{"id":145,"date":"2009-03-29T12:08:39","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T17:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2013-04-30T16:59:31","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T21:59:31","slug":"amazon-kindle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/29\/amazon-kindle-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Kindle 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-146\" title=\"kindle\" src=\"\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kindle.jpg\" alt=\"kindle\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kindle.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kindle-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I pre-ordered a <a href=\"\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00154JDAI?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=redreco-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00154JDAI\">Kindle 2<\/a> last month, for two reasons:<\/p>\n<p>1) I wanted to read more.<br \/>\n2) I wanted to have my own, personal Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy.  (Amazon offers free access to wikipedia)<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ve been playing around with it for about a month, trying to gauge how well it works.  I&#8217;ve read several books with it, and I thought I&#8217;d offer my impressions.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Likes<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Display<\/strong> &#8211; Personally, I&#8217;ve always hated <a href=\"\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ClearType\">ClearType<\/a>, and I prefer my text to be pixelated and ugly on a LCD monitor.\u00a0 Still, I found the e-ink display to be truly incredible.\u00a0 It has a completely different &#8216;look&#8217; about it that is difficult to describe.\u00a0 It&#8217;s unique, and is almost, but not quite, completely unlike paper.\u00a0 It displays surprisingly crisp, easy-to-read text.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ordering Books<\/strong> &#8211; Ordering books is easy.\u00a0 Too easy.\u00a0 I thought, &#8220;Hmm, I wonder if there are any Isaac Asimov books available&#8230;&#8221;, and I found myself indebted to amazon.com for $17.97 within three minutes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Internet\/Wikipedia Access<\/strong> &#8211; The ability to access the internet and wikipedia from anywhere there is a cell phone signal, with no charge, is awesome.\u00a0 Amazon says they reserve the right to charge at any later time, but have not announced anything yet.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Free Books<\/strong> &#8211; Surprisingly, the Kindle fully supports free e-book web sites like <a href=\"\/\/mnybks.net\">mnybks.net<\/a>.\u00a0 Clicking on a link to a .txt or .mobi file will cause the Kindle to ask you if you want to download this book to your device.\u00a0 Then, it appears in the main Kindle interface like any other book.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Computer Interface<\/strong> &#8211; With previous annoyances with the iTunes and Zune computer applications (required to add music to the associated devices), I was afraid that the Kindle would require you to install an &#8216;iBook&#8217; application.\u00a0 But, I was happy to see that any computer detects the Kindle as an external drive, just like a jump drive or other device.\u00a0 You can easily copy-and-paste supported documents (txt, mobi, etc files) directly to the Kindle with ease.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Battery Life<\/strong> &#8211; It seems to last forever, and I haven&#8217;t had any difficulties.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Minesweeper<\/strong> &#8211; The game Minesweeper is installed on the Kindle as a hidden easter egg.\u00a0 It&#8217;s fun.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Dislikes<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Internet Speed<\/strong> &#8211; Perhaps this is just my lack-of-experience with portable internet devices, but the internet speed on the Kindle is slow.\u00a0 I just searched wikipedia for &#8216;car&#8217;, and the page finally displayed after 75 seconds.\u00a0 It isn&#8217;t really usable as a portable encyclopedia when the response times are so slow.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lack of Folders &#8211; <\/strong>Amazingly, the Kindle does not support any form of folder organization.\u00a0 Every book, newspaper, and magazine appears in one big honking list, ordered by date downloaded \/ date last viewed.\u00a0 You can put 1500 books on the Kindle, but good luck finding the one you want.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Browsing<\/strong> &#8211; When I read books, I tend to remember the layout of pages.\u00a0 So, if there&#8217;s a big paragraph on the left page, and a grey box on the right, I can quickly flip through and find it easily.\u00a0 With the Kindle, this isn&#8217;t really possible.\u00a0 Each page change takes about 2 seconds, so quickly flipping through and finding something doesn&#8217;t work.\u00a0 This isn&#8217;t an issue for fictional works, but for reference materials (I bought Kindle version of &#8216;The Pragmattic Programmer&#8217;) it is a huge downside.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lack of Case<\/strong> &#8211; The Kindle costs about $360, but that doesn&#8217;t include a case.\u00a0 Oh, no.\u00a0 For a case, they&#8217;ll charge you another <a href=\"\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B001JAH7OM?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=redreco-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B001JAH7OM\">30 bucks<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-148\" title=\"case\" src=\"\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/case.jpg\" alt=\"case\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/case.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/case-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I have found that I read more thanks to the Kindle (because it overcomes a lack of motiviation to go out and find books).\u00a0 But as a Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide, it falls flat.\u00a0 And its pretty flat as it is.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I really can&#8217;t easily recommend it for the price.\u00a0 Perhaps if you find yourself on public transportation for a couple hours each day, it might be a decent investment.\u00a0 As it is, most casual (or technical) readers won&#8217;t find much utility here.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe in a few years, when you can get a free Kindle X in your box of Cocoa Puffs&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I pre-ordered a Kindle 2 last month, for two reasons: 1) I wanted to read more. 2) I wanted to have my own, personal Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy. (Amazon offers free access to wikipedia) So, I&#8217;ve been playing around with it for about a month, trying to gauge how well it works. I&#8217;ve read [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-impression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redrecondite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}