In the mid-’90s, I moved to Denver to work for the Rocky Mountain News. I loved the paper, but when I first moved to town I gravitated toward its competitor and mortal enemy, the Denver Post. And it was entirely because of format. I’d always read broadsheet papers like the Post. The Rocky’s tab format just seemed odd and different.
But within weeks, my Denver Post was going unopened each morning as I went straight for the Rocky. I grew to love the tab format. I could put it on the breakfast table while I ate, and I didn’t have to wrestle with it as I turned pages.
As I play with Amazon’s new electronic reader, the Kindle, I wonder if the same type of thing is occurring. It arrived yesterday, and I plugged it in last night, expecting it to take an hour or two to configure. I’d already purchased a European e-reader called the Iliad that took almost an hour to get on my wireless network and generally left me underwhelmed.
But the Kindle was a breeze. I plugged it in, paged through a few screens of the manual and quickly downloaded the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, beginning free trial subscriptions to each. My home network was irrelevant. The Kindle connects directly with a cell network, and it did so flawlessly. After browsing through thousand of books on Amazon’s store, I decided to wait a bit before making a purchase. I wanted to see if I liked the Kindle.
At first, it was sort of like the experience with the Rocky Mountain News. A bit foreign. But I got over that quickly. At breakfast this morning in the Cincinnati airport, I cruised through the Wall Street Journal while I shoveled my Southwestern Omelette into my mouth. This was much easier than juggling a paper, even a tabloid. I’d already started reading the paper on the plane on the way up. (I looked in my mailbox at 5 a.m. to see if the local paper and my print version of the Journal were there yet. No way. I’m lucky when they arrive by 7:30 … but the Kindle version of the Journal had downloaded automatically overnight.)
I’ve seen a lot of the digital hipsters pan the Kindle over flaws ranging from the way it manages digital rights to the look and feel of the thing. There’s merit to some of these complaints, but overall, I really like it and think it’s a big step forward. Wireless and ease of use make it a device that has me geeked.
Here’s a running list of what I like and don’t like about it. I’ll be updating it as I use it more …
I like
— The size of it. It’s really no bigger than a folded up newspaper. After watching my boss stagger onto airplanes in an eruption of newsprint from the multiple papers he’s juggling in his computer bag, I’m thinking this is a big upgrade.
— The wireless functionality. I realize the Sprint network has gaps and that will pose problems for frequent travelers like me, but the wireless set up flawlessly and it was a breeze to download books and newspapers. I also like the way you navigate through newspapers with it.
— Being able to store books and newspapers on a single device. For travelers, this has major appeal.
— While it’s not designed for web surfing, the “experimental” web browser isn’t too bad overall. It’s really no worse than surfing the web on my Blackberry.
What I don’t like or want to see changed
— I keep accidentally hitting the previous page/next page buttons when I don’t intend to. There must be a way to stop that from happening or mitigate it somewhat.
— The keyboard. It’s OK, but I want it to adopt some of the features my Blackberry has (i.e. hold down a letter to capitalize it, etc.) It’s not something I want to type on at length, but it’s better than most of the keyboards I’ve seen on gadgets of this type. (The hunt-and-peck stylus approach totally sucks.)
— I’d like to be able to e-mail articles to myself in addition to clipping them and saving them within the Kindle.
— The cover it ships with completely, totally sucks. I’ve resorted to using it more as a case that I put on the Kindle when I tuck it back in my computer bag. Trying to use the Kindle with the cover on is pretty much a waste of time. I’m sure they’ll come out with a better one … for about a hundred bucks …
— The general look. Photos of it make it look much clunkier than it really is. It would be fun to turn Apple’s design team loose here, but the functionality of the device belies its looks.
— II’m wishing it had a quick, easy notebook you could call up to take notes in. It does allow you to annotate and make notes, but I was wantin something more akin to a file system that would let me collect notes in docs that I could later open in Word. This might even be in there, but I haven’t found it yet …
— The price. It will need to come down before there’s any chance of mass adoption. Free would be about the right price point (the way cell phones are “free” or low cost when you sign up for a plan; maybe it’s free with $200 worth of purchases from the Amazon store or a two-year subscription to a newspaper.)
— It’s yet another gadget. But so far, I’m justifying that by the fact that I wouldn’t have to carry books or newspapers around with me. Plus, reading is a substantially different experience from web surfing. I can surf and scan on web info on my Blackberry, but reading on it leaves a lot to be desired. The Kindle really is a much better experience for longer format reads, and I think I’ll be willing to carry a Blackberry and a Kindle for that reason. If the Kindle gets better at web surfing and e-mail, I might even revert back to a more basic phone and let the Kindle pull double duty …