Mar

29

I got a Kindle-v1 Christmas 2007 as a gift. It's sorta great and it kinda sucks.

Great that I can load up just about any PDF on it (either through Amazon's email conversion service or via Mobi-book desktop PDF converter) and thus I can carry around a bunch of journal papers for quick perusal.

Great that if I read a review of a book, I can download the first chapter immediately and determine if I like the book, instead of hoofing it to a book store or ordering it from Amazon and discovering the book is a disappointment.

Kinda sucks because the Kindle (v1 at least) has a very fragile screen. I've cracked four of them, and while Amazon has been very good about replacing them, it is still disturbing that an e-ink screen, which is supposed to be more durable than an LED, seems more fragile than my iPhone's LED.

Another issue is that while one's notes/bookmarks/hi-lites are carried over from Kindle to Kindle for documents one loads up oneself, and for books that are purchased from Amazon, it's not so for periodicals. So when you get a new Kindle you find that while you have recovered that electronic copy of Reason, or The Atlantic, your notes/bookmarks/hi-lites have mysteriously disappeared.

Other problems of switching between Kindle and a replacement Kindle (at least for v1): your browser favorites don't carry over, and old transferred material isn't re-indexed for keyword search; i.e. the first time you purchase a book it's indexed for keyword lookup, but after you switch to a new Kindle anything you move over from the old Kindle is not indexed for keyword look up on the new Kindle. Last but not least, there is no file folders or file tagging. You are limited to sorting your documents by last read date, author, or title. Can't sort or organize your documents by fiction or nonfiction, can't classify documents as to subject area, etc. A folder structure/file tagging system was one of the first things that Kindle v1 users asked for in the Kindle support forums, and it disappointed lots of Kindle fans that it wasn't a feature of Kindle v2.

Nevertheless, with all the complaints, I was very glad when Amazon sent me my new replacement Kindle, as I was going through Kindle withdrawal. Using the Kindle app on an iPhone just isn't the same.

Dr. Corso specializes in modeling energy derivatives in APL, A+, J and k


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2 Comments so far

  1. legacy daily on March 30, 2009 7:48 am

    There's a Kindle application for the iPhone which works nicely. I haven't seen any reason to switch from the iPhone to the physical Kindle as a result.

  2. Alan Ladne on April 2, 2009 3:04 am

    I might have just been lucky, but in the year I’ve had mine I have never even seriously scratched the screen, and I carry it around in my coat pocket (unprotected by its binder) with keys and change. I’ve dropped it at least a dozen times.

    On the plus side, version 1 has a memory card slot (v2 doesn’t), and with a 4GB card I can carry about literaly thousands of books in a 10 oz. package. It’s great to be able to read the heaviest tome (say a medical encyclopedia) held in one hand while I hold a cup of coffee in the other. Another plus is the free basic internet service. Admittedly the browser is primitive (you can’t watch video, everything is in black and white and static), but there is no monthly fee (so far) and with it I can read the morning papers, check and answer my email, even buy things. Yes I can do that on my phone, but it’s harder to read, and it’s more expensive.

    On the minus side, not everything is available, and it can be a hassle converting things to kindle format. Amazon’s free conversion service has size restrictions–files bigger than 10 MB are rejected without even an error message. The publications Amazon offers for subscription have their pictures stripped out, which makes getting a picture-heavy magazine like Newsweek not worth the money. But I suspect over time they will solve these issues. It’s nice to be able to sit outside on a bright sunny day and read without difficulty, something I can never do with my laptop.

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