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2024
Sure to Kindle Your Interest in Reading: Amazon Kindle 2 E-Reader
Pros
Slim, lightweight, stores an entire library, lots of free books, handy features.
Cons
No case, no covers for many books, no pictures with periodicals.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Definitely worth the price, a must-have gadget for book lovers.
Have you ever thought about how much environmental impact there is in the production of a book? Few people do. First and foremost, books are made from paper, and paper comes from trees. True, many books today are made from recycled content, but there still must be some fresh pulp used, and even recycling requires energy and resources. Those trees that are used must be cut down, cut up, hauled away to the paper plant, and processed into paper. That paper is then transported to the printer and turned into books.
Those books are then transported (once again) to one or two warehouses, then perhaps a book shop. Finally, the consumer hops in the car (burning gasoline and adding to traffic congestion) to pick up a copy. But what if that didn't have to be the case? What if you could simply download the latest releases with the touch of a button over a wireless 3G network and have them at your disposal in less than a minute? Such is possible with the Amazon Kindle 2 E-Book Reader.
Environmental concerns, of course, were part of my considerations when deciding to buy a Kindle. But they weren't the only ones. Truth be told, I hate getting in the car, and the ability to download a book the day its released and start reading had great appeal to me. And so, about six months ago as I type, I bought the bullet, plunked down my hard earned $299 (the price has since fallen to $259) and bought a Kindle 2. And I've never regretted it. Obviously, I love to read, and if you don't, then best to move along now. The Kindle is not for you. But if you do enjoy reading as much as I do, then a Kindle 2 should be on your wish list.
About the Kindle Device
Amazon's Kindle is, of course, an e-book reader, and in this reviewer's opinion has been the best one on the market, although Barnes and Noble's new Nook reader may give the Kindle a run for its money. Books can be purchased from Amazon.com for the device, and at last count there were something like 390,000 titles available. Amazon is working to add more all the time. You don't have to order books exclusively from Amazon, however, since many titles are available free from websites like Project Gutenberg and the Baen Free Library.
The kindle is about 4 inches wide by 10 inches tall and 1/3 of an inch thick. Most of its depth is devoted to the display, which is grayscale in color and intended to resemble paper. For the most part, it does, and is much easier on the eyes in my opinion than a standard LCD video display. The Kindle does not display in color, a fact which does tend to limit some of the types of content it can deliver. Below the display screen is a keyboard used for some of the various device functions; to either side of the screen lie the Next Page/Previous Page controls and Home button.
There are actually two Next Page buttons, one on the left and one on the right, which makes the Kindle easy to use by both left and right handed readers. A navigational joystick, Menu, and Back button are located near the keyboard, while an on/off switch and headphone jack are seated at the top of the device.
Storage Capacity
Amazon boasts that the Kindle will hold roughly 1500 books, and that's about right. My unit came with almost 1.5 gigabytes available. Most books, depending on length, will run you about 750K to one megabyte in size. Still, e-books bought from Amazon can be "archived" with the seller and recalled via the Whispernet at any time, and at no additional cost. This feature allows for virtually unlimited capacity on your Kindle, since you can store vast amounts of books you'd like to read and archive those you've already read.
Adding Books
Before you can use your Kindle, you'll need some content. Amazon, of course, hopes that you'll buy your books from them, though you can add them from other providers as long as they are in a supported format (AZW, TXT, PDF, MOBI, and others by conversion through Amazon.) When I first ordered my kindle, I was shopping for books on Amazon.com over the web before it even arrived. I filled my cart with free classic novels and purchased a few books as well. When my Kindle was delivered, I merely turned on the wireless and they were immediately sent to my device.
Books are transmitted via the aforementioned Amazon Whispernet, which is nothing more than a 3G data network that operates via the Sprint cellular system. There is no extra charge for content delivery, although if you are outside the United States there may be a small fee per download. You can also connect to the Amazon store directly through the Kindle, and browse and search for titles using the keyboard to enter what you want. If you decide to purchase, you'll need to set up a credit card through your Amazon account; the same will be charged whenever you purchase a book.
