Well, this is not really a confession, more like experiences. The word “confessions” is just more interesting in a headline. Anyway, it is now just over two months since my son and daughter-in-law gave me a Kindle eBook reader for Christmas. Of course, I knew it was coming as I helped pick out the best one as his wife received one also. I did a fair amount of investigating before I chose the Kindle. My other two major choices were the Barnes and Noble “Nook” and the Sony eReader.
The bottom line of this report is I love my Kindle and take it with me almost everywhere. I spend more time reading everyday than I have in a long time…and loving it. The reason is simply that my Kindle is with me most of the time and previous downtime. such as waiting for lectures and concerts to begin is now used for reading.
The Kindle is lightweight and compact, slightly larger than a paperback book (but lighter and thinner). It holds over 1,000 or more books at any one time. Right now I have just over 40 books on mine. I usually read two or three at time…whatever strikes my fancy.
Reading is easy as it is almost precisely like reading a book, at least to my eyes. It uses a 6” e-ink screen…they are not backlit so they are easy on the eyes. I can change the font size to make it easier to read and I can read it vertically or horizontally. Page turning is a breeze as there is a forward and backward page buttons. Takes about one second for a page to change.
Since it is not backlit, you do need a light source of any type for reading. If you want to read at night in bed in the dark so not disturb your spouse, you will need a small light that fits on Kindle itself. And reading in direct sunlight is not a problem. I also recommend a cover to protect it.
Battery life is excellent…Amazon says that it will last up to two weeks without a recharge. That is assuming you leave the wireless connection off when not using it (more about that feature later). You can recharge it by plugging into the wall or using a USB port on your computer.
As you may notice from the photo, there is a miniature keyboard at the bottom of the device. You can use this for email, typing in searches, or making notes about what you are reading. Each note you write is automatically attached to the page where you started making the note. Granted, the keyboard is more like a cell phone keyboard, but it works well enough.
Another feature that is a God-send is the built-in dictionary. If you find a word that you don’t understand, you can click over to it and the definition will automatically display at the bottom. I recently read some British detective novels from the early 20th century and having the dictionary really helped with some unusual words…and it found every one of them…even told me that no one used those words much anymore.
Still yet another interesting feature is you can switch it from reading to having a voice read the book to you. I admit I have not used it all that much, but it does work surprisingly well. You can have a male or female voice do the reading. It is not as good as an audio book, but still it is better than the average mechanical voice.
While the device has limited Internet capability, you can go to Wikipedia to look up additional information. There are additional features, but I won’t go into them here.
The Kindle is available at Amazon for $259.
Next time, I will discuss more about books, how to buy them, where to buy them and how to get thousands of them for free. Stay tuned.
