Kindle DX - My Review

I always love new toys, and this is maybe the best one I have bought since my first laptop. Not only will I mostly be able to stop adding physical books to my vast collection (much to my girlfriend's relief), but I will actually save money in the long term. At my current rate of buying books, the Kindle should pay for itself within three years.

So, my first disappointment was discovering that the USB port is TINY, and none of my various adapters could connect my memory stick to the damn thing. Then I discovered (because God forbid I should read the instructions) that my Kindle has an email address so that I can email PDFs from my computer to my Kindle - problem solved.

So the next order of business was to buy a few books. The number of books available as Kindle editions is disturbingly small when one's interest is more academic, such as psychology, neuroscience, and other less mainstream material. Some obscure things are available, however, so my guess is that this has more to do with publishers than with Amazon. I would like to have been able to call up my Wish List, but I couldn't figure out how to do that - maybe I can't, or maybe I'll figure it out later.

Reading a book is easy, enjoyable, and has only one annoyance - a slow page turn rate, but I am adapting to that. Images are black and white only, with no hope of color anytime in the near future from what I hear. But the images are crisp and can be enlarged.

The little keyboard is surprisingly easy to use. Navigating the unit itself is easy once you get the hang of it. It was pretty easy to get the feel of entering titles in the search bar (I am NOT a texter, so my thumbs are fat and slow).

Overall, I am fairly pleased for now. This is a pretty cool piece of equipment for anyone who is SERIOUSLY into books - not sure a casual reader would appreciate it as much.

Tags: books, Kindle, technology, Amazon