First and foremost, I want to thank Mr. Loken for giving me the chance to be the first one to try out the Kindle book. It was a fantastic experience! I was excited and eager to get started as soon as I held it in my hands. The best thing about the Kindle is the screen, which looks like real paper. I could read for hours and my eyes wouldn't get tired, as they would have if it had been a computer screen. Unlike most electrical devices, the Kindle doesn't get hot after using it for a long time.
Some other functions that I really liked were the dictionary, the dog-ear marker and the highlights. While you're reading, you don't have to grab a dictionary and look up words you don't know; on you Kindle you just press a few keys and you get the definitions of the selected line in just a few seconds. The dog-ear marker can keep track of where you're at in your reading so you can come back to it later, and the highlights, well, it's just like how you'd normally highlight a book, but it can be undone.
The downside of the Kindle (I'm saying this from my own experience) is that you have to be really careful with the "Next" key. Even if you accidentally tap it really lightly, it can skip over quite a few pages, and it's quite a hassle to find your way back to the page you were on (the Kindle doesn't use regular page numbers). It's also a pity that the wireless can only be used in the US; with it you could browse books online, search information from wikipedia, get daily updates of newspapers/magazines, etc.
Overall I had a nice time with the Kindle, although I wouldn't recommend it for school use. It's a fragile device, it can easily get scratched, and kids tend to handle things like these rather carelessly. We can't take risks with expensive things like the Kindle. Also, if we're only going to have, say, 6 Kindles, there would be a problem if everyone wanted to borrow it, and we'd have to set a time limit to determine how long one can borrow a Kindle for.
And as a final/side note, I still prefer the typical solid books. It's something about the feel of it... it's an indescribable feeling. But the Kindle is also great; it's light, practical, comfortable to use, and can last up to 30 hours without charging. If you're interested, definitely try it out! Ask Mr. Loken to borrow the Kindle... and take good care of it. :)
Some other functions that I really liked were the dictionary, the dog-ear marker and the highlights. While you're reading, you don't have to grab a dictionary and look up words you don't know; on you Kindle you just press a few keys and you get the definitions of the selected line in just a few seconds. The dog-ear marker can keep track of where you're at in your reading so you can come back to it later, and the highlights, well, it's just like how you'd normally highlight a book, but it can be undone.
The downside of the Kindle (I'm saying this from my own experience) is that you have to be really careful with the "Next" key. Even if you accidentally tap it really lightly, it can skip over quite a few pages, and it's quite a hassle to find your way back to the page you were on (the Kindle doesn't use regular page numbers). It's also a pity that the wireless can only be used in the US; with it you could browse books online, search information from wikipedia, get daily updates of newspapers/magazines, etc.
Overall I had a nice time with the Kindle, although I wouldn't recommend it for school use. It's a fragile device, it can easily get scratched, and kids tend to handle things like these rather carelessly. We can't take risks with expensive things like the Kindle. Also, if we're only going to have, say, 6 Kindles, there would be a problem if everyone wanted to borrow it, and we'd have to set a time limit to determine how long one can borrow a Kindle for.
And as a final/side note, I still prefer the typical solid books. It's something about the feel of it... it's an indescribable feeling. But the Kindle is also great; it's light, practical, comfortable to use, and can last up to 30 hours without charging. If you're interested, definitely try it out! Ask Mr. Loken to borrow the Kindle... and take good care of it. :)
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Interesting! We'll see if these electronic books really take off in the next few years. Will they ever replace "real" books? Thanks for the review.
May 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM
Great review! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I was very interested in knowing what your experience with it had been.
Indeed, reading other reviews, it seems that its feeble complexion might be a problem for us... http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/05/26/this-is-what-a-broke.html
Also, another criticism I read about is that it doesn't support PDF files. See "File formats" http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/amazon-kindle-ebook-1.html
I'm sure that eventually, the idea of an electronic reader will take off and become the norm. This particular model, however, might be a "beta" version we'll have to think seriously about getting involved (or not) with...
May 31, 2008 at 8:47 AM