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Wireless Kindle User Review…
By: Claire C. Collins “Devourer of Words”
As good as it claims to be!
I got the Wireless Kindle 2 for my birthday, and have had it for a little less than a month now, and I am having so much fun! I am a voracious reader, and my family can testify that for the last three or so weeks, I’ve barely put the thing down to sleep.
Specific things I love:
— The text-to-speech function. My mother hates it — she says it takes too much concentration to figure out what the mechanical voice is saying, and the odd pauses throw her out of the story — but I for one am fascinated by how comprehensible the reading is. As someone who is interested in linguistics, I would love to know if there is a site out there that lists the rules Amazon gave the software — why, for example, “read” is sometimes pronounced to rhyme with “red” and sometimes with “seed,” but the word “reading” always rhymes with “bedding.” And it’s awesome, for someone who tends to try to read while doing everything (walking, cooking, getting dressed,) to have the option to put the book down and multitask faster.
— The device itself. It’s slim, beautiful, and intuitive. In fact, it’s so easy to use, it completely disappears, as a good book should. Within ten minutes of my first order over the whispernet (another thing I love) I was no longer reading a good book on the Kindle, I was just reading a good story, totally immersed in a new world. Which is as it should be.
I particularly love the fact (as with any e-reader device) that I can just lay the thing flat and continue to turn pages without worrying about the book closing or losing my page. Reading in bed or, more importantly for me, in physical therapy when I have to stay as still as possible, is so easy I’ve completely stopped thinking about it.
— The battery life. The Kindle read to me all the way from New York to Toronto last week — at least ten hours — without a recharge. (It was dead when we got there, though.) And if I do nothing but read with the wireless off, it goes for four days — and I read a lot! The wireless does eat up your power, though. Beware!
— The Whispernet library. It’s quick and easy, once you set up a credit card, and the “recommended for you” section has introduced me to a couple of new authors that I now love — Naomi Novik in particular. There is a whole world of books entirely unknown to me just waiting out there! It’s a very exciting prospect, particularly when I can read samples before I buy. I also like the feature that allows you to cancel a purchase made by accident, although I have yet to need to take advantage of that. It shows a certain stand-up mentality on the part of the sellers.
I also love the “give the reader the first of a series free” mentality — trying out new series/authors without any stress is awesome, and the “maybe they’ll buy the rest of the series” part of it is totally working. Heh heh.
Specific things I’m not crazy about:
— The screen. Most of the reason I got the new Kindle was that my mother’s Wireless Kindle 1, which she had never used and I had been borrowing, fell about a foot onto carpeting and the screen cracked, rendering it useless three days after the warranty expired. We were very put out with the fragility of the screen, but in the couple of days that I had been borrowing it, I had fallen in love with the idea of it, so I put it on my birthday list. For the first couple of days with the new Wireless Kindle 2, I was so overprotective of the screen that I could barely stand to use the device.
I have deliberately been testing its limits — taking it on vacation, to work (where there is a very inquisitive one-year-old), carrying it in my backpack — to dull the edge of my panic. This has worked to some extent, but I am still at least twice as careful of it as I am of my laptop, which cost three times as much. Buying a stiff case (the black M-Edge) has also helped. It still makes me nervous, nervous, nervous.
I have also encountered the problem others have mentioned about the text fading badly in the sunlight; this bothers me less, since I’m less likely to read outdoors.
— The five-way clicker (or “nipple-mouse”.) It’s a little annoying to use and doesn’t always click when you tell it to. Also, I can’t stop referring to it as “the nipple-mouse”, which is possibly the stupidest name ever.
— The Whispernet library. It’s just too darn easy to order books! They tell you this device was supposed to pay for itself in a year, but at this rate I’ll have bought three times as many books as usual, which is conducive neither to saving money nor to maintaining a healthy social life. Beware!
Careful readers will note, however, that despite these drawbacks, I gave the device four stars. The one missing star is just for the screen fragility, which is a major problem but not an insurmountable one, I trust. That is the only thing I would change about the Wireless Kindle, and I have faith that the developers are — or will be — working on this. Well done so far, Amazon. Bring on the next generation!
