Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

Well, I’ve had the Kindle for a few days now and I’m willing to discuss some of the finer points of usage.

Being able to go from reading your textbook, to today’s New York Times, to finding out a bit more about a subject, then going back to your book - seeing a reference and hopping online, finding the book, and downloading this new book in less than a minute… It’s quite the experience. Living in the future.

The form factor of the Kindle is MUCH slimmer than the videos and pictures gave me the impression of. It’s thicker than the Sony Reader, but not by much. It’s also not nearly as ugly in person. Holding it is awkward for the first little bit, but after a chapter or so of reading you get the hang of it and not accidentally pressing the buttons - you learn to appreciate the button locations (much easier than the Sony Reader.) You get over the fact that it’s ugly REAL quick.

The “experimental” web browser and stuff works but it’s nothing to write home about. This allows access to your email and such, but typing takes so long (slower than on a mobile phone) that you’d really not want to use it - browsing is slow, too. It works for accessing Wikipedia, and that’s really about all you’d want to do with it.

The “checking out a chapter” - something you can do with every book I’ve looked at so far - is great. It helps with impulse buying as well, something I’m very bad with around books. This was actually my biggest concern with the Kindle - I buy a lot of books and then thinking better of it, cancel it. Forcing myself to download the first chapter and read it before I buy helps.

The prices are cheap - most the time. Very rarely do you find something with a high price point, and it is almost always a technical manual or text book of some sort (those guys are just not going to give up the ghost, I’m afraid.) The selection is over 100,000 now and that’s a LOT. A lot more than public domain cheapies and best sellers. I picked up a favorite of mine, Earnest Becker’s Denial of Death which is pretty far from a modern day best seller for $7.99.

It’s not all roses - I ran across a few very badly formatted books, but not many.

The media services are excellent - I’ve been getting the New York Times daily - and it’s been a pleasure to read. The experience is very nice, and even more comfortable than an actual book at times. I can lay in bed and sit the device on my chest and read comfortably for hours - previously, having to turn pages and such, this always got awkward REAL fast.

The annotation and underlining is nice and you can go to any annotation or highlight very quickly from the menu. Annotating a lot of text is ill-advised (due to the speed of typing) but I simply use numbers and write my own notes down anyway.

So, all in all - I couldn’t be happier. I don’t regret the purchase for a moment (and I’m the king of buyer’s remorse) as with my book appetite I will save money in the long run, and my ability to scan and find my books elsewhere means it will be useful no matter what I’m doing.

Obviously, a device like this isn’t for everyone. Me? I love reading… and I’m interested in everything, and a device like this is what I’ve wanted every gadget I’ve ever used to be - I’ve been reading a lot, not just because of it being new, but because I suddenly have a wide variety of books always available. If I don’t feel like reading When Science Meets Religion for school, I can read a magazine or the new Stephen King novel or pick up a book on Semiotics.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  And don’t worry - last post about ebooks for a while!

This continues the series on using an eBook reader academically.

Of course, as fun as a shiny new piece of technology is, we must make it work for us. “Geek to live, not live to geek” and all that.You have a few options when it comes to acquiring content for your device.

1. Buy It
2. Scan It
3. Download it from a free source

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Well, Apple reduced the price of the iPhones. Now, we all knew they would - but I don’t think anyone expected anything like this. There are a lot of angry (and I believe deservedly so) early-adopters out there right now. A lot of Apple customers are feeling what it feels like to be a Dell customer right about now.

But, still, there is good in cheaper iPhones. It’s an amazing device, and a great piece of organizational technology rightly harnessed. If I can get my hands on one somehow, I’ll see about doing a breakdown for student use.

You may have heard the 4gb iPhone models have been discontinued, that’s true.. but until they sell out, they’re also selling for $299 where you can find them. Get ‘em while their hot!

In a previous post, “Backpack To Go“, we discussed lightening your load through the day - literally. The problem arises, however, for those students cursed with many large text books (this is particularly problematic, in my experience, in gen-ed, mathematics, and science courses). My girlfriend is a meteorology major and being a rather small girl has some definite problems with ten pound text books.

Later in the day, after this post, I was frustrated by my post doing little for her particular situation and decided to do something about it.

When I was using a tablet pc, I routinely scanned in all my textbooks for easy markup and so I wouldn’t have to drag them to class. I initially thought of this, but her laptop is a 17 inch monstrosity and this wouldn’t work too well for her. I would, however, advise it for anyone who regularly brings a laptop to their classes. Personally, I suggest the Plustek Opticbook 3600. The software is, regrettably, PC only - but works fine with Parallels or VMWare (which is the best in my experience) or Bootcamp if you have an Intel Mac. Scanning an entire 200+ pg book generally only takes an hour or so, but I often just scanned a few chapters at a time.

So, what to do? Well, occasionally, the solution is so damn simple you don’t even realize it. Here’s the trick my friends…. Copy machine. Just go to your local copy machine, Kinko’s, whatever, and copy out the things you will need for class for the next month or so. Make sure you copy to both sides - bind them together somehow, and there you go. Instead of a 10 lbs book, you have a small packet that can fit in a folder.

Picture courtesy of Judith P. Abrahamsen