Review: The Amazon Kindle
Category: Books & Writing... Tech...
Posted Friday, November 21, 2008 at 09:57 PM [GMT-6]

Earlier this year, I took a chance and bought MLB a Kindle for her birthday. She promised to write a review, but that's been almost five months ago. Her excuse? She doesn't want to put it down long enough to write about it. But I finally nagged encouraged her enough to finish the review, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. I hope Amazon.com is paying attention.

Here’s my long postponed (procrastinated) review of my Amazon.com Kindle e-book reader. I LOVE IT. It’s a little bigger than a paperback book when it’s in its cover (and I did replace the cover it came with to avoid inadvertent page turns). The screen is easy to read, it’s easy to hold and easy to read while you are doing something else (doesn’t require any hands to hold it open). But reading aside, it’s the access to Amazon and the internet that really makes the Kindle special. When my Kindle was new, it was simple to set it up with an Amazon.com account. It came with a users guide that I really do still intend to read one of these days, but it was so easy and so inviting and so addictive to browse the Kindle store, find a book, buy it and start reading it minutes (1-2?) later, it was incredible.

I started slowly; found a couple of books; and then found a series that I started reading on my Kindle. So far there are seven books in the series. I downloaded the first and read it, liked it enough to download the second and third – these were all released several years ago and the physical books are paperbacks. In the Kindle world, books like this are between about $4.75 and $6.75 each; even most new releases are only $9.99 if you wait a few days after the release date. Well, we traveled and vacationed during this time and I finished these pretty quickly so I downloaded number four and five; finished those and downloaded number six. Number seven is a new release and it was my first $9.99 book. I still managed to find four or five others to download and read, too. It is so cool; the Kindle uses a form of the Sprint network to connect to the internet and I could finish a book while we were driving down the road and download another one so I could stay occupied. [Ed. note: The reference to “we” and “driving” really means “not her” and “driving,” if you get my drift.]

It does require a little getting used to in terms of reading style. There’s a tiny delay while you wait for the next page to show up, but you figure out how far from the end of the last line you need to be to push the next page button so you don’t have to pause. It’s not backlit, so you need a light to read in bed, but it’s easy to read in bed (caution: if you doze off with your finger resting on the next page button, you may have to back up considerably to find your place again). I have read it in the bathtub [Ed. note: Gaaaahhh!!], but with a great deal of anxiety as it would not fare well if dropped. I saw that someone suggested a Ziploc bag which might work, but I’ve only read it in the tub once.

I didn’t care for the original cover that it came with. It didn’t stay in the cover securely and it was too easy to accidentally turn the page. Other covers are available, more $.

One of the reasons I postponed this review was because I had heard that free e-books were available that could be downloaded onto the Kindle and I wanted to try that and report. At first glance, it looked harder than downloading from Amazon, so I didn’t jump in right away. When I did, I found that while it was a little more involved, it wasn’t difficult at all. There are several sites that offer the free e-books and they cater to all forms of e-book readers, not just the Kindle. The two that I chose to use were mnybks.net and free-books.com. These sites contain older books; perhaps what would be considered classics, although some are not so classic. At any rate, I downloaded from both and found free-books.com to be easier. You can download a guide that will let you browse the free-book site more like you browse the Amazon Kindle store. Not quite as seamless, but close – and for free. I downloaded Frankenstein, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland and Gone with the Wind, among others. I saw versions of the Bible, but I may buy a version to download to get a version that is easier to navigate.

The Kindle has some other functions, but these are in its ‘experimental’ section. That’s where you find the actual web browser and audio capabilities. These are functional, but not elegant, but the Kindle is built to be pretty much a one trick pony and it is outstanding at that trick. It would be nice to have a faster web browser and to be able to arrange your books in folders and to have the on/off buttons in different locations, but those improvements would not have significantly increased the pleasure I have already gotten from my Kindle.

According to what I’ve read, you can store up to 200 books on your Kindle. The Kindle will also read SD cards and you can store your books on your computer. However, one of the other perks of being a Kindle owner is the space you are allotted from Amazon to store your ‘media library’. You can delete books from your Kindle, but they will always be available on your Amazon media library. The books you purchase from Amazon are automatically added to your media library. You can add the free e-books (or other media you put on your Kindle), but it’s not so automatic. This would be the place to note that you can have up to six Kindles on one Amazon account. This allows you to share the media you have on your Kindle with others in our family.

Bottom line, I’m still reading paper ‘real’ books from time to time because not everything is available in an e-format, but my Kindle has been kind of like my first cell phone. I wondered why anyone would want a cell phone before I got one. Now I hate to leave the house without it. I thought a Kindle sounded interesting and now I would not want to travel without mine. Thanks, MHH [Ed. note: That’s me! 8-)] for one of the best gifts ever!