would not should good

AFTER WAITING SEVERAL MONTHS for Amazon’s Kindle to stop being back ordered, they became available and I ordered one in another attempt to see how electronic books would evolve, and perhaps become a real alternative to real books. To be honest, I was excited about its arrival, even checking at work to see if it had arrived early in the day.

I knew going in that the usability of the Kindle device was considered questionable, but hopefully not unusable. I also co-workers who were very satisfied with their Sony Readers, but as an Amazon devotee, I liked the easy of browsing and buying books (as well as magazine and blogs) with the device.

The packaging for the Kindle boded well for my experience, as the box looked like it had been put together with some sense of aesthetics (it is based on a book paradigm) and felt more like my Apple packaging experience than most gadget packaging. I plugged it into the wall and started it up. The battery had some amount of charge, as it started right up.

I then started to try out the very white device without looking at the manual. The Kindle has five main interface points - a page next button and a page previous button on the left side, a page next button and back button on the right and then a scrolling/clicking button on the right. At the very bottom of the device is a primitive keyboard. Scrolling clicking button controls a silver image in a track on the right hand side of the device, which seems kind of low tech, but you get used to it. What you struggle to get used to is where to grab the Kindle when it is on without pushing the next page buttons on the right or left, which leaves you clutching the top center of the device or the lower central section above the input keys. The device layout works great when you are reading, but getting into a reading position requires you to remember not to click the buttons on the side. Looks like Amazon made a choice that steady state was more important than startup state, as you will be reading for hours not getting the thing into position to read.

The screen display things in a rather drab, but easy to read black type over a grey background. The images it sometimes displays from books and magazines look very washed out and over pixalated. A color version some where down the road seems inevitable. I actually liked the reading experience, as the screen is big enough to approximate a paperback, and the weight of the device is light. I am using the rather weirdly designed leather holder for the Kindle. The Kindle doesn’t like to stay in its clips, but the holder does make it easier to avoid accidentally clicking on the side buttons. The power button is on the back of the device, which makes using the case a bit tricky. You need to remove the device, turn it on or off, and then put in back in the case, which is not ideal.

Other down the road ideas are included in a experimental section that includes a primitive web browser. Its very slow, so I gave up before trying to download a Project Gutenberg txt based book. I have transferred them over to the Kindle via USB, which was a straightforward and easy process for a tech savy person used to working with USB ddrives.

So far I am enjoying the device and the content, plenty of which I am downloading from Project Gutenberg . I have not bought into paying for blogs yet, but I might. I really want an eletronic version of The Economist, but they don’t offer that yet (hopefully they will). My favorite bits are the free book samples you get. I have read a good portion of a number of books I have been thinking about for free (or at least the price of the Kindle). More on the Kindle as I continue to try it out. I have a plane trip to Seattle next week, so I will see how it works in that situation.