I’ve recently bit the bullet and bought a kindle. I’ve been wanting to see the display of an ebook reader for a while but never had the chance, but the reviews of the display were all very good so I wasn’t too worried about that. With the recently announced 3rd generation kindles at a much more reasonable price I decided that it was time to see what all the fuss was about.
I have been using the device for about two weeks and so far the overall impression is very positive. I haven’t recharged the device yet and it’s still about half full. I usually read at night before going to sleep. I’ve also used the built-in Oxford dictionary the first week. This was while I was finishing off a “normal” book, The Day Of the Triffids (excellent book btw). Even just as a dictionary it also works very well because of the keyboard, the screen and the fact that you don’t need to think about charging.
I have started reading Cory Doctorow’s latest novel for the win. The book can be downloaded for free in kindle format (DRM free). It’s wonderful to see Doctorow standing by his principles and embracing the future. In the past I would download his latest work and read it on my computer, waiting for the physical book to arrive in the mail. Now I can just download it right away, read it on a very nice screen, and donate if I like the book.
Living in Denmark I must confess that I haven’t given much thought about using it to read Danish books. I mostly read books in English anyway, but at some point I’ll have to check out if and how one can borrow ebooks from the library. But that is a subject for another blog post 🙂
The good:
- The screen. It’s better than paperback. Yes it’s that good.
- The dictionary (I’m quite surprised of how much I’m using it)
- Battery life
- Very light and can fit in a ton of books
The bad:
- Ebook prices. Why are a paperback version sometimes cheaper than the digital version?
- DRM on books
- PDF files can be viewed, but one really needs a bigger version as the kindle will not format the text to fit the screen properly. Hopefully this will be fixed in a firmware update sometime in the future.
And the ugly:
- It’s not too shabby looking with the graphite 🙂
One of the nice things about reading is that it enhances ones vocabulary, but only if one can learn the new words that one meets. I’ve always dreaded using a dictionary because one has to manually find the right page, and for them to contain all relevant words they need to be huge. When one is used to computers, this just seems terribly inefficient. Luckily now there are many online dictionaries. Sadly they don’t help very much when one is lying on the sofa or in bed and reading. This is where I think the kindle really shines. When reading a book on the kindle, one can instantly look up a new word without leaving the page. This alone is often compelling reason enough to buy it as an ebook than to buy it in paperback.