Amazon Kindle Gadget Review
April 23rd, 2008 by Lois MelbourneI have lots of gadgets. I get a lot of them because my husband figures them out or likes them and they become a part of our lives. He picks out good gadgets for me. The DVR and my iPods (I have more then one now) have been my favorite. I have a new one on the favorites list. For Christmas I received the Amazon Kindle. This is the electronic book by Amazon. It is FANTASTIC!
I know there have been other electronic books, some of them more successful then others. I think this one is going to go crazy in the market place. Here is why:
- It has the dimensions of a small note pad.
- It is light enough to carry in a briefcase or good sized purse.
- It is easy to read and you can adjust the font if you need it bigger.
- You can load over 200 books on to it without expanding the memory, and if you add an SD card you can jack that up to around 800 books.
- You can download books wirelessly from Amazon when you are anywhere. (It hooks up to your Amazon account automatically.)
- There are currently over 80,000 books available for download – as well as magazine and newspaper subscriptions. (That number appears to grow every day).
- It has a real “cool” factor. Every flight attendant and many fellow airplane travelers have asked about it and studied it during my travels.
- It downloads books in seconds.
- It allows me to have more then one book in progress, without carrying all that weight on a trip.
- The prices of the books are great – most around $10.00 even for current best sellers because you are not paying for shipping and paper/printing, etc.
- It’s “green.” You are saving trees by reading an electronic rather than a paper version – especially newspapers, but I have not used it for that yet.
Things I don’t like about it:
- You can turn the page accidentally if you don’t find a good way to hold the book. (You turn the page by pressing the paddles on the side.)
- A few of the books I want are not yet in the Kindle format.
- It doesn’t have a backlight so you still need the bedroom light or airplane light on to read. They missed an opportunity here – maybe future versions. But I think they did this to keep it light and keep the wonderfully long battery life.
- I won’t share my books that are on my Kindle.
If you like to read, if you travel and get tired of hauling too many books, and your tastes are not too esoteric – then I highly encourage you to get the Amazon Kindle.
When I traveled in Australia most people said Amazon was not as a big a deal as it is in the states. However, they were certain that if Kindle took off people would shift to Amazon because books there are so expensive to import, etc. They believed the electronic delivery would be a perfect way for them to buy books. So, there you have it. Amazon – a better way to go global…straight from your potential customers. (At the date of this writing it is not available for downloading books outside of North America).
It’s a great gadget. I know it will get even better. I will read more books and my bedside table won’t be stacked beyond my alarm clock with books in the queue to read…they will always be with me.
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