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selenayMy 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!
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 12:22 am (UTC)I know how tempting it is to have all the Miss Marples in one paperback sized thing that you can carry everywhere for those emergency "need improbable murder" moments.
I may already have started collecting. And I might have bought my first while in Chapters (Canadian bookstore chain) so that I could feel particularly subversive. Got to love having free wi-fi hotspots in most placed here :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 01:25 am (UTC)I recommend the free games, and also
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:31 pm (UTC)The Sony's are still (IMO) too expensive for what they do, but when they come down in price they'll be a great investment. The screen on my Kindle is fantastic, much clearer than Mum's Sony, and I know that's the one they're using in the new Sonys so it's worth holding out for.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:32 pm (UTC)I'll be bookmarking some things, I can tell :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:55 pm (UTC)I've also just been experimenting with putting some fanfic from AO3 on. It's stupidly easy. I download the story I want to my computer in .mobi format and then email it to my @free.kindle.com email address. Again, when I turn the wireless on my Kindle on the documents just download and they're ready to read. It's almost too easy - I'm going to end up with so much fanfic on this thing! Although, I am going to be reading through a few TARDIS Big Bang stories this way which is nice :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-21 07:52 pm (UTC)You are kidding, yes? Read it again. All the browsing for stuff can be done on a big screen. You want something from Amazon, it's about 3-4 clicks. You want something else, email it. Half a dozen clicks or keyboard shortcuts as preferred. Oh look, it's on the device. Done. Finished. Get reading.
Contrast with shuffling stuff around on memory sticks, where you're adding a whole extra physical step moving a card around, copying files on one or both ends, deleting stuff off again once it has been moved and so on. Many more steps. I'm very familiar with this as my radio records to SD card and I have to move those to a computer occasionally. Complete faff.
As for it doing too much, just don't use it for those things!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 08:15 am (UTC)But you're assuming I'd buy something from Amazon, which I wouldn't. The only books I buy new are Discworld ones and I'd far rather have them in book form than ebook form.
If you're emailing stuff, then I'd have to go and find it on my hard drive, then email it, then pick it up on the ebook reader. But with an SD card it skips the emailing it step. Whichever I did I wouldn't delete the files in case the ebook reader crashed and lost them. The SD card option also means that I can do it on either computer and also use it to copy things without having to get a pen drive out. Plus, if you've downloaded something from Gutenburg, you're already in the folder. It sounds like you do a lot more work than I do putting things on pen drives.
Plus the biggest problem I have with the Kindle is that I don't want my book to go online. It's the same as I don't want to go online with my phone or my mp3 player, or in fact anything that's not a computer. And there are far better things to do with the space than have a keyboard.