Evidently I Was Wrong. I Love My Kindle
When my husband has the perfect idea for a gift, he gets excited and can barely keep it secret. If the gift's for me, he pesters me until I guess what it is. Usually, the guessing lasts for a while, but this year, I figured out what I was getting for my March birthday by the middle of January: a Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading device.
He had a long list of reasons why a Kindle was perfect for me--less to print, less to tote around, fewer trips to the bookstore, and more room in our house for things besides books and book storage. I, on the other hand, was not nearly as certain. I had hoped for a tricycle, a new cell phone with a data plan, or a high-end firewall. An expensive e-reader wasn't on my list. I like how books smell, and I like to turn pages and take notes in the margins. And I don't like reading from computer screens. After mulling it over, I told my husband that I didn't think that I'd like the Kindle, but he convinced me to give it a try.
And he was right. I love my Kindle. I read more, especially more documents that I would have had to print before. Now, I e-mail those documents to my Kindle. (I may have saved an entire forest from destruction in the four months that I've had my Kindle.) I take more notes, too, because I can highlight and annotate text on the Kindle and transfer it directly to my computer--no re-writing or re-typing. The best part: with Kindlefeeder, I can send articles from my favorite blogs directly to my Kindle.
Turns out, I'm not the only person in the poverty law community who has a Kindle. Carol Garner at LawAccess New Mexico has a Kindle, too. She's hunted down some great resources for Kindle owners: Kindle Boards, The Kindle Warehouse, and MobileRead Forums. And John Mayer, the Executive Director of CALI, is expecting his Kindle DX any day. More broadly, the National Center for State Courts has suggested that e-readers could be great for judges, who need to read a lot and interact with their documents.
I love my Kindle2, too. I send journal articles to it that I might not normally have time to read. Then I can read them in spurts when I have a few minutes of downtime.
I love storing the major documents that I use as reference materials, such as the ABA's Standards for the Provision of Civil Legal Aid, the Civil Right to Counsel Resolution, Best Practices Guidelines for Legal Information Website Providers, Self-Represented Litigants Best Practices & more. These sit alongside mysteries, thrillers, etc.
I usually use MobiPocket to convert PDFs to Kindle/mobi format rather than sending them to Amazon to convert.
And I store recipes there, pop my Kindle in a gallon zip-lock baggie & use it in the kitchen (so I don't have to have all that paper laying around from recipes printed out & used only once!
BTW, Dorene Kuffer at New Mexico Legal Aid also has a Kindle!
I love my Kindle! I spend 2 hours a day on commuter rail so it's great to not have to carry around a book; I've almost completely given up ipod video on the way into work. I like manybooks.net as a source for free books and like the newspaper subscriptions (although a little pricier than print) because it's easier to read through the articles than flipping through a paper on a crowded train plus I can clip the articles. I still think one of the best features is no one can tell what I'm reading.
Gwen, Carol, and Cat - Thanks for your comments. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who loves her Kindle.
So, all four of us have raved about our Kindles, but are there things that irk you about it or that could be improved? For people who are considering purchasing a Kindle or other e-reader, do you have any words of wisdom to help them know whether an e-reader would be a good investment?
What irks me? no folder organization ability; can't share with friends when I find a great book; and it's hard to flip back 'a few pages' to find that line that you wanted to double check one more time (and you didn't think to note it at the time because you didn't realize you'd want to refer back later on!
Words of wisdom? an ereader might be for you: if you like to have "all" (or many) books with you all the time so that you can dig into something else on a moment's whim; if you want all those books in an exceedingly compact form factor so that you aren't lugging around a small house at any given time; if you are intrigued by the concept that you don't have to struggle with pages that won't stay open or you won't lose your place if you inadvertently let go of those pages or you get interrupted and have to leave the book without sticking that bookmark in; if you like the idea that you can tuck all those books you want to read someday into a medium sized purse or a small book bag and always have it handy when a few moments just appear unplanned out of nowhere. And the Kindle in particular might be for you if you have Sprint service access and want immediate gratification to get the next book in that series you have fallen in love with or a buddy mentions a book and you can just go look it up and either purchase it immediately or get a sample downloaded into your account to consider for later on; if you love the ability to get the print in a font size just right for you without having to purchase the 'large print edition' (which is then larger & heavier & more unwieldy than the regular print edition); if you like not letting the whole world know what you are reading.
An ereader might not be for you: if sharing with friends is very important; if you can't face the idea of not having those beautiful colorful covers in front of you; if you really really have to have that musty paper smell and don't mind the finite resources that are used to print those books; if you want the world to know that you've decided to pick up the latest escapist novel because work/life has gotten you down and you need a major distraction; or if you are not privileged or fortunate enough to be part of that segment of our society who doesn't have to think too much about getting these new gadgets that make life a little easier or more fun.
Some of the things I'm not so crazy about on the kindle is the DRM on Kindle books. You can't share with people who aren't on your Amazon.com account (you can however share between kindles registered to the same account); you can't use Kindle books on other e-readers or your computer. Like Carol, I'd love to have folder capability to organize my books and documents. PDF support is "experimental" on the Kindle 2 and you have to email the PDF docs to amazon to convert for you (or convert them yourself to unprotected MobiPocket using MobiPocket Creator (the new DX model PDF support is native and since it is a larger screen, probably wouldn't screw up the formatting of my PDF tech documents with code samples). They are still readable, but not as nice as the print (or online) versions of the books I use.
My best advice to someone thinking about buying one is to try to find someone who already has one and getting them to let you look at it. That's how I decided to buy mine. One of my fellow geeks had one at lunch one day and showed me how cool it is. And check out Amazon's kindle book store if you have specific books you want to read to know if they are even available.
Yeah - loving my KindleDX so far. The larger form factor is fantastic - amazing what a large effect a small change has on your reading habits. I really really want a touch screen though - keep on trying to treat it like an iTouch - wrong gestural language ;-)