My Kindle arrived yesterday afternoon and I’ve spent the last 24 hours trying it out. The packing was overly simplistic. In fact I was a little surprised…just a standard Amazon cardboard box and a protective liner on the front screen.
After plugging it in and getting a little battery power I began to put it to use. Since I purchased it for myself it was already linked to my Amazon account. In the last 24 hours I’ve ordered 4 books. The purchasing and downloading was straight forward. The Kindle did lock up while downloading the ESV Study Bible. I’m not sure how big the download was but it choked and I had to turn the Kindle off and on again to get things back to normal. Other than that minor hiccup everything else has been performed as expected.
Pros:
- Unbelievably easy on the eyes. The E-ink screen is really nice. I had read other reviews and didn’t really believe them, but it is just like looking at the pages of a real book. The screen is the biggest plus for me.
- Easy purchasing capability. You simply choose the Amazon Store from the menu, type the book you want in the search bar and choose Purchase. That’s it. In under 1-2 minutes you have the book on your Kindle and can start reading.
- Bookmarks and Highlights. While you’re reading you simply click the little joystick which starts a highlight, move the joystick right and/or down and then click again to end the highlight. It’s then added to your list of highlights for that book, which can be found under the Menu in the “My Marks” section.
Cons:
- I don’t really care for the keyboard. The buttons have a funny shape with a slightly raised center. It doesn’t feel natural at all. And while I know how to type I felt the need to search for keys instead of intuitively finding them.
- The little joystick seems like it could break easy.
- No backlight. While I appreciate that this greatly improves battery life it would be nice to have.
- Navigation seems to lag a little. As you’re reading if you push down on the joystick it places your cursor at the top of the page. With every downward push of the joystick it moves your cursor down a line, naturally. It just seems to me it could be a little more responsive. I have found myself wanting to touch the screen at the location I wanted to place the cursor.
One other thing I’ve tried, which worked well. I have had a book in PDF form sitting on my computer for quite a while. I emailed the PDF to my Kindle email which converted the PDF to the Kindle format and emailed me back a download link. I downloaded the file, connected my Kindle, and simply dropped the PDF in the Documents folder of the Kindle. The PDF is now listed along with my other books for me to read. Pretty cool.
The first 24 hours have been great. I’m looking forward to trying it out in “real-life” scenarios…flights, doctors offices, while driving, etc.
*Full Disclosure: the links to Amazon are through my Affiliate account. Purchases made through my account go towards the projects and work we do through our charity, CommunityOne.