Although I love the Kindle store and use it all the time through my device, it does trouble me that the purchase feature is not password protected. Conceivably, someone who happened to steal or find your device could download books against your credit card, although they would be of no use to them anywhere but on the Kindle itself. I tend to operate under the assumption that people that steal don't read, and people that read don't steal, so the risk seems small.
Another way to add e-books to your Kindle is by simply connecting the device to your computer with the provided USB cable and dragging and dropping supported formats to the device. The Kindle will recognize them, for the most part, as well as it does books you obtain from Amazon.
Other Content
Of course, you can enjoy more than books on your Kindle. Magazines and Newspapers are also available, and for a fee you can subscribe to either of them. For my part, I don't find that they work so well. Mainly, it's the pictures that I miss. Sure, the articles are complete (and inexpensive too, Newsweek runs me a mere $1.49 a month). But I miss the wonderful snapshots that accompany the stories in my periodicals. Kindle will only store about six of them, and will automatically delete the oldest one when a new magazine is downloaded. Unlike books, magazines are not stored on the Amazon site for later recall.
Newspapers work a little better, but they'll cost you more. Most subscriptions run about $6 a month, though some (such as USA today) are twice that. There are a number to choose from, and they originate in cities around the country and the world.
The Kindle also serves as an MP3 player, should you choose to drag and drop DRM-free MP3s on it. Personally, I prefer not to do that, since they take up much more space than books do. I have my Zune HD to listen to music on; my Kindle is reserved for reading.
I'm Ready to Read
All of this is great, you say, but what's it actually like to read a book on a Kindle? Pretty amazing, actually. When you first turn the device on, you'll arrive "Home" (and can get back there anytime by hitting the Home button). Here, you'll see a list of all the content on your device, books first, listed by most recently accessed. Using the joystick, you can scroll up and down through your titles. The currently selected one will show as underlined, and by pressing down the joystick you will be brought to that title. Press left, and the device will ask if you want to delete the title, which you can do by pressing down on the joystick. Never fear, however, since if you delete an Amazon-bought title it's really only being archived, and will show in your Archive folder.
Pressing the Menu button while at the Home screen will give you a pop-up box with several options. You can turn the Wireless on or off, Shop in the Kindle Store, View Archived Items, Search, access Settings, pull up Experimental features, or Sync and Check for Items. The latter is useful if you have a new magazine or newspaper issue that is not yet on your device. The Search option allows you to search Wikipedia, Google, the Amazon Store, and most importantly, your device. It's helpful when you don't want to scroll through your library but would like to find a title.
Once we've found our title, we're ready to go. The Kindle will keep the title you're currently reading first on the list for easy access, and when you do select it the device will remember exactly where you left off. The display is perfect for text and easy to read against the non-backlit screen, even in bright sunlight.
While the display is a nice feature, it's not what sets the Kindle apart from a printed book. No, it's the things that an e-book can do that a printed one just can't that make all the difference. For one thing, it's easy as pie to read the Kindle with one hand, without the need to turn pages. The Next Page button is perfectly positioned just where your thumb will be, and that means you can easily move from page to page. I actually find I can read faster on the Kindle than I can with a printed book.
Of course, the Kindle does not really use pages, instead relying on "locations" which are blocks of text assembled in page format. And while you can't go to a certain "page", you can jump to a location with the Menu button at anytime.
As we advance in years, we can't always see as well as we used to. That's OK, though, because depressing the "Aa" button on the keyboard allows you to adjust the text size. The largest of them only allows about four words per line, but is comparable with large print books one can purchase at the bookstore.
But maybe you don't want to read on your kindle at all; maybe you want it to read to you. With Text to Speech, your Kindle can do just that, although publishers have the option of denying you this feature, and some do. Their reasoning is that it denies them the revenue from the purchase of audio books. This seems particularly cold hearted to me, since the Text to Speech option would seem of particular use to the visually impaired. At any rate, this feature works remarkably well, with excellent pronunciation and pace. You can adjust the latter through three speeds, and even select a male or female voice. The Kindle has two speakers built into the back, or you can use headphones (sold separately).
