For Christmas I got an Amazon Kindle, despite previously not wanting one (see this post). Here are my impressions of it so far.
What is the Amazon Kindle? Why Would One Want One?
Here is Amazon.com's page all about it.
Stuff I Already Have to Read
Stuff I Already Want to Read
While on the Internet, I sometimes come upon articles that are much longer than I have the time or the attention span to read, but which look interesting. What I figured out how to do with the Kindle is to save those articles for later. I can simply save the html file, e-mail them to my Kindle and viola I have reading material for later. This takes a webpage and stores it on the Kindle as if it were a document. There are two reasons I have for doing this. First, on the Kindle I find this more convenient than fiddling with its Internet browser. I have the cheaper Wi-fi only version of the Kindle, so I wouldn't always be able to access these webpages via the Internet anyway. Second, I like what the Kindle does to these html files to strip them down. The Kindle gives me the page's text--that is, the only part of the page I want to pay attention to--in a crisp, clean, e-ink screen format. I don't have to deal with all of the other flashing side-bar ads, links, and any other extra noise that come with reading something on the Internet. It is much easier to read webpages like this.
Learning Another Language
The Kindle Is Not What I Thought It Was (I Don't Mean That in a Bad Way)
Before I got the Kindle, I read up on it quite a bit. I was more or less informed about what the technical capabilities of it were. I had seen a demo model of it on display at Target. I thought what I would mostly be using it for is to read books for fun and to perhaps bring it to church. I thought I would have to buy books from the Amazon store on a regular basis. However, I see that the Kindle is not quite what I thought it would be; I don't mean that in a bad way; what I mean is that I am using the Kindle more for things that I didn't think I would be using it for than for things I did think I would be using it for. I am mostly using it for the things I have described above.
As far as reading books goes, however, I do like the Kindle experience. I like being able to order books instantly. I like the vast selection of free, out-of-copyright books available on various sites. I like putting a lot of books on a light, compact, portable device. I just don't sit down and read books as much as I do the other things I mentioned above.
Also, I still have physical books, i.e. non e-books, on my shelf that I still plan to read. Before getting the Kindle, for some reason it seemed that getting a Kindle meant that, in large part, I would be committing to reading books exclusively on the Kindle; that, of course, is a silly notion.
Kindle vs. Other E-Book Readers
What about other e-book readers? In choosing an e-book reader, I preferred the Kindle because it was the highest rated of all the e-book readers. The Kindle, from what I have read, has the best e-ink display and the fastest page refresh of all the e-ink readers. The other e-book readers have some good qualities, but for me the Kindle wins out. The Sony reader has a touchscreen, which is nice, but because of that, it doesn't have as nice of a display; further, in actually using the Kindle, I have found that being able to navigate quickly not a big deal because by its nature an e-book reader is for reading longer documents. The Barnes and Noble Nook, which is the second most popular dedicated e-book reader, has a small LCD touchscreen below its e-ink screen; in theory this is convenient, however reviews said that the touchscreen was slow.
There are also some more expensive options for portable reading. Barnes and Noble came out with a Nook Color. It's an "e-book reader" with an LCD screen. As such, it can do color, it has a touchscreen, and it's fast. It is also capable of doing other multimedia (music and video). Apparently, it can unlocked and turned into a Android-based tablet computer. It runs for about $250. More expensive than that, there are tablet computers like the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. Tablet computers can do books in addition to all of the other things that they can do. They are a few times more expensive than a simple Kindle. My opinion on these devices versus the Kindle is that the Kindle does reading better; I would rather read off of an e-ink screen on a lighter device if I am reading something longer (as I explained above).
What is the Amazon Kindle? Why Would One Want One?
Here is Amazon.com's page all about it.
Stuff I Already Have to Read
After a week or so with the Kindle, it dawned on me how many PDF files I go through on a regular basis. Any mathematical paper I have to read (or write for that matter) is available in PDF format. I even have links to a lot of full math books for free in PDF. The Kindle is great for reading PDFs. Reading them on the Kindle is better for me than reading them on a laptop because of the Kindle's e-ink screen and it's light weight. I also like being able to underline and annotate my papers electronically. It's really a lot like having a piece of paper on the screen. In the past, I have never been able to sit still in front of a computer screen and read page after page of a long paper. My solution has therefore been to print it out papers, which is fine. The Kindle is convenient because not only do I save paper, when I'm on the go, I don't have to carry a pen and a large stack of papers to do work. Further, when I am done with a paper, I don't have to worry about filing it away in a large physical filing system. Given the length of most of these PDF files, this really is a convenient.
