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!

Well, I ended up not going to my doc appt and (unrelatedly) stayed home to follow the keynote.

All I can say is wow… not because of the keynote, but because it was a strange thing to watch the internet implode. I was watching a few sites (necessary since they kept crashing) to see what was going on and Gizmodo, Engadget, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog all puttered and died at various times. A million people hitting “Refresh” has to do some pretty brutal things to your bandwidth.

No tablet from Apple, though - so, I’m crushed. Don’t they know I want to hurry up and live in the future? I guess I will put all my birthday money into Amazon’s Kindle (if they ever start shipping them).  I’m a bit torn, though.  The idea of being able to get to almost any book I may want instantly is ridiculously appealing, more to the point - the ability to keep a lot of books with me easily is very appealing (I tend to be reading 4-5 books at a time, aside from school books).  Unfortunately, I’m one of those that absolutely hates reading anything very long on a screen.  E-Ink evidently fixes that problem.  At the same time, the Kindle is ugly as sin and reeks of “first gen device.”  Of course, color e-ink is a ways off…. so no telling when we’ll see the next real version of the ebook reader.

What can I say, I’m a technophile…  I’ve no substantial vices except a desire to access all of my(and the world’s) information as easily as possible whenever I want.  That’s not too much to ask, is it? 

 Any of you used the Kindle? Have any experience with it?  You see the MacBookAir or follow the keynote?  Let me know in the comments! 

Okay, so I’ve got one of those long, lovely doctors visits tomorrow right during the keynote. I’m on pins and needles for one thing and one thing only - a tablet.  The rest I either know already or it won’t effect me (most likely.)  I don’t need a sub-notebook, for instance.  I find it difficult to do much more than email, browse the web and write on my MacBook as it is.

Now, I know everyone is going “it’s not going to happen, at least not yet” (John Gruber explains it well).  And that’s probably true… But I tell you what, if they can make something like the iPhone but bigger they’ll have nailed it. Tablet’s have been around for a while, hell… my last non-mac PC was a tablet but the UI has always been a disaster.

That’s been issue number one - you can’t have a tablet computer and the only difference be you use a pen or your hand just like a mouse.  It’s awkward and slow and irritating.  It’s the same reason that before you had the iPhone most pocket pc/palm devices were about 90% evil.  Using them just never became a process that was pleasant.

Issue two has been size/weight and general usability design.  For example, the Gateway convertible tablet I had before my MacBook had a big grip along the hinge.  It was great for when I was standing up and writing, but if I set it down one side was about a half-inch higher than the other, and giving that the device weighed 7-8 lbs, I didn’t stand around with it often!

Gruber makes the excellent point that it can’t be, at least right now, a total computer.  And if it is, the boys at Apple have been staying up awfully late; it’s going to have to be a specialized device.

So imagine a device with a clean, fast interface (ala iPhone) that specializes in just two things - retrieval and input of data.  Of course, it’ll do a few other things like let you listen to music or chat with your friends, but primarily it’ll been a fast and light web-browser, document reader, note-taking, email receiving, rss reader.  You can probably type a long email or blog post, but wouldn’t necessarily want to.  Not by typing, at least.  When you actually do have to input data, you’d be writing it out most the time.

If someone can do this right, make it usable, make it sexy, make it fun and pleasant to use - Apple can.  I absolutely believe this sort of thing is where our tech is heading, and I want to get there sooner rather than later.

Sp if Apple announces a tablet tomorrow.. I’m going to have to rob a bank or something.  As scared as I am of first gen hardware…  I’ll go sell plasma if I have to!