Students (and Epinions reviewers) will find the Notes and Marks feature extremely helpful. By pressing the joystick button next to a word, and then dragging across and/or down you can underline sections of text and easily recall them later through your My Notes and Marks folder.
Don't you hate coming across a word you don't recognize without a dictionary handy? That won't happen with your Kindle. The reader has a built-in copy of The New Oxford American Dictionary, and simply parking the cursor in front of that pesky word you don't know will bring up the definition.
Battery Life and Power Consumption
Amazon says that the battery will last for a week of reading with wireless on and two weeks with it off. I can't say that my experience supports the claim. First off, the amount of use you put the device through in that week or two will greatly influence your battery life. I find that with wireless on, I'll get three to four days of average use, which is typically a few hours a day. Turning off the wireless greatly extends the battery life, however, at least enough that I've read a few books without recharging.
When you do need to recharge, the supplied power cord is extremely convenient. A full charge takes up to four hours, although it seems to go much faster through an electrical socket than it does via USB connection. The same cord allows you to charge through either source, as the USB connector pops easily into a wall socket adapter (included).
Durability
The metal and plastic construction on the Kindle seems sturdy enough, though I am very careful with mine and certainly would not want to drop it onto a hard surface. The device comes with a standard one-year warranty, which can be extended to two for about $69. Extending your warranty will also provide additional protection against drops and spills.
Experimental
The Kindle also comes with a few "experimental" features. A rudimentary web browser that displays mostly text is one of these. It's not extremely fast or pretty, but I have used it on the go in the car to check e-mail and news on CNN.
Book Prices and Selection
So far, I've found literally hundreds of books I'd love to read available via Kindle, and that's only just scratching the surface. Prices are usually more reasonable than bound paper editions, and most New York Times Best Sellers are available for just $9.99. Indeed, this Christmas I bought my son a hardbound copy of Steven King's latest tome, Under the Dome for just $14 through Amazon, and that seemed a deal since it's well over 1000 pages. Better yet, though, the Kindle edition I bought for myself was just $9.99, and I had it in under a minute.
I've picked up a number of Star Trek novels for around $2 to $3 each, and most books that retail for $7.99 usually run around $6.39 for the Kindle. In addition to the classics, there are a number of other novels that are free as well, though these are usually fist installments in a series upon which the publisher tries to get a reader hooked. I got a free e-copy of John Birmingham's Weapons of Choice in this fashion, for example.
The Kindle store also offers books you won't easily find elsewhere. I was shocked to find, for example, Zigzag Journey's in Northern Lands available. The book was published originally in the 1890's by Rhode Island author Hezekiah Butterworth.
In all cases, you can download a sample of 10 or 20 pages of a book if you're not sure whether to buy. This is free, and if you don't like the sample you delete from your device and move on to the next one.
Downsides
The Kindle is far from perfect,, however, and there are a number of issues that, while all minor, still manage to annoy this reviewer. The first that I noticed, of course, was the lack of a carrying case included with the device. Amazon wants another $30 for a case, and that seems almost criminal. For $259, they could throw in at least a basic cover.
Covers and pictures are another issue. Kindle versions of books generally seem to omit maps, photos, and illustrations, though I'm not sure why. A copy of 1633 I got from the Baen Free Library included all the maps that the paperback edition did. You can access the cover of a book while reading by pressing Menu then Cover, but in many cases this simply displays a standard book background with the name of the book you're reading across the top. I do like to see the actual cover of the book, myself.
Text formatting can be an issue at times, too, especially with free titles. Most of the classics were converted by volunteers, and this sometimes shows in poor translations and formatting. Even some purchased books have chapters and paragraphs crammed together, making it difficult to see where one passage ends and another begins. Fortunately, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule, however.
I enjoy reading novels in French and German from time to time, and while you can purchase dictionaries for these languages that can be loaded onto the Kindle, it would be nice to have the same automatic lookup for them that is available for English words. This would truly make the Kindle an invaluable resource for students learning a new language.
Finally, and this is more of a suggestion I suppose, a solar cell built into the back of the device would make it even more environmentally friendly. This would not replace the power cord, of course, but could supplement it and reduce the amount of generated electricity needed to read.
