Amazon Kindle

I was a very early reader. My mother taught me how to read by the time I was four, and I was reading Sherlock Holmes and Jules Verne novels before I was out of elementary school. At least in my school district this was a rarity, even in high school when a teacher wouldn't believe me that I had read a novel (I am sure it was by Isabel Allende) on my own, not because I was being forced to.

It got me out of my normal Spanish class and into the "lit" class for a week or so, which was nice.

In US Army basic training you are forbidden from reading anything that isn't published by the Army, and you are handed a paperback, the "Smart Book" (Tradoc Pamphlet 600-4). Whenever you are not doing anything, you better be reading that book.

I carried it on my left leg pocket of my BDUs. On the right leg pocket I carried Clive Barker's Imagica. From 6 feet away it looks about the same size as the Smart Book, and I never got caught reading it. I had the Smart Book since before basic training and was already bored, so I needed the novel just to keep me sane.

Years later, I am still reading nonstop. It doesn't even bother me the cost, since there is always a decent selection of discounted books at every chain bookstore you can think of. The problem is storage.

A book per week habit means a collection of hundreds of books, which basically eat up your living space since you are only reading one at a time. In our case, we have a full wall covered with bookshelves, crammed to the top with 14 years worth of book purchases. And this doesn't take into account the books ruined over the years by insects, water, etc. If we still had them all we would need a second full wall.

And here comes the Kindle. The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader with prepaid 3G wireless connectivity, and integrated into Amazon.com. This means that, without even using a computer, you can browse the Amazon Kindle store from the device, pick the books that you want and they are delivered to your device in minutes. Want to read a sample first? No problem, you can download a sample and pay to turn it into a full version later, and it never expires.

It is being marketed as the iPod of the book world.

It is also ugly as murder, since it is not an Apple product people will bitch and moan about how ugly it is, but the truth of the matter is that once you are reading, you don't pay attention to the device, all that you do is look at the screen and it looks perfect.

People also bitch about the price: $359. What everyone seems to be missing is that this device comes with prepaid 3G cellular connectivity, which is expensive. My iPhone 3G costs $30/month to access the same kind of connectivity. With the Kindle, you pay $359 and off you go. I am sure that at least $200 out of the $359 is due to the prepaid connectivity.

Now, here is the smart thing that Amazon did, that Apple didn't: Amazon stores all of your paid content for you, and you are free to re-download as many times as you wish.

Fried your Kindle? You can pull all of your purchases with your replacement unit, no charge. You can't do that with iTunes and an iPod.

Ran out of space and are too cheap to buy a $8 2GB SD card? Delete some of your books, you can always pull them down again. You can't do that with iTunes and an iPod.

I also like that I can add my own content to the device. I can either plug the Kindle to USB, or I can remove the (optional) SD card. If I plug the Kindle to USB, both the internal memory, and the SD card, show as two separate storage units. There is no science as of how to add content, you simply drag files in the allowed formats into the documents folder in the Kindle or SD card and off you go.

If you want to convert your files to the AZW format, then you can try Stanza, which so far rocks.

Still, there are things that could be better:

1. The previous/next buttons need more resistance, to account for accidental hits.



2. The wheel button eats the battery if the device is asleep and the cover is closed.



3. The retention tab for the cover is a joke.



4. The rear door opens too easily. At least it needs a lock button.



5. The two most important buttons, the power and wireless buttons, are in a really stupid place if you are expected to use the cover.



6. Search sucks.



7. It doesn't allow you to arrange your books as folders. I added a few dozen files and it drove me crazy trying to figure out what was what.

Those are all minor nags, and Amazon is rumored to be already working on version 2. I would expect Amazon to address some of the usability issues, but one thing is for sure is that there is no way in hell Amazon is going to show up with a $99 Kindle, that is, unless it comes with a cellular service contract for $X/month.