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lauraredcloud at 11:25pm on 13/07/2010
lauraredcloud at 11:25pm on 13/07/2010My kindle arrived today. Here are some first-impression pluses and minuses:
+ "Paperlike" pages are indeed non-backlit and don't cause eyestrain the way reading on a computer does. (My eyes start to feel itchy after a full day of work, so I don't like reading on a phone or something on the subway.)
- I am as yet too embarrassed of my yuppie scum nature to actually whip it out on the subway.
- Experimental browser is impossibly slow. Not useful really. It's quick to download a book, but checking your email is ridiculous.
+ Because leaving a page on display takes no battery power (only changing the display does, which is why battery life is measured in page turns rather than in time), when you turn it off it leaves a picture of a tree or some birds or a portrait of an author on the display. This is cute.
- A lot of wasted real estate. I feel like the screen could be about a half inch bigger in both dimensions.
+ Unexpected plus: I came home from class early today because I felt sick, and by the time I got home I didn't feel up to doing anything but lying around reading. I was able to procure and read a comfort book I hadn't read in awhile without getting out of bed! It is so easy to buy books.
- It is so easy to buy books
+ "Paperlike" pages are indeed non-backlit and don't cause eyestrain the way reading on a computer does. (My eyes start to feel itchy after a full day of work, so I don't like reading on a phone or something on the subway.)
- I am as yet too embarrassed of my yuppie scum nature to actually whip it out on the subway.
- Experimental browser is impossibly slow. Not useful really. It's quick to download a book, but checking your email is ridiculous.
+ Because leaving a page on display takes no battery power (only changing the display does, which is why battery life is measured in page turns rather than in time), when you turn it off it leaves a picture of a tree or some birds or a portrait of an author on the display. This is cute.
- A lot of wasted real estate. I feel like the screen could be about a half inch bigger in both dimensions.
+ Unexpected plus: I came home from class early today because I felt sick, and by the time I got home I didn't feel up to doing anything but lying around reading. I was able to procure and read a comfort book I hadn't read in awhile without getting out of bed! It is so easy to buy books.
- It is so easy to buy books
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?!
Re: ?!
I chose kindle because it supports a variety of formats (more than Sony or Nook) and because of the low price and the experimental browser, but as I said, it's pretty useless. I also seriously considered the European e-readers, such as Bebook or Cybook, which are similarly priced but accept more file formats (such as epub which is a common format for library ebooks). I would be interested to see how those compare.