Overall
In the final analysis, however, I've found that the positives far outweigh the negatives with the Amazon Kindle 2 reader. I've loved it these past months, and it seems I'm not alone. This holiday season Amazon actually sold more digitally downloaded books than paper ones. That would seem to show a clear trend, and if you haven't purchased your Kindle yet, what are you waiting for? There's a whole world of reading excitement awaiting.
Those books are then transported (once again) to one or two warehouses, then perhaps a book shop. Finally, the consumer hops in the car (burning gasoline and adding to traffic congestion) to pick up a copy. But what if that didn't have to be the case? What if you could simply download the latest releases with the touch of a button over a wireless 3G network and have them at your disposal in less than a minute? Such is possible with the Amazon Kindle 2 E-Book Reader.
Environmental concerns, of course, were part of my considerations when deciding to buy a Kindle. But they weren't the only ones. Truth be told, I hate getting in the car, and the ability to download a book the day its released and start reading had great appeal to me. And so, about six months ago as I type, I bought the bullet, plunked down my hard earned $299 (the price has since fallen to $259) and bought a Kindle 2. And I've never regretted it. Obviously, I love to read, and if you don't, then best to move along now. The Kindle is not for you. But if you do enjoy reading as much as I do, then a Kindle 2 should be on your wish list.
About the Kindle Device
Amazon's Kindle is, of course, an e-book reader, and in this reviewer's opinion has been the best one on the market, although Barnes and Noble's new Nook reader may give the Kindle a run for its money. Books can be purchased from Amazon.com for the device, and at last count there were something like 390,000 titles available. Amazon is working to add more all the time. You don't have to order books exclusively from Amazon, however, since many titles are available free from websites like Project Gutenberg and the Baen Free Library.
The kindle is about 4 inches wide by 10 inches tall and 1/3 of an inch thick. Most of its depth is devoted to the display, which is grayscale in color and intended to resemble paper. For the most part, it does, and is much easier on the eyes in my opinion than a standard LCD video display. The Kindle does not display in color, a fact which does tend to limit some of the types of content it can deliver. Below the display screen is a keyboard used for some of the various device functions; to either side of the screen lie the Next Page/Previous Page controls and Home button.
There are actually two Next Page buttons, one on the left and one on the right, which makes the Kindle easy to use by both left and right handed readers. A navigational joystick, Menu, and Back button are located near the keyboard, while an on/off switch and headphone jack are seated at the top of the device.
Storage Capacity
Amazon boasts that the Kindle will hold roughly 1500 books, and that's about right. My unit came with almost 1.5 gigabytes available. Most books, depending on length, will run you about 750K to one megabyte in size. Still, e-books bought from Amazon can be "archived" with the seller and recalled via the Whispernet at any time, and at no additional cost. This feature allows for virtually unlimited capacity on your Kindle, since you can store vast amounts of books you'd like to read and archive those you've already read.
Adding Books
Before you can use your Kindle, you'll need some content. Amazon, of course, hopes that you'll buy your books from them, though you can add them from other providers as long as they are in a supported format (AZW, TXT, PDF, MOBI, and others by conversion through Amazon.) When I first ordered my kindle, I was shopping for books on Amazon.com over the web before it even arrived. I filled my cart with free classic novels and purchased a few books as well. When my Kindle was delivered, I merely turned on the wireless and they were immediately sent to my device.
Books are transmitted via the aforementioned Amazon Whispernet, which is nothing more than a 3G data network that operates via the Sprint cellular system. There is no extra charge for content delivery, although if you are outside the United States there may be a small fee per download. You can also connect to the Amazon store directly through the Kindle, and browse and search for titles using the keyboard to enter what you want. If you decide to purchase, you'll need to set up a credit card through your Amazon account; the same will be charged whenever you purchase a book.
Although I love the Kindle store and use it all the time through my device, it does trouble me that the purchase feature is not password protected. Conceivably, someone who happened to steal or find your device could download books against your credit card, although they would be of no use to them anywhere but on the Kindle itself. I tend to operate under the assumption that people that steal don't read, and people that read don't steal, so the risk seems small.
