Kindle Review
Facing about 75 hours minimum of flight time before the end of the year, I decided to try the Amazon.com Kindle as an alternative to carrying 4 or books with me on long flights. Considering my employers travel policy basically forces me into coach, where power for the PC is difficult to find, I end up reading. (When I lucky enough to go business class, the greater space and power outlet means I can both work and even practice mandolin - thanks to the mini-version Audie got me).
My Kindle arrived 2 days after I took the plunge, tossed by the UPS driver on the front stoop as usual. It's about the size of a trade paperback and about the weight. It actually feels a bit flimsy for the money. The screen quality is very good and it is comfortable to read, except when the page flashes black. You get used to that quickly it seems. I guess you learn to time the blink. It really doesn't get in the way of reading like trying to read on a PDA did. Books are easy to get from Amazon, which down loads them directly and discounted from the paper edition. Several other places have either books for sale or free books set up for the Kindle. This blog keeps a growing list of sources of books for the Kindle as well as our resources. It's list of free classics is worth bookmarking.
My only concerns are that it feels delicate and I wonder how it will hold up to the rigors of travel. The other is more serious: you can't read a PDF file on it unless you covert the file to either an AWZ or PRC file first. This conversion can be done through Amazon for a very small fee (a dime a book) or via some programs like MobiPocket Creator. Neither of these work as well as I would of hoped but they are tolerable. Some formating is lost - you lose the organization of charts, tables, and indices at best - and it makes reading messy. It's frustrating because the Kindle is much more readable than a monitor is and you can snuggle up with a bourbon and it in a comfortable chair for a quiet evening. So, Amazon.com, if you read this, please add pdf capability to the Kindle soon.
BTW, you may know about the Google library where they are trying to scan in everything they can get their hands on. Well, those really suck as Kindle books because they are scanning them as images and not as text. Huge files result that have no way to navigate and the text quality is poor at times. This is very depressing especially when the Kipling collections out there as PRC are often missing verses from poems. Google's version of Kipling's Collect Verse is complete and correct but, since it is images, it is also a huge file. It's actually larger than Chesterton's Collected Works from MobileReference, which has like over 100 works on it. The lack of OCR is costly in space and the files seem to be protected so I couldn't get mine to run. However the size problem pretty much disappears when you add the SD chip to the Kindle. I think up to 16 GB is available, which should let you carry most everything.
UPDATE: Well, I finished a new fiction book on it and an working thru Modern Raman Spectroscopy. The figures are readable, the equation can be clearly seen, - basically its just like a book. I don't go as far as this lady her "it's a religious experience" but she's got a more coherent review of its advantages that I do. (Hat-tip via Prof . Reynolds)
The ability to really handle technical books for me is the dealer maker. This is a lot easier than carrying several texts I am working on while traveling. I was surpised to find this was "kindlized" too. There are quite a lot of science books for the Kindle, some new stuff, some classics, and sadly more than a few I am reading at home. This has the potential to be very useful because you can read a few pages while waiting and then disgest the papers. I find I read technical stuff in small batches and having it in a small "book" makes it easier to haul around with me. It will be interesting to see what technical journals start offering a Kindle version first. I'd bet AAPS myself.
New worries? Not really, just that the screen is sadly too small for reading music to practice from. Now if they got rid of that little keyboard we might be in business. Heck, I may have to change the tag line on the blog again. (The handgun changed to mandolin when I started all the overseas travel - funny the lack of understanding most other countries have about guns in your luggage.)
My Kindle arrived 2 days after I took the plunge, tossed by the UPS driver on the front stoop as usual. It's about the size of a trade paperback and about the weight. It actually feels a bit flimsy for the money. The screen quality is very good and it is comfortable to read, except when the page flashes black. You get used to that quickly it seems. I guess you learn to time the blink. It really doesn't get in the way of reading like trying to read on a PDA did. Books are easy to get from Amazon, which down loads them directly and discounted from the paper edition. Several other places have either books for sale or free books set up for the Kindle. This blog keeps a growing list of sources of books for the Kindle as well as our resources. It's list of free classics is worth bookmarking.
My only concerns are that it feels delicate and I wonder how it will hold up to the rigors of travel. The other is more serious: you can't read a PDF file on it unless you covert the file to either an AWZ or PRC file first. This conversion can be done through Amazon for a very small fee (a dime a book) or via some programs like MobiPocket Creator. Neither of these work as well as I would of hoped but they are tolerable. Some formating is lost - you lose the organization of charts, tables, and indices at best - and it makes reading messy. It's frustrating because the Kindle is much more readable than a monitor is and you can snuggle up with a bourbon and it in a comfortable chair for a quiet evening. So, Amazon.com, if you read this, please add pdf capability to the Kindle soon.
BTW, you may know about the Google library where they are trying to scan in everything they can get their hands on. Well, those really suck as Kindle books because they are scanning them as images and not as text. Huge files result that have no way to navigate and the text quality is poor at times. This is very depressing especially when the Kipling collections out there as PRC are often missing verses from poems. Google's version of Kipling's Collect Verse is complete and correct but, since it is images, it is also a huge file. It's actually larger than Chesterton's Collected Works from MobileReference, which has like over 100 works on it. The lack of OCR is costly in space and the files seem to be protected so I couldn't get mine to run. However the size problem pretty much disappears when you add the SD chip to the Kindle. I think up to 16 GB is available, which should let you carry most everything.
UPDATE: Well, I finished a new fiction book on it and an working thru Modern Raman Spectroscopy. The figures are readable, the equation can be clearly seen, - basically its just like a book. I don't go as far as this lady her "it's a religious experience" but she's got a more coherent review of its advantages that I do. (Hat-tip via Prof . Reynolds)
The ability to really handle technical books for me is the dealer maker. This is a lot easier than carrying several texts I am working on while traveling. I was surpised to find this was "kindlized" too. There are quite a lot of science books for the Kindle, some new stuff, some classics, and sadly more than a few I am reading at home. This has the potential to be very useful because you can read a few pages while waiting and then disgest the papers. I find I read technical stuff in small batches and having it in a small "book" makes it easier to haul around with me. It will be interesting to see what technical journals start offering a Kindle version first. I'd bet AAPS myself.
New worries? Not really, just that the screen is sadly too small for reading music to practice from. Now if they got rid of that little keyboard we might be in business. Heck, I may have to change the tag line on the blog again. (The handgun changed to mandolin when I started all the overseas travel - funny the lack of understanding most other countries have about guns in your luggage.)
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