After much anticipation my brand spanking new Amazon Kindle finally arrived last weekend. I’d been chomping at the bit to get my hands on the reader and I must say I’m really impressed with it so far.
As I opened my delivery parcel and lifted the device out from it’s packaging my attention was immediately grabbed by just how crisp and sharp the screen content is. So much so in fact, that, I thought there was some sort of printed sticker stuck on to the screen itself. It really looks like genuine ink!
The Kindle is currently the highest selling product on Amazon for good reason and I’m sure a lot of you are are considering making the purchase yourself, so here are my thoughts on the product.
Kindle Pros
- Lightweight – To say that the Kindle is lightweight is an understatement, it probably weighs less than most paperback tittles and looks a whole lot cooler too.
- Your own Portable Library – You can carry a tremendous wealth of information with you wherever you go. I’m sure you too know that it can be a real pain lugging around massive SQL Server text books on the daily commute but we need suffer no more! Now if I want to quickly reference a topic or specific point from the excellent Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting I just reach for my Kindle.
- Built in Dictionary – What a great feature this is. Simply highlight the word of interest whilst reading, and the dictionary definition will be presented to you at the base of the page.
The screen ink technology is awesome – Amazon’s Kindle 2 is powered by technology developed by E Ink Corp., an electronic paper display company born out of the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. It’s the same company that created the system behind the Sony Reader. Check out the following Blog post to find out more.
- Ease of use – Yes the Kindle comes with a simple how to get started guide but you won’t need it! It’s completely intuitive how to operate the device right out of the box. Sure there are some cool features that require a little learning but these are available for the Tech savvy via the Kindle Guide book included on the device.
Kindle Cons
- Reading PDF’s Suck Big Time – My experience of reading PDF’s so far has been awkward, to the point where I actually just don’t want to bother. The issue for me has been that for any given page the text content does not fit correctly thereby requiring me to scroll, which is a huge pain if you have to do it for every line. Sure if you just want to quickly reference a specific item in SQL Server MVP Deep Dives for example, then it’s fine but you’re not going to want to read a whole chapter like this, let alone an entire document.
Final Thoughts
I’ve been making a conscious effort of to read a lot more this year, especially outside of my core subject areas and the Kindle has really helped me with this. I genuinely believe that it has actually enabled me to read content faster.
Overall the new generation Kindle is a tremendous product and at £109 I think it’s an absolute steal!
