Kindle 2 thoughts
Geoffrey Kleinman - examiner.com:
As I thought about carrying around a device that holds several thousand books, I really thought about my reading experience. With music I love being able to switch between thousands of albums at a click of a button. Music is whimsical - at one moment I may be in the mood for one song and then for another. Books on the other hand aren’t. I’m extremely ‘loyal’ when it comes to a book. I pick up a book and read it cover to cover. I don’t start up other books, leave one half read while I start another. So what’s the real benefit of carrying around so many books?
As a geek and gadget lover I really want to justify the Kindle 2, especially now that it’s not so fugly. However Geoffrey’s comments about the predominantly serial nature of most people reading habits got me thinking.
My own reading for entertainment certainly fits his model of not putting one book down before starting the next. However as I’ve cut out all casual reading while I’m focusing on studying for my CCIE lab, my reading has gotten much less serial.
At any one time I could possibly want to look something up or read from any one of about 4 large (600+ page) Cisco Press books plus one or two other reference books. These are all hardcover tomes which pretty much excludes carrying more than two in any reasonable bag - laptop or an additional dedicated “study” bag I’ve taken to toting around - an unappealing thought.
In addition to the physical books that could be eliminated (lets ignore the fact that they would have to be repurchased to get them on the Kindle), I read a very large amount of technical reference material obtained via PDFs. The Kindle doesn’t have any native PDF support, but can convert them which is a somewhat experimental feature it seems.
However just how good is that, can it handle diagrams in PDFs, or standard text formatting etc?
And what about eye strain? Part of my lust of the Kindle is how much I dislike reading things on my laptop. Yes I have it with me most of the time I could be using a kindle, and it supports any and all formats I could run across with ease; but I really dislike reading things on it.
Especially reference material where I might be actively using my laptop and looking to read some kind of document (thinking LAB material here: I’ve printed out pages and pages of things to put in a binder). Flipping back and forth on one screen does nothing to reduce my already ADD proclivity to loose focus.
I also seem to comprehend things better when reading them in printed form vs. computer; which camp would the kindle fall in?
Kindle Pro’s:
- Light no matter how many books
- Ease of access to new material
- Totally cool toy
- Cheaper books vs. print copies
Kindle Con’s:
- Price $350 is a bit much — though the argument could be made that this is offset by the savings in ebooks
- Not as durable as books — though the drop tests on Amazon’s site are impressive
Kindle Unknowns:
- Eye fatigue — exactly how much easier on the eyes is the eInk screen vs an LCD?
- How good is search/bookmarking facility — can it over come the page turn speed?
- How good is PDF importing?
- General user experience
- Reading comprehension on par with paper?
My biggest problem is how do I investigate the unknowns? I don’t know anyone that is getting a Kindle 2, nor any place where I could get my hands on one to play with for a little bit. I wonder what Amazon’s return policy is……
