Total Number of Ratings: 7
Two Weeks Later: The Kindle 2
Saturday, May 23, 2009 9:33 PM
I've had my Kindle 2 for about two weeks. I've downloaded a few books from Amazon, grabbed a stash of "I'm embarrassed I've never read this" texts from Project Gutenberg, and have torn through a few books. I love it. I want to carry it with me wherever I go and I have to keep reminding myself that I wouldn't take a book to the grocery store or to my mother's house for dinner, so Sparkie should stay home. Of course I named it, but I name things even when not prompted, so that's not saying too much.
Newspapers are already failing, and it's clear that books are the next target as the paper-less revolution foretold decades ago finally gains some momentum. The eReaders may fall victim to a sudden burst of superior technology which will render it as useless as the 8-track or the mini-disk or countless other it items I can't recall right now. Do Betamax and HD-DVD count? oh! DIVX! There's another one. Anyway, it looks like the electronic ink technology is forging ahead instead of slowing down, and with multiple worthy readers on the market, I'm pleased with my leap of faith.
What makes the Kindle so great is hard to accurately define. I remember trying to explain to my parents why CDs were so much better than cassette tapes. I remember the "how lazy is our daughter?" looks they exchanged when I talked about being able to skip to new tracks without having to rewind or fast forward. They did not understand the appeal of a shuffle feature. It was thinner and sexier than a cassette tape. So what? It had been hard to make a case for the CD on such weak arguments, but the changes the technology brought were greater than the sum of its parts.
So, too, is the Kindle.
It's not quite as profound as the DVR revolution. People go from not understanding a DVR's appeal to not understanding how they ever lived without it in a matter of seconds. The changes an eReader like the Kindle will make in your life are subtle, and you might feel a bit foolish trying to explain how much of an impact it's had on your life.
Perhaps the most trivial-sounding but most convenient aspect is that it never changes size. Tiny paperback, crazy-heavy hard cover, or hard-bound anthology are all the same size, so I don't need to adjust my bag or my wrist when I switch from one to the other. There's something to be said for consistency.
I don't have to physically search for a new book. I'm not talking in the browsing-at-a-book-store way. There are piles of books scattered around my house. When it's time to pick a new one, I have to seek out the piles, sort through them and decide what makes sense to read next. Now I just flip through the files at my fingertips or browse an online catalog (on Sparkie, even) until something sparks an interest. Life changing? No. Really nice? Yes.
The books are all right there. This isn't just about being lazy. The simple pleasure of finishing one book while you're away from your library and being able to chose the next one without breaking stride is fabulous. I no longer to take 3 or more books with me when I travel to make sure I've got something to match my mood in case I finish the one I'm currently reading. Pack light! Pack smart!
Greater than the sum of its parts, indeed.
The transition from books to the K2 (with a brief stop at the K1) was not without its hurdles. I spent a good deal of my first few days wondering just what I'd done and worried that the K2 would end up in the drawer next to the Nintendo DS inside of 6 months. Buyers remorse, they call it, and I was terrified I'd caught it.
Some of my fleeting frustrations were legitimate, but it turns out I was mostly being a spoiled brat:
- The 5-way controller took a few days to get used to, especially after the scroll wheel.
- The refresh rate while cursor-ing around the store was not as fast as using the internet on my computer.
- It didn't include a simple notepad feature so I could compose on it as well.
- Although it's highly unlikely I'll be able to fill it with books before a newer, sexier (color?) Kindle comes out and I want to upgrade, I don't understand why they took away the SD Card from the first generation.
- Amazon wouldn't upload all my free content to their servers so that I could look at it on my iPod, too.
- The best user-written program for managing a library of books was not as slick and shiny as the applications I'm used to seeing on my computer and iPhone. Plus, it crashed.
- Finding ebooks on the internet took time and the formatting (for these free things) wasn't as slick what I'd downloaded from Amazon.
