Product: Amazon Kindle
Price: £89
I am, and always have been, a keen reader. Books are an essential for every holiday, are always kept by wherever I am sleeping, and I often have more than one 'on the go' at a time. I was therefore fairly wary of the new wave of eBooks, which seemed to be a case of technology encroaching where it isn't needed - into the realm of the written word, which has survived with no need for improvement for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Change is scary, change is unknown, but sometimes, change can be a good thing. The Kindle, I have decided, is a good thing. We lose very little in the transition from a paperback to the Kindle, but we gain far more in dropping our sentamentalities.
When buying and reading books on a Kindle I lose the following: the feel and smell of a new book, the ability to display that book in my home and the ability to give that book away to anyone else. And though the side of me that misses the days of VCR and TVs that required their own tables to sit on misses holding a physical book in my hand, I really can't say that I'm missing out on a lot here. The Kindle isn't exactly unpleasant to hold either; it has a softened back, and is weighted in the golden zone between 'so-light-it-may-snap-of-its-own-accord-at-any-moment' and 'a-little-bit-heavier-than-it-should-be'. The ability to put my book collection on display is not much of a loss either, and really shouldn't be unless you either have a surfeit of space to fill or a need to show off a high-brow taste in literature to impress any Oxford professors who might stumble into your personal vault of lofty tomes. This potential disadvantage is easily outweighed by its bright side - because you can squeeze your whole book collection onto a Kindle you can effectively haul around a mobile library in your bag whether you are travelling abroad, or settling into a university room (which comes supplied with less space than a prison cell at some considerable extra cost) - and all without the corrective spinal surgery which might usually follow such an undertaking.
For the terminally apathetic, such as myself, the Kindle also simplifies and refines the process of getting hold of a book to read. You no longer have to trail to the shops to pick up a novel, but simply wait for Amazon to deliver it to you, at a digital speed several thousand times faster than the delivery of a physical copy of said book. This has served to re-kindle (geddit?) my own appetite for reading, and I've returned to my old habit of getting through a book every one or two days, though how much of this can be attributed to the 'shiny new toy effect' remains to be seen.
The Kindle certainly becomes natural to use extremely quickly - the buttons that allow you to flick back and forth through the book require very little effort to use, and - just as with turning a page in a 'real book' - you soon stop noticing yourself doing it. The e-ink used is excellent, and feels just like reading any other book - if anything you get less eye strain with a Kindle, as you can make the font pretty much any size you feel like.
But any good review must contain some criticism, so let us discuss the faults with this latest, cheaper iteration of the Kindle. Unlike its flashier cousins this version is missing a keyboard, which, though not needed during the actual reading of the book (unless you feel compelled to annotate every book you read) is definitely missed when browsing the Kindle Store, which feels clunky at best.
This version is also missing the almost-worldwide 3G coverage of the high-end models, which is no problem here in my house with Wi-Fi, but I sense could be a pain when in places where Wi-Fi is more of a rarity. Leaving Wi-Fi turned on also seems to lower the battery life considerably, but when the battery life is so long anyway (for all you iPhone users this means weeks, not hours) this is a very minor complaint.
My main complaint with the Kindle store is pricing, though this is a fault with the whole market of digital distribution. For a digital copy of something to be even comparable in price is ludicrous - there are no manufacturing costs to take into account, and distribution costs a fraction of the price. For a digital copy to cost more is absolutely unforgivable, but this is an all-too-common sight on the Kindle store, as well as comparable stores for other mediums such as Steam or iTunes media.
To summarise then, the Kindle is excellent. Whether it is the best eBook reader out there, I cannot say, but it is hard to imagine anything doing it better. Once they sort out the pricing problems it is easy to imagine eBooks becoming the norm in reading, rather than the exception.
-bobmus
Price: £89
Change is scary, change is unknown, but sometimes, change can be a good thing. The Kindle, I have decided, is a good thing. We lose very little in the transition from a paperback to the Kindle, but we gain far more in dropping our sentamentalities.
When buying and reading books on a Kindle I lose the following: the feel and smell of a new book, the ability to display that book in my home and the ability to give that book away to anyone else. And though the side of me that misses the days of VCR and TVs that required their own tables to sit on misses holding a physical book in my hand, I really can't say that I'm missing out on a lot here. The Kindle isn't exactly unpleasant to hold either; it has a softened back, and is weighted in the golden zone between 'so-light-it-may-snap-of-its-own-accord-at-any-moment' and 'a-little-bit-heavier-than-it-should-be'. The ability to put my book collection on display is not much of a loss either, and really shouldn't be unless you either have a surfeit of space to fill or a need to show off a high-brow taste in literature to impress any Oxford professors who might stumble into your personal vault of lofty tomes. This potential disadvantage is easily outweighed by its bright side - because you can squeeze your whole book collection onto a Kindle you can effectively haul around a mobile library in your bag whether you are travelling abroad, or settling into a university room (which comes supplied with less space than a prison cell at some considerable extra cost) - and all without the corrective spinal surgery which might usually follow such an undertaking.
For the terminally apathetic, such as myself, the Kindle also simplifies and refines the process of getting hold of a book to read. You no longer have to trail to the shops to pick up a novel, but simply wait for Amazon to deliver it to you, at a digital speed several thousand times faster than the delivery of a physical copy of said book. This has served to re-kindle (geddit?) my own appetite for reading, and I've returned to my old habit of getting through a book every one or two days, though how much of this can be attributed to the 'shiny new toy effect' remains to be seen.
The Kindle certainly becomes natural to use extremely quickly - the buttons that allow you to flick back and forth through the book require very little effort to use, and - just as with turning a page in a 'real book' - you soon stop noticing yourself doing it. The e-ink used is excellent, and feels just like reading any other book - if anything you get less eye strain with a Kindle, as you can make the font pretty much any size you feel like.
But any good review must contain some criticism, so let us discuss the faults with this latest, cheaper iteration of the Kindle. Unlike its flashier cousins this version is missing a keyboard, which, though not needed during the actual reading of the book (unless you feel compelled to annotate every book you read) is definitely missed when browsing the Kindle Store, which feels clunky at best.
This version is also missing the almost-worldwide 3G coverage of the high-end models, which is no problem here in my house with Wi-Fi, but I sense could be a pain when in places where Wi-Fi is more of a rarity. Leaving Wi-Fi turned on also seems to lower the battery life considerably, but when the battery life is so long anyway (for all you iPhone users this means weeks, not hours) this is a very minor complaint.
My main complaint with the Kindle store is pricing, though this is a fault with the whole market of digital distribution. For a digital copy of something to be even comparable in price is ludicrous - there are no manufacturing costs to take into account, and distribution costs a fraction of the price. For a digital copy to cost more is absolutely unforgivable, but this is an all-too-common sight on the Kindle store, as well as comparable stores for other mediums such as Steam or iTunes media.
To summarise then, the Kindle is excellent. Whether it is the best eBook reader out there, I cannot say, but it is hard to imagine anything doing it better. Once they sort out the pricing problems it is easy to imagine eBooks becoming the norm in reading, rather than the exception.
-bobmus