So I broke down and ordered a Kindle from Amazon. I heard a lot of really good things about the Kindle and I had some trips coming up and some books I really needed to read. I don't like to bring paper books with me on trips. I like to pack light and I try not to have to check my bags. To this end I need to eliminate the unessentials. Unfortunately most paper books fall into that category. Now with the Kindle I can bring hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers with me without filling my suitcase with paper.
I ordered my Kindle on March 15th and it arrived about a month later. There were times I thought about canceling the order. Amazon wasn't very clear about when I could expect my Kindle. They were selling on Ebay for about $100 more.
So far I'm really happy with it. The e-paper display is really neat. Though it may seem that the resolution is nothing special, you really can't make out the pixel matrix. It really does look like ink on paper (behind a matted glass screen of course). Before my Kindle arrived I wasn't blown away by it's design. I thought it was quite poor from a distance. After seeing it in person that quickly changed. Sure, Apple would have done a better job with this thing but the folks that designed the Kindle knew what they were doing. Amazon wanted an experience as close to reading a real book as possible and I don't think it's far off. The Kindle, to me, resembles a small booklet that would be folded over. There is a rubber gripping on the back so holding it is effortless (once you know where to put your thumb). I thought the keyboard layout was somewhat arbitrary and ugly but having looked at it some more it resembles that of an open book and it actually gives you some room to place your thumb between to two groups of keys which makes for the optimal way to hold the Kindle.
I use the Kindle every morning to read the New York Times and I've downloaded a couple books,
Stranger in a Strange Land and
A Briefer History of Time. The Kindle also has a built in web browser (no javascript) and I use it to check Digg and some other news sites. Amazon charges $1.99 to have blogs delivered to your Kindle but with the built in web browser I don't see why anyone would pay for that. The wireless networking seems really fast an reliable. I haven't really tested the built-in dictionary/Wikipedia or searching features but I can imagine that these features will really come in handy at some point.
The Kindle is expensive. I'm not sure it's worth the price tag just yet. I'll need to spend some more time with it. Newspaper, magazine subscriptions, built in dictionary, searching, access to Wikipedia and things like the built in web browser really give it some promise. Like a lot of other things these days, if the Kindle were $100 cheaper it would be a no-brainer.
