The Amazon Kindle is a great way to carry all those books, magazines and newspapers around with you while you are on the go.
Those unfamiliar with e-books are usually wary of the idea of reading from portable computers. Screens perform poorly in direct sunlight, and your eyes get tired. But the Amazon Kindle is about to change a lot of people's minds. The device uses a high-resolution display technology called an electrophoretic (or electronic paper, or "e-paper") display that is not backlit. Instead, it basically imitates a printed page, so you can read books the way you normally do, whether you're in a beach chair or beside a lamp.
The entire device is about the size and weight of a standard paperback book (10.3 ounces, and measures 7.5x5.3x0.7 inches). Meanwhile, the screen is 4.9x3.6 inches and its contrast is adjustable, as is the font size. Overall, the quality of the "printed" page looks exceptional, and reading for long periods poses no different eyestrain than one would normally encounter from a regular text.
The delivery mechanism of the Kindle is one of the handiest features. EV-DO technology is built into the unit, so as long as you are within Sprint's mobile phone network, you can immediately access the Kindle/Amazon library, as well as newspapers, blogs, Wikipedia, and the rest of the Internet. The latter two services are free, but you have to pay subscription charges for both the newspapers and the blogs, which is rather ridiculous given that they are free online. Access to the high-speed EV-DO network, however, does not have a charge, and a monthly service plan is not required.
There are no cables or computers required for the Kindle, but if you are outside of Sprint's network (say Europe), you can download books to a computer and then transfer the files via USB. Most new releases cost $9.99, and older titles are offered at a discount. You can also read the first chapters of many books for free. The other products that you can download to the Kindle are audiobooks and MP3 files, for which a headphone jack sits on the side of the unit.
Among the newspapers that the Kindle can include are The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many others. There are some major concerns here, though: Because it is auto-delivered each day, you do not get to view the same information as someone on a computer; namely, you lose all of the breaking news and basically you have the morning edition in your hands. Given that the Kindle has a wireless connection, this seems lazy. And the formatting of the newspaper is not particularly pleasing (it's as if it's been converted into a book). You can actually access the sites for free over the device's Internet connection, but the browser offered with the Kindle is unexceptional and does not format the pages particularly well, nor are they in color.
Magazine subscriptions are a more suitable media for the device, as their content is not as dynamic. Some of the magazines that the Kindle can access include TIME, Atlantic Monthly, Forbes, and many others. There are some formatting issues here too, but over time this will probably be resolved with future firmware updates, which happen automatically over the high-speed network.
Nonetheless, books will be the consumer's primary focus here, and downloading them from Amazon's site is exceptionally easy. You simply go to their library through a dedicated button and then select a title. After one click, the book begins downloading, and generally takes about one minute to arrive in full. Another great thing is that if you need to delete books for space, or if you lose your Kindle, Amazon tracks all of your purchases so that you can download the book again, free of charge.
Reading your purchases is surprisingly smooth because the designers have done a great job in virtually creating printed text. Once you finish one page, pressing a button on either side of the screen will flip to the next. It takes just a second or two for the words to refresh. Below the screen there is a full QWERTY keyboard that you can use to type in requests, web pages, or other notes, and there is a scroll wheel beside it so you can move through web pages. Whenever you run across a word you don't know, either online or in a book, you can indicate it and all the words in that line are looked up in a dictionary for you. The device also remembers where you left off reading, and you can dog-ear pages where important information resides. Also on the keyboard is a button that takes you to your own home page where all of your works are displayed. Once there, you need only to scroll around until you find what you want to read.
The capacity of the Kindle is 185MB of internal memory, which holds roughly 200 titles, but there's a SD memory card slot on the back of the unit that can accommodate cards up to 4GB in capacity. In addition to books, The Kindle can also store your personal files and pictures, which can be loaded via USB or e-mailed to the Kindle. The latter feature is a bit obnoxious, as you have to pay per attachment (even if it is just ten cents each).
Probably the biggest drawback of this device is its design. The plastic shell feels cheap, and when you're spending 400 bucks and downloading hundreds of books that you're paying for, a little bit of confidence in the device's ruggedness would be nice. As for battery life, you should get about a week's worth of reading done before you need to recharge. If you leave the wireless connection on all of the time, the battery will be drained in about a day and a half.
Overall, the Kindle is definitely a handy way to tote your books around with you, but a few design issues and subscriptions deals need to be ironed out before the public will embrace it.
Pros: Easy-to-read screen, quick access to downloading books, large internal and external memories
Cons: Must pay for periodicals and blogs, design not very rugged, e-mail transfers awkward and pricey
<
No comments:
Post a Comment