: Kindle: Amazon's Wireless Reading Device

Rating: - Not good source for history
Most of the well known historians are not on kindle. If you are looking for books on history that are newer than four or five years old forget it. Kindle has a very limited selection and most of the books can be bought for less at a book sell. They show a lot of numbers but look before you purchase. 10 versions of Story of a slave girl. Several are Federalist and Ati-Federalist papers. They do a lot of duplication to get their numbers up. Look at what you can purchase before you get a kindle.

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Rating: - Annoying ad
Tired of seeing it everywhere on Amazon...sooo annoying... plus it is black and white!!! who cares?!!!

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Rating: - Kindle does make me read more!
I've had mine about 5 weeks. I've read 3 books when I have not read for pleasure in 4 or more years. Needless to say I like it a lot. Whispernet is cool and useful feature. As is mentioned by others some pictures are garbage. Is it the scan or the e-paper itself. I vote a little of both, you see all the books I downloaded to my Kindle I own hard copy of too.

If you have ever wished the type face of a paperback was bigger, you will love the Kindle. I have found that the 6 font sizes cover most of the documents and books I've read so far.

The screen can have some glare depending on the angle of your light, but it is easily adjustable due to it's size and format. I was amazed at how close the tactile experience of read a book fits with this device for me.

It is pricey, and I know when I bought mine that the new version was due out (5 months ago when I started my research, they had not announced the new model, but rumors were strong). Still I like it!

The only gripe I have is that the price of an electronic book is too high! I would buy books 'out of my normal scope', if they price was lower. They loose a sale because my risk of disappointment is higher vs. cost.

Amazon and publishers need to embrace this revenue stream in our current economic downturn or they will die a slow death...or is that how markets are supposed to work?

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Rating: - Lacks PDF support
This looks like a good product, but the way that I'd use it, it's not complete yet.

If it had color capability, that would be good, but that's not critical. See below.

The thing I'd use it for is to store and organize the hundreds of scientific papers that I work with (I'm a physicist.) They are all available as .pdf files, and not jpgs, gifs, or word documents. If this device could store and manage .pdf files, I'd get one in a heartbeat, even for $100 more. But the headaches of reformatting papers is a killer - I'm still worried about having to e-mail them to the device. If it could tap into the internet (like it does for wikipedia,) and get .pdfs, it would be a killer device, and almost every working scientist would have one within 2 years.

Regards,
Martin

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Rating: - An Indispensible Pleasure!
My reactions to the pictured product were underwhelming; I thought it looked klunky and suspected it to be very much "first generation." Now that I've owned it for six weeks I STILL rank it below the iPod league in cool and I can think of at least half a dozen ways to improve it ergonomically and operationally.

Do I regret the buy?

Not for a moment!

Its joys and benefits GREATLY outweigh any legitimate objections. The free wireless linking and the ability to hold a library in your hand and a world of reading in a few portable ounces has made my Kindle indispensible. My first reaction on turning it on was "too dim." I was used to the bright white background of a laptop and not prepared for the grey page of this reader. But within an hour I had discarded this objection: it's actually easy on the eyes and the sharpness of the "electronic ink" makes reading easy and effortless.

Improvements in design and software are needed and inevitable, but even if they arrive tomorrow I wouldn't regret for a moment my purchase; as it stands this is a delightful device. The main pro's:

* Easy downloading of both purchased material AND free reading from such sites as Gutenberg
* The choice of font sizes makes reading smooth and strain-free
* Automatic bookmarking keeps your place and allows you to "pick up" your reading choices from where you left off (a major plus for those of us who like to keep a roster of reading choices going)

The main con is, thankfully, one that will probably be addressed in a
software improvement:

* the current software does not allow you to sort your library into categories like folders. A mild irritation when you've loaded your Kindle as I have!

* You should also be aware that the current technology is NOT well suited for material that depends on pictures or graphs or diagrams. That tends to disqualify it for (say) an economics treatise. It also means that magazines and newspapers will be limited on the Kindle to their TEXT content. Actually, though, I find the device's easy navigation of such material (and the exclusion of ads!) a compensating benefit...