I have been a avid ebook reader since the days of my Palm IIIxe. While the user experience was lacking on a lot of levels I was hooked on the concept. With the Palm TX ebook reading became much better. When the iPod touch came out I was a bit disappointed in the lack of a good ebook reader. By this time I had a few gigs of ebooks. Some of which I could no longer access because of DRM and special readers required.

Then the Kindle 2 Came out

I received my Kindle 2 As a gift from my daughters as a birthday gift. I had not asked for one or even even mentioned that I was thinking about getting one. At that time I wasn't sure that I needed to spend that kind of money for a dedicated reader. But I was very intrigued with it. I had not been that impressed with the Kindle 1. The second version looked very good and had been getting very good reviews from everywhere.

My take on the Kindle.

Setting up my Amazon account was a snap. After a cursory read of the documentation I was able to download a few books and get to reading. Extra points for ease of setup.

The Kindle feels good in my hand. It feels solid. No creaks if you hold on tight. It is a bit heavy than you think it would be. But lighter and easier to hold than a lot of hard bound books.

The button layout is good and didn't take that long for me to master. To use a button requires you to press toward its inside edge and the amount of pressure needed means that you won't inadvertently scroll the page or bring up a menu. The navigation maybe a bit dated and not be the newest or slickest but it does what it needs to do.

Reading a book on the Kindle is a mixed bag of nuts. Some good, some not so good and some just bad features. Since the e-Ink page has no back light the ambient light source is going to be important with your enjoyment of the Kindle. Outside on a sunny day, the screen is fantastic. Seems like the stronger and brighter the light, the better the screen looks. As ambient light gets dimmer it gets harder to read. I have had to fit out my reading areas with some gooseneck reading lamps with some incandescent light bulbs that I had stashed out in the garage. This is one area that the Kindle is a bit weak.

The up side to e-Ink? Battery life is really really good. You can go days with out charging the Kindle.

The Kindle 2 does not have a scroll feature. You use the next page and previous page buttons to "turn the pages". There is a noticeable lag between pages turns. At first I was very aware of it but with time I don't notice it that much.

Downloading books on the go.

Buying and installing a book on the Kindle is almost too easy. Beware! You can spend a lot of money with out realizing it. All kidding aside, Amazon did a very good job setting up the Kindle store. And I'm still amazed at how fast a book can be delivered to your Kindle over WhisperNet. So far I have not hit any dead spots in the service, though I haven't hit the boonies with it yet. On a side note. Check out the free books Amazon has available.

The ability to annotate a section of a book or a document can be a godsend. You can add notes, though it takes some practice to do so. It is not the most intuitive way but gain it does work.

The Kindles keyboard I think is its weakest point. OK I'll come out and say I hate it. The keys are too small and the location make it hard for me to comfortably type. Since I don't use the keyboard that much I probably will not get to a point of being able to touch type on it. Adding the fact that the printing on the keys is terribly small and printed a medium grey, so no contrast, I'm finding a whole new meaning to hunt and peck typing. Thankfully I don't have to use the keyboard that much though if I liked typing on it I would most likely use it more.

Experimental Goodies
The Kindle has a few extras. A bare bones web browser which takes me back to the days of browsing the web on a telnet session to a Lynx browser. Just text, which if you happen upon a website that is formatted for that, can be quite useful. I could see teachers putting up class notes and assignments on webpages developed for the Kindle.

There is a MP3 player but it is very basic. I have an iPod for this. Though in a pinch it is available.

Text to Speech Yep you can listen to you Kindle read to you. You do get to choose between a male or a female voice and the quality is... well I'll be kind and say that I don't understand why audio book vendors where all that worried. I have heard that this feature was disabled at thier request but it still works on my Kindle.

Over all I enjoy my Kindle. It is a work in progress. I do think we will see improvements with later versions. Would I recommend the Kindle to others? For the person that just wants to have a book reader and doesn't need much more than that, Yes. The ability to download books while almost anywhere with out a computer, it fills that need very well.