Kindle!
My Kindle arrived a few days ago. So excited! I love it already :-)
From getting out of the box to setting it up in the home wifi and downloading books took around ten minutes. It would have been much less if I hadn't been trying to remember the password for the network without checking the handy notebook downstairs :-) Adding it to the home network when I had the correct password was a cinch and the entire thing is very intuitive. Anything that you can't figure out on your own is in the manual that is already loaded onto the Kindle, which I've been referring regularly because obviously the Kindle needed a thorough test-drive ;-)
I opted for the Wi-Fi only model because I couldn't really see any situations when I'd want web-capability on it outside of hotspots. I've got home wi-fi and there are wi-fi hotspots all over the city I live in, plus the airports and hotels that I use regularly, so paying an extra $50 for 3G coverage made no sense to me.
All the comments on how good the contrast on the screen is were right: the background is much whiter and the text far darker than Mum's Sony. When I tried out the Sony, I had to bump up the text size a bit to read comfortably because the contrast wasn't great and the display wasn't particularly sharp. The Kindle is no problem and I've left it on the default text settings, which are about what I would expect in a normal paperback. For people who need large print, though, I could see the Kindle being a godsend. I haven't had any of the previous models, so I can't compare whether the controls are better now, but I have no problems and quite like having the next/previous page buttons on both sides of the reader.
I will admit that someone with large fingers will struggle with the keyboard and 5-way controller. Good thing my fingers are pretty slim :-)
For those interested, the new Sony reader models apparently use the same e-Ink screen as the new Kindle and if you're in the market for a Sony then you definitely want the new model.
I've had various samples, some free classics and a few cheap (under a dollar) reads sent to the Kindle a couple of days before it arrived, so I was able to start reading immediately. Setting up collections was easy so I'll be able to keep things nicely organised. Yesterday evening I went on a spree and got another three books: two recommendations from LibraryThing discussions plus an author I like who's not-latest is still nearly $20 in trade paperback after a year out and another one coming out recently. The Kindle copy was $8, so that's a good saving already that I don't feel the least bit guilty over.
Browsing the Kindle store is also very easy (I think that easy is the theme of this) and I can tell it's going to take some will-power not to buy way more than I can ever read. I've already got a wishlist going so that I can go back to buy things easily. It's possible that I've got all the Miss Marple books on there already...
I'm fairly sure that there are hidden tricks and categories to the Kindle store that I'll be finding as I go. It took me a while to work out where my wishlist was to see what I'd put on it, but then I accidentally hit the menu button while I was in the Kindle store and found the wishlist along with various other things I'd been looking for. Hitting the menu button in different screens to see what it has is a good guideline if you're unsure where to find something.
The Kindle has an experimental web browser that has had mixed reviews including a lot of reports of it making the Kindle freeze/reboot. Amazon pushed out a patch a week before my toy arrived that fixes most of the freezing problems and my Kindle picked it up as soon as I put it to sleep for a few minutes, so I decided to have a quick play with the browser. It's pretty slow with graphics-intensive pages but works nicely with mainly-text. I had a browse on the mobile version of the BBC News site and on Twitter, which both work fantastically and will probably be getting a bit of use until I get an iPod Touch.
It's ridiculously slim and light without a cover and adding a cover (the basic Amazon one in blue, no light) it's still a stupidly slim, light little machine. The slim profile is going to make it much easier to carry around with me and will be awesome when I'm travelling. There are a number of books that I've put off reading because their bulk isn't transportable (I always have a book in my handbag and try to keep myself down to one or at most two books on the go at once) that will probably be Kindled.
Today I experimented with buying a newspaper and spent a lot of the day happily curled up with the Independent. The local paper here is good for local news, OK-ish for Canadian news and ignores everything else. Spending some time with a paper that has good World and European news was lovely and I'll definitely be indulging again when I have a lazy day planned. I just wish Private Eye had a Kindle version!
In short, I adore my Kindle to itty bitty pieces and can absolutely see why people are raving about them so much!
