The Wave of the Future : Not Not Very Good!
Megan says, “everyone I know thinks the Kindle is not very good, but is nonetheless the wave of the future…” False! Megan knows me. I actually have a Kindle, thanks to Kerry’s warm yuletide generosity, and I love it!
Here are my complaints:
(1) Not enough books yet available for the Kindle.
(2) It seems a bit fragile, and I’ve had to hard-reset a couple times after mild jostling.
I am inundated in books. I have way too many. I have no place to put them. I often can’t find them when I want them. I often don’t know what I want to read on a trip, so I carry six heavy books with me, which sucks. I now have something like 20 books in this one little package, and I love it. The e-ink display may be slightly grayer than I’d prefer, but it’s very comfortable too read. I suffer from computer screen-related eyestrain, and I find reading off the Kindle no worse for my eyes than reading a book, and sometimes better, since I can increase the type size. It formats pdfs better than advertised, and I’ve got now got a few free pdf-ed books aboard. You can carry about all of Project Gutenberg, if you like. I can imagine lots of marginal improvements, but I’m extremely impressed with my Kindle so far and my main complaint is that because everything is not available for the Kindle, I have to keep buying physical books, most of which I don’t really want qua objects. I get lots of publisher’s review copies and I don’t want most of these either. I would be more likely to actually browse these books if the publishers sent the Kindle version. I have actually become emotionally attached to my Kindle. You should probably buy one.
February 5th, 2008 01:28
You can send me your old books, I’ll even pay for shipping.
I was going to buy an ebook reader but I decided to purchase a mini laptop (Asus Eee PC) instead, I just couldn’t justify a device soley for book reading purposes, but a fully functioning computer, yes.
February 5th, 2008 10:01
I dig tiny computers, but I really needed to spend less time reading backlit displays, which is one reason I really like the Kindle. I can email myself pdfs and whatnot, and then read them at my leisure, and eyestrain-free without having to remember to grab or find the printout.
How’s the Asus? I think I probably want a tiny laptop eventually anyway.
February 5th, 2008 16:26
But you have so few of your books on your library thing page. You should just take a week off and put them all on there. That’s more or less what I did, despite not having the time to do that at all.
February 6th, 2008 13:25
I quite like the Asus. It would never replace my current computer, obviously, but I find it great to take to the university since it is really small. I’ve always disliked laptops because they are too bulky to carry around but at 7″ the Asus is perfect. That said, I’d probably recommend waiting for the second generation.
Probably in the next few years I’ll break down and buy an ebook reader since the screens are much better to read from like you say. Also, at 200+ books, I’m probably going to run out of shelf space soon.
February 10th, 2008 18:39
[...] Not everybody feels this way, of course. I don’t agree, but I do see his point. [...]