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 …
