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."
I don't know if this can legitimately go in the category of "less time on tasks, more time with people", but...
. 
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