Amazon Kindle Keyboard — 10 Things That I Like About It

I recently bought a 3rd generation Kindle.  For quite a while I had wanted to get one, since I’m an avid reader living in a Spanish speaking third world country.  I had my hesitations since it’s not the same thing as reading a ‘real book.’  I personally think e-readers, such as Kindle, Nook, Sony E-reader, et al are the direction of future publishing and reading, and we need to remember that “real books” were a revolution in the publishing world of their day with the invention of the printing press.  I’ve often said the internet is this generation’s printing press.  So at any rate, after nearly 6 weeks of having my own Kindle I thought I’d give a little review, since I casually find myself encouraging people to get one.

Here’s What I Like About The Kindle 3 So Far:

1. Affordable price. At $139 for the wi-fi only version and $189 for the free 3G plus wi-fi version, the Kindle is very affordable.  But the price of the Kindle itself is not why I prefer it but the price of the books (not including free ones I’ve found or public domain ones).  I may even be writing this too soon, it’s likely as they catch on, the price will continue to drop.  Who knows, maybe they’ll even be free very soon? Plus, when factoring in that I wanted something to be able to read e-books since English language books are hard to come by in Peru, the price is why I went with the Kindle instead of buying a more expensive iPad.
2. Decent selection. The Kindle Bookstore has almost almost 700 thousand books available (excluding public domain books). Sometimes I can’t find some book I want, but can find its author has e-versions of their material.
3. Its Size. The current edition of the Kindle weighs just 8.7 ounces—about one-third the weight of an iPad.  The Kindle feels feels just right in the hand, whether in its case or out of it.
4. Easy page navigation. There’s page-forward and page-backward buttons located on both sides of the device–so whether you’re right handled or left handed shouldn’t matter, and they are easy to use and seem very intuitive.
5. High screen resolution. The text truly rivals the printed page.  I have been impressed so far with how easy it is on the eyes, and resembles an actual paper page.  The fact it has no color can be a bummer if you’re trying to read a PDF document or something else that necessitates color, but for simply reading most books, this is fine.  The reason I preferred a Kindle to an iPad is the fact it uses electronic ink instead of an LED screen, which reflects glares off of external lights, such as the sun if you want to read outdoors.  This also ties into the next reason;
6. Great battery life. With wireless turned off, the Kindle will last 30 days.  I’m not as worried about making sure it’s charged to capacity like my iPod or cell phone, so I can just grab it and go if I’m wanting to bring some reading material with me.  I don’t have to worry it’s about to die or needs to be charged.
7. The storage space. Much like the reasoning behind why I use an iPod classic instead of a fancier one, I like the idea of just being able to take any book or music I want with me on the go, not knowing what I’ll prefer on the road, until I get there.  Ebooks don’t take up a lot of file space, therefore it’s easy to store a large number on the device.  It’s like having a library in your hands.
8. I’m reading a lot more as a result.  This is a good thing right?  Since I don’t necessarily know which book I want to bring with me on a commute or for a trip to the coffee shop, I grab the Kindle, which has all my electronic books on it (I also have a back up on my Kindle for Mac on my computer) and as a result, I also find myself reading from it in order to pass time (like I would with books normally).  I’ve noticed as a result, the amount of reading I’m accomplishing personally has sky rocketed.
   

   

9. Social Media.  You can set up your Amazon account to be connected with your social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.  If you desire to share book excerpts you can highlight them (which really, is more like underlining them) and like the share button and it will automatically share a link to the excerpt to the social media you’ve specified.  So, while I read I tweet the excerpts I want to share.
10. Lots of free books. If you’re like me–a reading machine–you lament that books are more expensive than how fast you like to read them.  Kindle has helped solve that in the fact Kindle books are much cheaper than paper back and definitely hardcover books.  However, there are websites available that keep track of deals of the week or when books are free 1.  I’ve found many public domain books that someone has taken the time to format for the Kindle, such as works by D.L. Moody, Charles Finney, Jonathan Edwards, Martin Luther, G.K. Chesterton, among several others or at least that I found for only $1.99.

Here’s What I don’t Like About the Kindle:

1. Difficulty in Organizing book collections. Like in iTunes or on my phone, I like to organize my music into playlists, and likewise I’d like to organize my books in similar collections such as what I’m currently reading.  So far, unless I’m missing it, there doesn’t seem to be a method for just click on the book and selecting you want to add it to a certain collection.  Instead, all it seems you can do is open the collection through the menu and click that you want to add or remove books from the collection…while showing ALL of your books and merely indicating by a check mark which ones are already in the collection.  Thus, making the process quite arduous.  Why might you want to make a collection in the first place?  For me, ease of finding the particular books I’m after.
2. Difficulty in Converting or Using PDF Files. You can email your Amazon account and send PDF documents you may wish to convert to their format and make more readable on the kindle.  However, if the document you’re converting has block quotes in the pages, these screw up the formatting big time and cause portions of text to go missing or get “skipped” in the conversion process.  If you want to just view PDF, the font has to be large enough to be readable on the Kindle since you cannot change the font size but merely zoom in as though each page is a JPEG.  This proves quite difficult, and therefore makes viewing or reading PDFs on the Kindle impossible to date.
3. Not all books come properly formatted for the Kindle. One discovery I made early on is that you can skip to the next chapter by clicking the square navigation button.  However, sometimes when I click to the left or to the right on it, instead of going to the next chapter I’m taken to the end or beginning of the book.  Or sometimes nothing happens.  It would be nice if I could just skip to or see the next chapter or previous one consistently.  So far, it’s just a matter of luck if a book you buy or download has been formatted properly to take advantage of this feature.

So there you have it.  Get yourself one but hold on to your books!

1. Check out Tim Challies’ Building an eBook Library On The Cheap for more on that at http://www.challies.com/resources/building-an-ebook-library-on-the-cheap [↩]