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The Amazon Kindle: igniting the desire to read

A few months ago I started contemplating whether to buy a tablet PC or not. The problem wasn’t really that I was wondering whether I wanted one or not, but rather if I should spend so much money on something I actually already had, in a smaller version, in the form of my Galaxy S phone. Being a sucker for gadgets the longing for my phone’s big brother never quite subsided and when I picked up this month’s issue of Popular Mechanics featuring a huge gadget section and reviewing their top 10 tablets, I started wondering whether I shouldn’t just take the plunge and make a nice big dent into my savings account to buy one of these bad boys. But then, for a moment I started wondering what I would really use it for, and although it is a nice toy, between my cellphone, netbook and PC I’m pretty much okay in terms of computer needs. Yes, a tablet would be very cool and handy, but maybe I can hope to find one in my Christmas stocking this year.

I turned the page and there was a nice bite-sized review of the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. For some time I have been thinking of buying an e-reader as well, since I needed something to get me reading again, but figured getting a tablet would serve that purpose as well. I was wrong. As I read the review of the Kindle I started realizing how different the e-reader really is form the tablet PC and that the Kindle is so much more optimized for reading than the tablets. Of course you can’t play any games on it, or do word processing, or install any applications, but for the $139 you pay (on Amazon.com for the 6″ WiFi and 3G Kindle, shipping and import tax excluded; I paid $189 in total) it is a pretty sweet deal. And since eBooks are much cheaper than the hard copies (and sometimes even free when it comes to classics) you save over and over again. Not that I am abandoning hard copies quite yet… There’s nothing like the smell of a new book and few things beat the feeling of picking up a second-hand out-of-print book at a bargain price.

After reading the review and speaking to a friend was just as keen on buying a Kindle, it was not long before I ordered mine. And within five days I had my new toy! And what an awesome little gadget it is. The size of the 6″ Kindle 3 is perfect for reading. The whole device is about the length and width of a paperback, only much slimmer which makes it easy to handle for an effortless read. There is no page turning, no struggle to keep the book from slamming shut when holding it with only one had and no worries of folding or curling pages by accident. And the screen has minimal glare and with the E-Ink Pearl display technology it reads as if you were reading from a actual book – no strain on the eyes (like in the case of a backlit LCD) and a nice crisp contrast. Further you have the Amazon Kindle Store at your fingertips as well as access to the internet with the built in WiFi (and 3G if you buy the WiFi and 3G version – which I would by the way totally recommend) for free! (Amazon has some or other deal with Vodafone SA to provide dedicated internet access to all Kindle devices.) The web browser is still in its experimental phase, and of course in greyscale, but it works quite well – it pretty much reminds me of browsing the web on my old phone which ran on Symbian OS 9.1. The navigation is pretty intuitive and it is easy to find your way around the Kindle to sort your documents and eBooks and to adjust the settings (although I had to look a few things up).

Cool stuff about the Kindle is that you can load all your documents onto it from your PC (sometimes you need to convert some files for [optimized] reading on the Kindle) and save the eBooks from your Kindle on your PC as well. This makes it easy to read the books on Kindle for PC if you had it installed and you can even print these books after converting them to PDF. And just like you can browse books in a book store, you can also browse books on the Amazon Kindle Store by reading reviews, and even downloading free samples of a few pages to flip through the book and decide whether you would like to buy it. The Kindle also comes with speakers and an audio jack for listening to audio books (which are also available for purchase on Amazon). Further you can do all sorts of nifty stuff such as change the view to landscape, change font sizes, make notes, search for phrases within a book or document, bookmark stuff, choose the typeface, line spacing and words per line. And there is ample storage space to store thousands of books and documents!

Being able to carry all your books in one compact device makes it so much easier to fit all your books in a handbag and carry them around wherever you go. It is perfect for when you have to wait in a long queue and get bored of playing Angry Birds on your phone or checking out the people next to you – simply take out (any!) of your books and catch up on some reading. And it is unlikely that you run out of power as the battery lasts for weeks (especially with the wireless turned off), making the Kindle a perfect holiday companion.

In May this year Amazon announced that digital book sales have now exceeded sales of all print titles. This includes both hardcovers and paperbacks combined. As of the first of April, for every 100 print books that Amazon has sold (of any kind, excluding free titles) the company sold 105 Kindle books (http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/19/kindle-books-officially-take-over-print-sales-at-amazon-pulp-st/). The Kindle, or rather e-readers, seem to offer the solution to the growing problems of people’s increasing lack of interest in reading, the plummeting of literacy levels and the drop in book sales. In terms of latter it poses a larger problem of illegal copying and pirating of books, since it is much easier to simply copy the electronic copy of a book and spreading it through file sharing websites than to physically photocopy and distributing it. This could of course also affect book sales for the worse, although one could argue that the lower prices of these digital books will possibly encourage book lovers to rather buy the eBooks to help the industry grow. That aside, especially for the younger generation who are more technology oriented and not interested in reading a hard copy of anything anymore, e-readers offer the perfect combination of being a gadget and a good read, urging people to start reading again. The name Kindle after all suggests to ignite something, in this case, a desire to read , and to keep this passion for reading burning.

To me the birth of the Kindle was as if a tablet and my favourite book store had a very intelligent (but maybe slightly less good looking) lovechild and asked me to adopt him. And I can’t believe I had waited so long to do it. Because of all the academic reading I have to do, reading started to feel like more of a chore than a pleasure, but since I opened my Kindle package a week ago my desire for reading sparked again and the flame is burning quite ferociously.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wi-Fi-Globally-Display-Technology/dp/B004YL4NOU/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313163173&sr=1-2