My girlie bagged a Kindle 3 the other day. Said she needed more books, but when I flat-out refused to sacrifice any more guitar space to add to the shelves (3 large ones and counting), she settled on this as a compromise.
She loves it - it's small, sleek, and means she can keep bothering my Facebook feed with quotes from the Raven.
As for me?
Well, for starters, the device is sleek, and is small. She's got me trumped there - it's a marvel of design, and Amazon really do deserve credit for this one. Build quality's solid, the device is light (not ridiculously so due to the battery, but easily light enough for comfortable use), no bigger than a standard paperback and a great deal thinner, and all seamlessly put together. You've got to love it when that happens.
The screen of the device is a 6" E-ink display, that makes reading an absolute doddle. When it arrived, and I was tasked with setting up the device, I thought the message on the front of the screen, detailing setup instructions in perfectly clear writing with beautiful pictures, was a sticker. It was actually a page pre-loaded on to the screen by Amazon, in E-ink. Well played! The books read beautifully, there's barely any way to distinguish it from printed type, and there's the added bonus of some very pretty pictures, as well as portraits of great authors, which appear when in standby mode. I couldn't be more impressed with this.
There's also access to Kindle's content delivery service, Whispernet, through the device itself, thanks to built-in wi-fi support, and on some models, 3G. In this instance, I did have a say in the choice - I pointed out that the price difference between models just meant impulse buys were more likely on the go, and the couple of hours wait (at most) to get to a wi-fi hotspot, wasn't worth the £40 difference (which could, I reminded her, be used to buy more books!)
The classic literature of Whispernet is an invaluable resource. With tens of thousands of books available on the Kindle, for free, it's a boon. PDF support is also a bonus, so that titles not available through Amazon's service are more often than not readily available. However, the standard side of Whispernet is the curse of impulse buying. It literally does take less than 30 seconds to buy a book, and with instant payment taken from a bank account, this could cause a problem when the bills can't be paid, because you spent half an hour on Amazon Marketplace.
Having said that, there is one aspect of the Kindle that some commentators are annoyed about - a lack of EPUB support. Neither myself, nor the owner of aforementioned Kindle (who I have had to tear the device from to write this review) have noticed any problem here so far. Yes, it's a pain being limited in retailers, but Amazon seem to do competitive low prices, and the system has workarounds, the most notable being Calibre. From a personal perspective on this point, I'm torn - I know in my heart this is a missing feature that should knock my opinion of the Kindle as a whole, but in my head, I don't notice it, and in my limited use, probably won't. The occasional classical work, physics textbook, and the odd bit of Pratchett when the missus isn't looking, will probably be the extent of my use.
The screen has been a source for contention in some circles. While it's generally accepted that the E-ink panel is the best bet for reading, when switching pages on the Kindle, there's a brief delay while the screen flashes from white to black, and back again. While it's no bother as-is, some have labelled their Kindles faulty and asked for a replacement, only to complain the second time around. I could see a problem if a speed-reader used the largest font possible, and gave themselves an epileptic fit in the process, but now we're just delving into the realms of madness.
My biggest problem with the whole Kindle ecosystem? The users.
There are dozens of threads on the official Kindle message boards, sorted and titled by date the Kindle was ordered, estimated dispatch date, full of people who are either still moaning that they haven't received their Kindle based on their estimated date, those who have received their Kindle and are smugly flaunting it like a dwarf among midgets in a disaster area's Red Cross food drop zone, and those who think the Kindle forums should be more about the device, less about delivery/order dates and times, and that the multitude of threads could quite easily be condensed into one single thread regarding delivery (these people are shouted at, abused, and promptly reported to staff/down-voted/ignored).
The air of pretentiousness upon hearing some self-satisfied poseur prance about how much they love their new Kindle over "treebooks" (I couldn't make this stuff up!) and how they've been "steadily engorging their brain on the classics" (read: downloading the free ones), quite frankly, stinks to high Heaven. You could quite easily gather a consortium of Kindle forumites, drop them in the ocean, and watch as the saturation level of toxic bile in the direction of any vaguely related subject (iPads/tablets, real books, Amazon, Whispernet, Royal Mail, warehouse stocks, non-Kindle users, literature as a whole) caused a disaster of epic proportions.
An artist's impression of the impending doom
So, yes, the Kindle's a great device, backed up by an easy (and I might argue, almost too easy) way to purchase new content, a wide variety of usable formats, and a wonderful screen, built for purpose.
Just don't expect me to be your friend if you get one.
No comments:
Post a Comment