Another way to add e-books to your Kindle is by simply connecting the device to your computer with the provided USB cable and dragging and dropping supported formats to the device. The Kindle will recognize them, for the most part, as well as it does books you obtain from Amazon.
Other Content
Of course, you can enjoy more than books on your Kindle. Magazines and Newspapers are also available, and for a fee you can subscribe to either of them. For my part, I don't find that they work so well. Mainly, it's the pictures that I miss. Sure, the articles are complete (and inexpensive too, Newsweek runs me a mere $1.49 a month). But I miss the wonderful snapshots that accompany the stories in my periodicals. Kindle will only store about six of them, and will automatically delete the oldest one when a new magazine is downloaded. Unlike books, magazines are not stored on the Amazon site for later recall.
Newspapers work a little better, but they'll cost you more. Most subscriptions run about $6 a month, though some (such as USA today) are twice that. There are a number to choose from, and they originate in cities around the country and the world.
The Kindle also serves as an MP3 player, should you choose to drag and drop DRM-free MP3s on it. Personally, I prefer not to do that, since they take up much more space than books do. I have my Zune HD to listen to music on; my Kindle is reserved for reading.
I'm Ready to Read
All of this is great, you say, but what's it actually like to read a book on a Kindle? Pretty amazing, actually. When you first turn the device on, you'll arrive "Home" (and can get back there anytime by hitting the Home button). Here, you'll see a list of all the content on your device, books first, listed by most recently accessed. Using the joystick, you can scroll up and down through your titles. The currently selected one will show as underlined, and by pressing down the joystick you will be brought to that title. Press left, and the device will ask if you want to delete the title, which you can do by pressing down on the joystick. Never fear, however, since if you delete an Amazon-bought title it's really only being archived, and will show in your Archive folder.
Pressing the Menu button while at the Home screen will give you a pop-up box with several options. You can turn the Wireless on or off, Shop in the Kindle Store, View Archived Items, Search, access Settings, pull up Experimental features, or Sync and Check for Items. The latter is useful if you have a new magazine or newspaper issue that is not yet on your device. The Search option allows you to search Wikipedia, Google, the Amazon Store, and most importantly, your device. It's helpful when you don't want to scroll through your library but would like to find a title.
Once we've found our title, we're ready to go. The Kindle will keep the title you're currently reading first on the list for easy access, and when you do select it the device will remember exactly where you left off. The display is perfect for text and easy to read against the non-backlit screen, even in bright sunlight.
While the display is a nice feature, it's not what sets the Kindle apart from a printed book. No, it's the things that an e-book can do that a printed one just can't that make all the difference. For one thing, it's easy as pie to read the Kindle with one hand, without the need to turn pages. The Next Page button is perfectly positioned just where your thumb will be, and that means you can easily move from page to page. I actually find I can read faster on the Kindle than I can with a printed book.
Of course, the Kindle does not really use pages, instead relying on "locations" which are blocks of text assembled in page format. And while you can't go to a certain "page", you can jump to a location with the Menu button at anytime.
As we advance in years, we can't always see as well as we used to. That's OK, though, because depressing the "Aa" button on the keyboard allows you to adjust the text size. The largest of them only allows about four words per line, but is comparable with large print books one can purchase at the bookstore.
But maybe you don't want to read on your kindle at all; maybe you want it to read to you. With Text to Speech, your Kindle can do just that, although publishers have the option of denying you this feature, and some do. Their reasoning is that it denies them the revenue from the purchase of audio books. This seems particularly cold hearted to me, since the Text to Speech option would seem of particular use to the visually impaired. At any rate, this feature works remarkably well, with excellent pronunciation and pace. You can adjust the latter through three speeds, and even select a male or female voice. The Kindle has two speakers built into the back, or you can use headphones (sold separately).
Students (and Epinions reviewers) will find the Notes and Marks feature extremely helpful. By pressing the joystick button next to a word, and then dragging across and/or down you can underline sections of text and easily recall them later through your My Notes and Marks folder.
Don't you hate coming across a word you don't recognize without a dictionary handy? That won't happen with your Kindle. The reader has a built-in copy of The New Oxford American Dictionary, and simply parking the cursor in front of that pesky word you don't know will bring up the definition.