Stuff I Already Want to Read
In a previous post, I wrote about how the Internet has changed the way people read. The point is, people (including myself) have developed an aversion to sitting down and reading anything long. With myself, I saw that I was used to the rapid-fire bombardment of information I got from browsing the Internet. The Kindle, I have seen, makes it easier to combat this tendency.
While on the Internet, I sometimes come upon articles that are much longer than I have the time or the attention span to read, but which look interesting. What I figured out how to do with the Kindle is to save those articles for later. I can simply save the html file, e-mail them to my Kindle and viola I have reading material for later. This takes a webpage and stores it on the Kindle as if it were a document. There are two reasons I have for doing this. First, on the Kindle I find this more convenient than fiddling with its Internet browser. I have the cheaper Wi-fi only version of the Kindle, so I wouldn't always be able to access these webpages via the Internet anyway. Second, I like what the Kindle does to these html files to strip them down. The Kindle gives me the page's text--that is, the only part of the page I want to pay attention to--in a crisp, clean, e-ink screen format. I don't have to deal with all of the other flashing side-bar ads, links, and any other extra noise that come with reading something on the Internet. It is much easier to read webpages like this.
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| Here's the Kindle displaying a webpage I sent to it. I really like being able to focus on the words. |
On top of this, I found out about a way to have content from the Internet, like the news, automatically delivered to my device for free. Among a few options I discovered, I like the program Calibre the best. Calibre does a lot of other things too, like convert e-books among several different file formats. (This, by the way, makes it so that, except for DRM books, I can convert anything I want to read to formats that the Kindle reads.) What Calibre does with automatic delivery is the following: it goes to websites (this can be blogs or newspapers or anything), takes the articles there and places them in a convenient e-book format (which, by the way, is a lot nicer than going to the websites and reading them on a browser); it then e-mails them to my free kindle account; when the Kindle is using the wireless, the content is delivered automatically to my device; I can have Calibre do this manually, or I can schedule it to do this automatically at a time where I know that my computer will be on. (I would prefer a website to do this automatically and for free and at the same quality as Calibre, but I haven't found one that is good enough.) Of course, if I didn't care about money, I could pay Amazon to deliver the news to me at a steep premium. Here is an example of the newspapers they deliver, from which I get free content via the newspaper's webpage.
Learning Another Language
I have found some pretty cool features of the Kindle which help me read in other languages. I'll post more on this later.
The Kindle Is Not What I Thought It Was (I Don't Mean That in a Bad Way)
Before I got the Kindle, I read up on it quite a bit. I was more or less informed about what the technical capabilities of it were. I had seen a demo model of it on display at Target. I thought what I would mostly be using it for is to read books for fun and to perhaps bring it to church. I thought I would have to buy books from the Amazon store on a regular basis. However, I see that the Kindle is not quite what I thought it would be; I don't mean that in a bad way; what I mean is that I am using the Kindle more for things that I didn't think I would be using it for than for things I did think I would be using it for. I am mostly using it for the things I have described above.
As far as reading books goes, however, I do like the Kindle experience. I like being able to order books instantly. I like the vast selection of free, out-of-copyright books available on various sites. I like putting a lot of books on a light, compact, portable device. I just don't sit down and read books as much as I do the other things I mentioned above.
Also, I still have physical books, i.e. non e-books, on my shelf that I still plan to read. Before getting the Kindle, for some reason it seemed that getting a Kindle meant that, in large part, I would be committing to reading books exclusively on the Kindle; that, of course, is a silly notion.
Kindle vs. Other E-Book Readers
What about other e-book readers? In choosing an e-book reader, I preferred the Kindle because it was the highest rated of all the e-book readers. The Kindle, from what I have read, has the best e-ink display and the fastest page refresh of all the e-ink readers. The other e-book readers have some good qualities, but for me the Kindle wins out. The Sony reader has a touchscreen, which is nice, but because of that, it doesn't have as nice of a display; further, in actually using the Kindle, I have found that being able to navigate quickly not a big deal because by its nature an e-book reader is for reading longer documents. The Barnes and Noble Nook, which is the second most popular dedicated e-book reader, has a small LCD touchscreen below its e-ink screen; in theory this is convenient, however reviews said that the touchscreen was slow.
There are also some more expensive options for portable reading. Barnes and Noble came out with a Nook Color. It's an "e-book reader" with an LCD screen. As such, it can do color, it has a touchscreen, and it's fast. It is also capable of doing other multimedia (music and video). Apparently, it can unlocked and turned into a Android-based tablet computer. It runs for about $250. More expensive than that, there are tablet computers like the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. Tablet computers can do books in addition to all of the other things that they can do. They are a few times more expensive than a simple Kindle. My opinion on these devices versus the Kindle is that the Kindle does reading better; I would rather read off of an e-ink screen on a lighter device if I am reading something longer (as I explained above).
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