From getting out of the box to setting it up in the home wifi and downloading books took around ten minutes. It would have been much less if I hadn't been trying to remember the password for the network without checking the handy notebook downstairs :-) Adding it to the home network when I had the correct password was a cinch and the entire thing is very intuitive. Anything that you can't figure out on your own is in the manual that is already loaded onto the Kindle, which I've been referring regularly because obviously the Kindle needed a thorough test-drive ;-)
I opted for the Wi-Fi only model because I couldn't really see any situations when I'd want web-capability on it outside of hotspots. I've got home wi-fi and there are wi-fi hotspots all over the city I live in, plus the airports and hotels that I use regularly, so paying an extra $50 for 3G coverage made no sense to me.
All the comments on how good the contrast on the screen is were right: the background is much whiter and the text far darker than Mum's Sony. When I tried out the Sony, I had to bump up the text size a bit to read comfortably because the contrast wasn't great and the display wasn't particularly sharp. The Kindle is no problem and I've left it on the default text settings, which are about what I would expect in a normal paperback. For people who need large print, though, I could see the Kindle being a godsend. I haven't had any of the previous models, so I can't compare whether the controls are better now, but I have no problems and quite like having the next/previous page buttons on both sides of the reader.
I will admit that someone with large fingers will struggle with the keyboard and 5-way controller. Good thing my fingers are pretty slim :-)
For those interested, the new Sony reader models apparently use the same e-Ink screen as the new Kindle and if you're in the market for a Sony then you definitely want the new model.
I've had various samples, some free classics and a few cheap (under a dollar) reads sent to the Kindle a couple of days before it arrived, so I was able to start reading immediately. Setting up collections was easy so I'll be able to keep things nicely organised. Yesterday evening I went on a spree and got another three books: two recommendations from LibraryThing discussions plus an author I like who's not-latest is still nearly $20 in trade paperback after a year out and another one coming out recently. The Kindle copy was $8, so that's a good saving already that I don't feel the least bit guilty over.
Browsing the Kindle store is also very easy (I think that easy is the theme of this) and I can tell it's going to take some will-power not to buy way more than I can ever read. I've already got a wishlist going so that I can go back to buy things easily. It's possible that I've got all the Miss Marple books on there already...
I'm fairly sure that there are hidden tricks and categories to the Kindle store that I'll be finding as I go. It took me a while to work out where my wishlist was to see what I'd put on it, but then I accidentally hit the menu button while I was in the Kindle store and found the wishlist along with various other things I'd been looking for. Hitting the menu button in different screens to see what it has is a good guideline if you're unsure where to find something.
The Kindle has an experimental web browser that has had mixed reviews including a lot of reports of it making the Kindle freeze/reboot. Amazon pushed out a patch a week before my toy arrived that fixes most of the freezing problems and my Kindle picked it up as soon as I put it to sleep for a few minutes, so I decided to have a quick play with the browser. It's pretty slow with graphics-intensive pages but works nicely with mainly-text. I had a browse on the mobile version of the BBC News site and on Twitter, which both work fantastically and will probably be getting a bit of use until I get an iPod Touch.
It's ridiculously slim and light without a cover and adding a cover (the basic Amazon one in blue, no light) it's still a stupidly slim, light little machine. The slim profile is going to make it much easier to carry around with me and will be awesome when I'm travelling. There are a number of books that I've put off reading because their bulk isn't transportable (I always have a book in my handbag and try to keep myself down to one or at most two books on the go at once) that will probably be Kindled.
Today I experimented with buying a newspaper and spent a lot of the day happily curled up with the Independent. The local paper here is good for local news, OK-ish for Canadian news and ignores everything else. Spending some time with a paper that has good World and European news was lovely and I'll definitely be indulging again when I have a lazy day planned. I just wish Private Eye had a Kindle version!
In short, I adore my Kindle to itty bitty pieces and can absolutely see why people are raving about them so much!