Monday 3 January 2011

Kindle Reader

I recently bought an Amazon Kindle 3G and I'm planning to write a few posts on my experiences using it.

First off the Kindle is an ebook reader, that's it, it doesn't do anything else. Saying that though you can access the internet with it, you can play mp3's on it and in some cases it can read a book to you via the text-to-speech function; more on these in a later post.

The Kindle's physical size is roughly the height and width of a paperback book and 8.5mm thick, the display is black & white only and uses an E-ink screen; this screen looks sharpe and it's like reading a normal book page and it weights 270 gms.

The screen reminds me of the children's toy Etch-a-sketch. Each time the page is 'turned' the screen has to refresh and this means that it flashes, on some of the videoes I watched before buying the kindle I was a bit distrubed by this but once I started using it, I can say that I don't notice it anymore.

The screen is not backlit so this does mean that you need to have some kind of lightsource to read by, but it also means that eye strain is kept to a minimum unlike lcd screens.

The Kindle can store roughly 3,500 ebooks on it which by any standard is a lot of books!

I will cover books, blogs and newspapers in another post.

The Kindle is advertised as having up to a month of battery life (when the wifi is switched off) so far I have only done one charge and still have half the battery life showing.

So far the kindle has renewed my interest in reading books again and with is new interest I have set myself a challenge.

The challenge is to read 100 books (either Physcial books (p-books) or e-books) in 2011. I have set up a page on the blog that will appear in the menu bar (above) to show what books are read and how I getting on.

6 comments:

  1. A Happy New Year to you.

    Glad to hear that your interest in reading books has been re-'kindle'd.

    Trevor

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  2. I bought my wife a Kindle in December and she loves it. She's a "Book" person, to whom the feel of a book is almost as important as the content, but she thinks the Kindle is great. She's currently downloaded about 70 free books from various sources, which means easier packing for our trip to Scotland this month!

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  3. Hi George. I've recently bought a Sony Reader and have really got back into reading again. Here's one for you. Now, I thought Arthur Conan-Doyle just wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories. In fact, it seems he wrote them only because they sold and he needed the money. He considered himself a writer of historic novels and I've just read "Micah Clarke" by him, downloaded free from Project Gutenberg and loved it. The action takes place in 1685 and covers the Monmouth Rebellion, Battle of Sedgemoor, etc. I'm noiw on to Desperate remedies by Thomas Hardy. Cheers.

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  4. Thanks for the tip, Geoff.

    I picked a couple of Conan-Doyle books called Brigadier Gerard, a French cavalry officer in the time of the Napoleonic wars from feedbooks.com not read them yet.

    There is certainly plenty of books out there :-)

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  5. Got Kindle for half a year already and I'm actually taking it everywhere with me. Life is so much easier if you're a book person.

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  6. I’ve been visiting your blog for a while now and I always find a gem in your new posts. Thanks for sharing.

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