amazon kindle
In spite of being child-distracted and tired, I must have been a half-decent wife lately. The spouse-unit recently gifted us with a Kindle. We’d talked about it before, as I’ve been an avid eReader eBook buyer for years now, but I just wasn’t terribly impressed with the first-gen Kindle. I’ve gotten quite used to backlit devices and the unlighted Kindle always made me nervous. I couldn’t imagine how realistic paper-like text would be more valuable to me than the ability to read in forced bad lighting. (Think of trying to read in the dark next to sleeping baby…) Still, with the new slimmer Kindle, the spouse-unit splurged and we tried it out.. and still have it.
Really, the text is quite beautiful. On first try, the page flash is annoying but over a couple of days, I got used to it and hardly notice it. (Apparently it has something to do with all the electronic inks being realigned on the ‘page’.) I like being able to adjust the font size because I tend to read smaller fonts and more text on a whole page faster in the middle of the day, but come nightfall, my eyes are tired and setting the font larger makes it easier to read. I do still miss backlit, and until the Kindle for Amazon iPhone app recently came out, I just stopped reading on the Kindle once I went to bed. Now, I just make sure to sync the Kindle, get ready for bed and curl up next to the sleeping baby with my iPhone and the screen brightness set down to low. (No wonder I seem to be getting less sleep lately.. hmm.) We did get the clip-on Kindle light, but it’s just too bright for me to use in bed with the baby, though I imagine it would be great on airplanes and the like. I’ve had a few software glitches with the Kindle, mostly not syncing to the latest page read accurately, and one time it seemed to reset and lose my latest read place entirely, sending me back a few chapters. But these problems were minor and often because I was switching between Kindle and iPhone within minutes and, I’m assuming, not giving them enough time to sync properly.
All in all, I’m enjoying it. I would be totally sold if I could figure out an easy way to get my old DRM’d eReader .PDB books on the Kindle, as I have 1776 to finish reading and it would be awesome on the Kindle. I’d like for the “sync to furthest read” feature to be able to turn on the wireless, sync and turn off the wireless again. Also, it would be nice if the magazine subscriptions supported bookmarks, and if the iPhone app supported magazine subscriptions. Other than that, Amazon has a reasonably decent product on their hands.
