The Amazon Kindle
Cost $ 359.00 full retail
Availability: Alternates between low in stock and sold out
A few weeks ago Mrs. DS proudly handed me my 'main' Christmas gift. I tore the wrapping paper off with careless, well conditioned abandon to find a smallish, white gizmo with a little screen and a miniature keyboard. I asked what it was. She beamed as she told me 'books,’ and then added excitedly, "All of 'em!"
The Amazon Kindle (Wiki) is a portable, rechargeable e-book reader -- with embedded wireless access to an electronic library full of e-books -- made to look, feel, and read like a real book. I found it pulls it off, mostly, but a few criticisms remain.
In the midst of a sharp recession, the reader's price makes it attractive to only those with disposable income and appropriate for only the more voracious reader. While hundreds of thousands of books are available at no cost, more recent books and bestsellers out in hard and paper back cost from around 3 to 12 dollars. It can subscribe to some major online dailies like newspapers and websites. There are some e-book networks developing that work for a flat fee; badly needed if this format is going to takeoff. A dozen purchases a month could add up fast.
The Kindle uses electronic paper -- with an adjustable font -- that mimics the look of its pulpy ancestors. Here it succeeds: several times I found myself unconsciously searching for the edge of the next page to turn. Like a real book, the text is not backlit. A small light can be clipped on the device to read in a dark place. I'm told informally that back-lighting is difficult to arrange with electronic ink and paper. Still, a night friendly text option is one useful invention from the cyber world future designers might want to include, if possible.
Those vertical 'space bars' running up most of each side, where the thumbs are resting in the pic, change the page almost on touch. It's close to impractical to hold without the accompanying notebook case, and clumsy to operate even with it. The latter corrects itself to some degree; after a single day of non stop reading in the case, I became adept at picking it up and using the buttons as I wished without a potentially costly fumble.
Children's books and non-fiction books tend to come with artwork, diagrams, or graphs. The Kindle will not display a lot of that very well. The images are often rendered virtually useless. They're B & W, tiny, and there is no scroll or zoom.
The wireless network used by Amazon to locate and download new books into the Kindle worked fine for me. Browsing and purchasing on the reader itself was a little slow (It was a breeze to plug into a computer and download from the net). Overall, for something this new, I found the embedded network surprisingly user friendly.
The Kindle visibly struggles with the conundrum facing every e-gadget maker: what does it ultimately want to be? There is an intriguing, self publishing beta version that could, someday, really shake up traditional publishing houses and bookstores. Or should its makers first invest in technology that includes e-mail, images and video, phone, full internet access, or daily news reader? You tell me.
In summary, for reasons above, I probably wouldn't recommend it for anyone who isn’t somewhat responsible and a teensy bit comfy with a computer. There are competitors to consider and no doubt more to come. But for this hard core reader, as a gift, it is so far a superb one. Last week I merrily romped, almost non-stop, through a dozen fiction and nonfiction classics in a sublime trance without paying a penny. If you love reading old fashioned dead tree books and you can handle email or the Google, it's fair to say you'll probably love the Kindle, too.