Should you Consider Amazon Kindle?

I'm an office-less pastor. I sit in Starbucks... a LOT. Generally, when I'm doing a preaching series out of a book of the Bible, I grab all the commentaries I have on that book and they sit in my car trunk for the duration.

Yeah- they get pretty messed up.

Imagine having my whole reference library at hand, all the time, no matter where I am...

Whoa.

Enter, Amazon Kindle...

Here's a review:

(from Living Digitally)

"The Kindle is Amazon's new wireless reading device. Interestingly, they don't call it an eBook reader. They use the term "wireless reading device" which is actually very accurate, and much more descriptive. All marketing and buzzwords aside, Kindle is a device for wirelessly downloading and reading eBooks, newspapers, magazines, and blogs. It uses electronic ink for a high-contrast and power-thrifty display, and it even hints at music and web browser functionality, as well.

I've only been using my Kindle for about four hours, and most of that time has been spent reading, but here's what I have to report so far:

• The screen is nice. This is the first time I've seen electronic ink, and I'm impressed. The contrast is good, although not as good as pure white paper. It's more like a newspaper which, for me, is sufficient. There's no color, and since it renders in grayscale, images are not especially exciting. But purely for reading text, it gets the job done.
• The Kindle uses "free" EVDO from Sprint to deliver your content wireless. I put the term free in quotes because to me, it feels more like the cost is built in. Yes, Amazon is the one paying Sprint (the Kindle doesn't require any type of data plan — it's ready to go right out of the box), but it feels to me like the bandwidth costs are built into the content you download. This isn't a criticism of Amazon, however. It's much better than having to pay yet another monthly subscription fee.
• All the content you download is recorded on Amazon's servers so if your Kindle is damaged or it needs to be replaced, you can easily re-download everything you purchased (even your annotations and bookmarks are backed up!). Since the storage capacity of the Kindle is limited (180MB of internal memory which they say will store about 200 book and newspaper files), you can even delete content from your Kindle, but re-download it again later for free (the iTunes Store could learn a thing or two from the Kindle). You can also use SD to expand the Kindle's memory essentially infinitely.
• The processor in the Kindle is a bit pokey. At least, I assume it's the processor that is responsible for the pause when you turn pages or type. It might also be that electronic ink takes a while to render. This is my first experience with electronic ink, so I have nothing to compare it to. Regardless, I don't find the slight sluggish feel of the device to be a detractor (although I'm sure future versions will be noticeably faster). In fact, once you get into the rhythm of reading, you know to hit the "next page" button as you start the last line of text on the page so by the time you've read it and your eyes are back up at the top, the page has refreshed.
• I haven't used it enough in the real world to comment on battery life yet. Amazon claims about a week of use with the wireless turned off, and with the wireless going, you'll need to charge it approximately every other day. I'll probably get in the habit of plugging it in at night so I never have to worry about it, and/or turning off the wireless if I don't think I'm going to use it for a few days.
• The Kindle isn't all about eBooks (hence the term "wireless reading device"). You can also download newspapers (11 newspapers are currently available, 8 in the US), magazines (8 are available), and blogs (307 are available). Periodicals are automatically delivered via EVDO as soon as they are available, so your newspaper is waiting for you in the morning, and new magazine issues hit your Kindle before they hit the newsstands. Kindle also has The New Oxford American Dictionary built in so you can quickly and relatively easily look up words you don't know. Of course, you can also bookmark, annotate, highlight, and virtually dog-ear.
• If you dig deep enough, you'll find that the Kindle also has a few other tricks up its sleeve. You can email Word, text, HTML, or image files to your Kindle (each Kindle account gets it own email address), and for 10¢, Amazon will convert them into a format your Kindle can render, and send them to your device. You can also do this yourself for free simply by connecting your Kindle to your computer via USB and copying your Word, text, HTML, or image files into the appropriate directories on your Kindle. PDF files are experimental which means they might partially work, and they will probably work better in the future after some firmware upgrades. You can also copy MP3s over and use your Kindle to play music (this feature is no doubt in preparation for selling audio books), and there's even a built-in web browser that you can use to pull up a few sites. The speed is more than acceptable, but the rendering is poor enough that I think sites will have to be designed specifically for the Kindle to make them worth viewing.
• The Kindle has a built-in keyboard for things like searches and annotations. It looks kind of cheap, and feels kind of cheap, but I've found it to be surprisingly usable. In fact, after just a few words, I found I could type much faster than the Kindle could render, however input is buffered, so eventually it catches up.
• The scroll wheel (jog dial, as Sony calls it) makes navigating relatively easy, though it could use some texture. My finger often slides on it instead of spinning it. The next page, previous page, and back buttons are conveniently placed on the sides of the device, and they feel fairly robust, though I will try my best never to drop my Kindle. The one criticism I have of the button layout is that it's hard to pick up or handle without hitting a button that navigates away from what you wanted to look at. Buttons cover so much of its surface that it almost feels booby-trapped.
• The Kindle's navigation system is reasonably good, though it takes getting used to. The inclination is to scroll up or down to get at previous or next pages which doesn't work (and rightly so — this is supposed to be a book!). And the back button doesn't work like a browser's back button. In other words, back doesn't take you to the last page you looked at; rather it seems to take you to the last navigation juncture, or menu. Although this is confusing, once you understand how it works, it's pretty efficient.
• I mentioned above that the Kindle is ready to go right out of the box. I mean that quite literally. You take it out of the box, plug it in, turn it on, and start using it. Kindles are even pre-configured with your account information, so you don't even have to enter your Amazon credentials. This was probably the simplest and best initial experience I've ever had with a device. It blows my mind that this Kindle was configured with my account information, boxed up and shipped to me, and I was reading the Washington Post in less than 12 hours. Amazon has this process perfected.

...

So what's my overall impression of the Kindle? I'm very intrigued. It's not perfect, but it would be unfair to expect it to be. The Kindle is amazingly complex when you consider the technology, content, and the business behind it. And it's amazing how simple it all seems from the perspective of the end user. I think Amazon has outdone even Apple on this one."

Comments

[monts]

I've been intrigued by the Kindle for a while, but I like the look and feel of "real" books better than a digital format... however, after hearing you mention it as a place to put all of your reference information for sermon-crafting, it sounds a whole lot more intriguing and useful to me...

Good idea! I'm definitely intrigued by the prospect!

[Noel]

Does anyone know if you can add books you already own or if you will have to pay for them again?

[john chandler]

Bob,
I got one, and I really like it. The biggest shortcoming to me in using it as a reference tool is the lack of titles available still, especially in terms of Christian publishing houses. But, I'm hoping that will be remedied sooner rather than later.

Here's a review I did on it on my blog: http://www.somestrangeideas.com/2008/01/12/musings-of-a-kindleworm/

[Bob Hyatt]

Noel- I think you'd need to rebuy- which is a bummer. But look at it this way- with Kindle, you need only buy it once- and you can read it forever. You can redownload if something happens to your kindle or you buy a new one...

Books, you can loan to others.

But you have to pack them up and they wear out, get ruined, eaten by the dog, etc...

I really see Kindle as a great device for reference stuff, books you want to have on-hand, ready access to. For most books, the paper copy will do fine...