Friday, April 10, 2009

20% faster page turns

That's part of the ad for the new Kindle. I'm doing a little Kindle research because I've got a lot of travel ahead of me. I am trying to imagine not hauling the usual books and other reading material.

I'm not exactly an early adopter. I love my Ipod but stick to a pretty basic phone. I don't text, except the occasional happy birthday to a teenager. I never watch TV in real time, relying on my dvr to record my shows and keep me up to date. I drive a 6 year-old car and have no desire to trade it in.

And I love books. I like holding them, smelling them, feeling the heft. Turning the page in anticipation of finding out what comes next. Throwing it across the room in a fit of pique feels good, too. I like shopping for books. I get a thrill of discovery wandering the aisles of a book store that I can never get paging through lists of titles on the Internet.

Still, the Kindle promises me much more than a reading experience. I can store hundreds of books. I can change the font size, even the font color. I can look up the meanings of words rather than guessing as I usually do. Annotating the text electronically might be fun. And there's that faster page turn. 20% faster.

Everyone I know that has one seems to like it? How about you?

For me, I think I'm going to hold off for a while. The Kindle is here to stay. Perhaps I'll wait for the Kindle 3 before I invest.

4 comments:

Camille Minichino said...

I'm waiting, too, Terri. Mostly for some kind of universal charger. I'm already traveling with different chargers for my cell phone, my head set, my laptop, my camera, and my iPod!

Joanna Campbell Slan said...

Count me as a hold-off. I want a reader that won't lock me into one bookseller--and I agree with Camille. I'm thinking there should be universal devices, like the music industry wisely did with MIDI (a universal music application/appliance).

Terri Thayer said...

Good points! I knew you would have thought of things I hadn't.

I hear you with the chargers. That's a new thing to pack isn't it? And my camera always chooses the worst times to run out of battery.

Betty Hechtman said...

I have a Kindle. My husband bought it for me. I downloaded one book, which I started to read, but haven't finished -- it's been so long, I'm going to have to start over from the beginning. What I don't like is that you can't get a sense where you are in a book. They don't use page numbers because of all the font changing and all, I guess it doesn't work. So, they put in some other numbers which might help you find your placem, but not let you know if you're 50 pages in or 100.

On the other hand, it is nice to be able to carry a number of books without the weight.