- My sexy new carrying case smelled a bit funny and the leather was kind of stiff like it had never been used.
See? I told you I'm a spoiled brat. If you read enough to hear the siren call of the Kindle and have the means to respond, I highly recommend you answer.
I enjoy the size changes of a book and see it as another fun and needed aspect of reading them - seeing what cover they chose and what design. Are the letters pushed upwards like the Harry Potter books etc.? Is the spine straight or curvy? Are the pages really thin making the book really easy to bend, or are they like thin cardboard? Do they have dust-jackets and what's underneath them? Etc.
Like The Wish List with it's weird cover that doesn't tell much about the book, and the fact that part of the cover started peeling in my copy - the clear part that's like plastic-wrap ( http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/1191-1/%7BCC4D6094-ED2C-4780-B955-87A0FD033AC1%7DImg100.jpg ) or seeing the cover chosen for the first Hebrew edition of Daddy-Long-Legs ( http://booksefer.net/files/catalogReg/12285017238117.JPG ).
For me it would be a sad thing to lose, so that's a con for the Kindle and devices like it. I don't like the space books take and since I will never be able to sell them unless I start going near a heavily visited place (the post office) and sell them there (like I used to), it will probably take me a lifetime to sell ALL of them (even with ads near where I live, in second-hand-selling websites with many visitors, in second-hand-book-selling websites, and even with discounts and me delivering the books for free to people living nearby, and even with dirt-cheap prices on a lot of them), so I buy cheap (5 NIS per book for used books - about 1 USD) and/or donate to libraries or borrow from libraries.
I can somewhat convince myself that getting a Kindle is worth it just to actually start reading the books in Project Gutenberg (so many books and effort put into that database and so many new ideas to explore) - I tried on the computer but never got around to reading them. The only e-book I ever fully read was The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling because I didn't find a physical copy. I just can't imagine not being able to stare at the cover from time to time like I did with the first Harry Potter books trying to figure out when the things on it are about to happen in the book or guessing what will happen based on the cover, or being lured by a certain cover at a bookstore after spending 20 minutes there trying to find something that appeals to me.
Being able to search quickly for books I'm interested in reading sounds great and with lower prices on some of the books and the capacity it's wonderful - a book for every mood and occasion. But the quietness of a library is something I'll probably miss. Being able to dive right into a book's world without being interrupted - the house is too noisy - too many people around and buses are like that sometimes. Maybe I'll bring my Kindle to a library? That would be weird.
A notepad or sticky notes feature would be great - being able to write short things and being able to see them if you choose to, at the same place in the book you wrote them in would reduce the hassle, since I'm writing reviews for every book and comicbook I read, and I forget some stuff if I don't write them down. The lack of an SD card also doesn't sound good even if I'll never get a chance to use it.
This review kind of puts me off the Kindle a bit, but I guess that until I'll get the money to buy it and won't need or want to spend it on something else, there will probably be newer versions of the device, and they might fix the things I don't like.
Thanks for the review.
eReaders certainly aren't for everyone, and your point about craftsmanship that goes into many books is a very valid one. i think that will keep books around as an art-form for quite awhile. there are bands that still release vinyl albums, after all.
another drawback that i haven't mentioned because it's not a real issue for me is book-sharing. my mom has this huge network of friends that swap books back and forth. as much as they would all love the convenience of a kindle and think my kindle is seriously sexy, without being able to share (legally), they're completely put off by it.
also, i should clarify my comment about a note pad. the kindle does let you highlight text and make notes and such within the context of a book, which is great for reviews or text books. since those notes are archived, i'm assuming that you can pull them off easily. what i wish they had was more of a stand-alone composer so that i don't have to switch to my computer or a flesh-and-blood note pad and pen when i want to switch gears from reading to writing. i suppose i could just make my own "blank" document and add notes to it if i really had to have it. :)
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Ads in the kindle? http://techgeist.net/2009/07/amazon-put-ads-kindle-books/