Battery Life and Power Consumption
Amazon says that the battery will last for a week of reading with wireless on and two weeks with it off. I can't say that my experience supports the claim. First off, the amount of use you put the device through in that week or two will greatly influence your battery life. I find that with wireless on, I'll get three to four days of average use, which is typically a few hours a day. Turning off the wireless greatly extends the battery life, however, at least enough that I've read a few books without recharging.
When you do need to recharge, the supplied power cord is extremely convenient. A full charge takes up to four hours, although it seems to go much faster through an electrical socket than it does via USB connection. The same cord allows you to charge through either source, as the USB connector pops easily into a wall socket adapter (included).
Durability
The metal and plastic construction on the Kindle seems sturdy enough, though I am very careful with mine and certainly would not want to drop it onto a hard surface. The device comes with a standard one-year warranty, which can be extended to two for about $69. Extending your warranty will also provide additional protection against drops and spills.
Experimental
The Kindle also comes with a few "experimental" features. A rudimentary web browser that displays mostly text is one of these. It's not extremely fast or pretty, but I have used it on the go in the car to check e-mail and news on CNN.
Book Prices and Selection
So far, I've found literally hundreds of books I'd love to read available via Kindle, and that's only just scratching the surface. Prices are usually more reasonable than bound paper editions, and most New York Times Best Sellers are available for just $9.99. Indeed, this Christmas I bought my son a hardbound copy of Steven King's latest tome, Under the Dome for just $14 through Amazon, and that seemed a deal since it's well over 1000 pages. Better yet, though, the Kindle edition I bought for myself was just $9.99, and I had it in under a minute.
I've picked up a number of Star Trek novels for around $2 to $3 each, and most books that retail for $7.99 usually run around $6.39 for the Kindle. In addition to the classics, there are a number of other novels that are free as well, though these are usually fist installments in a series upon which the publisher tries to get a reader hooked. I got a free e-copy of John Birmingham's Weapons of Choice in this fashion, for example.
The Kindle store also offers books you won't easily find elsewhere. I was shocked to find, for example, Zigzag Journey's in Northern Lands available. The book was published originally in the 1890's by Rhode Island author Hezekiah Butterworth.
In all cases, you can download a sample of 10 or 20 pages of a book if you're not sure whether to buy. This is free, and if you don't like the sample you delete from your device and move on to the next one.
Downsides
The Kindle is far from perfect,, however, and there are a number of issues that, while all minor, still manage to annoy this reviewer. The first that I noticed, of course, was the lack of a carrying case included with the device. Amazon wants another $30 for a case, and that seems almost criminal. For $259, they could throw in at least a basic cover.
Covers and pictures are another issue. Kindle versions of books generally seem to omit maps, photos, and illustrations, though I'm not sure why. A copy of 1633 I got from the Baen Free Library included all the maps that the paperback edition did. You can access the cover of a book while reading by pressing Menu then Cover, but in many cases this simply displays a standard book background with the name of the book you're reading across the top. I do like to see the actual cover of the book, myself.
Text formatting can be an issue at times, too, especially with free titles. Most of the classics were converted by volunteers, and this sometimes shows in poor translations and formatting. Even some purchased books have chapters and paragraphs crammed together, making it difficult to see where one passage ends and another begins. Fortunately, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule, however.
I enjoy reading novels in French and German from time to time, and while you can purchase dictionaries for these languages that can be loaded onto the Kindle, it would be nice to have the same automatic lookup for them that is available for English words. This would truly make the Kindle an invaluable resource for students learning a new language.
Finally, and this is more of a suggestion I suppose, a solar cell built into the back of the device would make it even more environmentally friendly. This would not replace the power cord, of course, but could supplement it and reduce the amount of generated electricity needed to read.
Overall
In the final analysis, however, I've found that the positives far outweigh the negatives with the Amazon Kindle 2 reader. I've loved it these past months, and it seems I'm not alone. This holiday season Amazon actually sold more digitally downloaded books than paper ones. That would seem to show a clear trend, and if you haven't purchased your Kindle yet, what are you waiting for? There's a whole world of reading excitement awaiting.
