Kindle from Amazon

I’ll be the first to admit that e-books suck. They’re great in theory, but they’ll never catch on. There’s nothing that screams dork more than an e-book. E-books are the future. Apparently there is some miscommunication going on and some are under the impression that I think e-books are not the future. I, like many others, enjoy the real thing. There’s just something comforting about having a paper book to carry around, to bunny ear, scratch notes on, highlight words/phrases and whatever else you may like to do. The refresh rates suck and you just want to pull your hair out while waiting for the next page to load. You don’t know how far along you are in the book. Those are just a couple reasons among a slew of arguments to hate e-books. Although, part of me thinks it’s a waste of resources even if it’s made from recycled paper. Traditional books have their pros and cons, but e-books are just janky and stupid, right? Well, yes, they are, but the Kindle from Amazon is a different beast.

My initial impressions were pretty off. I just wasn’t all that impressed and sort of left it on my desk for half a day, but I always want to floss the latest in technology when traveling so I brought it along for my trip to the Bay Area for turkey day. I figured I’d at least have Internet access while waiting at the airport. Then I started to tinker around with it as I got bored with the browser, which is phenomenal, but we’ll get to that later. The Kindle is a well thought out product. It incorporates the New American Oxford Dictionary and Wikipedia, which is extremely helpful when you have no idea what’s being said in an article from the NYT, Time, CrunchGear or any one of the books available from Amazon. I often find myself not knowing the definition of a particular word and I always tell myself I’ll grab the dictionary and look it up. I also tend to highlight phrases or passages that I’d like to share with others or just keep for myself, but I can’t always find them when I need them. These are just a few examples that I know many of you find yourselves in as well. Kindle takes care of all that. If you’re reading a book/magazine/newspaper and you need to look up the definition of something then do a quick search without ever leaving that page. It’s that simple. The Search function on Kindle is superb as it checks the Web, Wikipedia, New American Oxford Dictionary, Kindle Store and any book/magazine/blog that’s on your Kindle. It’s the most comprehensive search engine I’ve seen and it’s on an e-book of all places! If you need to highlight something then go right ahead. Want to take a few notes in a particular section then do it. Any notes or highlighting you do shows up on the main menu under the “My Clippings” category. Need to know how far you are in the book? If you’re like me then yes you do. At the bottom of the screen is an indicator bar that fills itself in as you go along. Navigating through books is as easy as any paper book. If you need to check out the table of contents or you need to jump to the beginning or go to a specific location then do so by way of the menu. You can add a bookmark, though, the last page you were on is always remembered. Bookmarks show up under “My Clippings” as well. Can it get any easier? I don’t think so.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/11/21/amazon-kindle-review/