Kindle

Kindle 3g

 

I’ve bought a kindle (the e-ink family with 3g) 6 months ago, middle august pretty much.

From then on, I’ve got to say I’m loving it. In a not particular order:

  • Updated to the latest page: This means that you don’t have to find the latest page, or you have to fight with the bookmark. Pretty nice.
  • Autosync: I have an Android phone and I can read the same book (if bought on amazon) on the phone or on the kindle. The amazon app is smart enough to ask me if I want to sync to the latest page read, either on the kindle or on the phone. Nice one.
  • Wireless delivery and easy access to books: when a book is bought on amazon, it is automatically delivered to the kindle through whispernet. This potentially brings any book close to you. (and it makes very easy to spend tons of money on them.)
  • Battery and usability: The battery is able to deliver power up to one month. This is remarkable and really makes it easy to use it and forget is powered by electricity. The mini usb standard port makes super easy to recharge with any cable. Pretty nice.
  • More than one book: this is quite a given, however the possibilities to have tons of books in one device ready to go to the latest page in a pretty compact format is very nice ability. Especially if you are a parallel reader and like to read more than one book at the time.
What the kindle is not good:
  • Reading Papers and PDF: If you used to an android with a touch-screen using the kindle with the e-ink is a very unpleasant activity. I’ve given up.
  • Browsing online: The browser is pretty essential, so you can quickly look up some pages, however I will not suggest to use it as main browser.
 
Bottom line: If you want to have a nice device to read books made of text, where words count and images are not important or essential, I’ll say go for it and you will be happy, otherwise I guess a tablet will do better.
 
P.S.: Now the kindle store is open also on amazon.it, so I can access tons of books in Italian too, which is very nice and convenient.