My daughter bought me a Kindle for Christmas. Due to the back order, it just arrived, as a Kindle 2. So of course I immediately downloaded a book to try it out (books are the new Kindle razor blades). My initial impression is very positive – and you can change the font size for bad eyes, etc. I spent over an hour reading – very easy, no eyestrain.
The text is extremely clear, although it does take a bit of getting used to, as does navigation. You do have to be careful about light reflecting off the screen. The battery is supposed to last 4 days with wireless on and 2 weeks with it turned off. The Kindle comes with a USB cable and a plug attachment so you can plug it into a socket to charge the battery. The plug attachment is about the size of a heavy-duty extension cord plug – no more recharging brick! And of course you immediately have to rush out to buy a holder so the screen doesn’t get all scratched up.
You can not only buy books from Amazon, but also send them PDF, *.doc or various other types of documents. These will be kindelized (or is it kindlerized?) and downloaded to you “for a small fee.” I tried this with a couple of items with no problem, although depending on the formatting of the original and the font size you choose to read it at, you may get odd line breaks. To avoid the fee, you can send the file to “free.kindle.com.” You will be notified to download the result to a PC and from there to the Kindle. Apparently you will soon be able to archive files to a PC, which means that you could give a book to somebody else when you are done with it.
The Kindle is supposed to hold up to 1,500 books, but it is extremely unclear how they might be organized if you have any significant number. You can sort the table of contents by Author or Title, but it would be nice to be able to have categories.
The book selection is spotty – there are a bunch of things I would not have expected (James McPherson on the Civil War for example), some I would have liked to have seen (the new book on Darwin and slavery was not there) and a number of best-selling authors are simply not there at all (Patricia Cornwall, John Grisham).
But for travel, vacation, etc. it will really be great – instead of having to take and throw out four or five paperbacks on a cross-country trip, the Kindle will be enough.