Tag Archives: eBooks

If you missed part one of the Kindle review, it is here.

So how do things like photos, drawings etc get handled on the Kindle’s greyscale screen? On the whole, fine – nothing to write home about but it’s not really about the visuals, it’s about the words primarily. Speaking of which, much has been made of the ability to view pdf and Word documents and other file formats too. How well do they get handled? Don’t expect anything complex to read easily; it won’t. But if they’re fairly straightforward, no problems. I’ve used it in a public-speaking situation for handling my notes and it was fine.

You can add in bookmarks, highlight passages and even add your own notes. Those are all then synced to your Amazon page and can be viewed there (and cut & pasted to elsewhere). Amazon also keep track of what passages others have highlighted and you can see those highlights via their Kindle site. I really rate being able to highlight and add notes and have used it a lot with the PC app.

However – and this is a serious, serious wish on my list, Amazon – you ought to partner with a service like Evernote to download content I want, and have collected, onto my Kindle. Come on, do it. Show the world you care. Evernote is your perfect partner. You just need to get it sorted. Note to Evernote: make it free for premium users (like me). What a great differentiating point that would make. ‘Nuff said.

Similar (but remembering that ‘similar is not the same as same’) is Instapaper which can be sent to Kindle (via your freely-given Kindle email address). I’ve just started trying to use it, hoping that It works a treat. I’ve never been into using it before – I usually just put stuff in Evernote to read later – but if it works well it might begin to change my habits somewhat.

Making collections is quite simple – a button press or two, enter the title and away you go, adding whatever items you’d like into that folder. I can see that over time, with the ability to add hundreds and thousands of items, collections are going to be crucial, unless you decide to leave everything you aren’t currently reading in the archive section. But that’s less easily navigated.

Battery life is promised as being up to a month with wi-fi turned off and up to 3 weeks if it’s turned on. How many page turns does that equate to (because it’s page turns and other actions like setting bookmarks, highlighting and making notes, that use the power)? I honestly can’t say, although I wish Amazon would – it’s the only type of statistic that makes any sense. So far I’ve had a few issues with my Kindle – it went into an endless re-boot cycle a few days after arriving and that whacked the battery well and proper. After a full re-charge it’s gone down by 50% in just over a week, with moderate wi-fi usage. (I know, on a site like this, to be talking about 50% after a week feels really odd, but they promised me a miracle when they said ‘up to a month’ and I’m a wee bit disappointed.)

Because of that re-boot frenzy and some freezing issues, I’ve spoken to the Kindle supportpeople a couple of times. They’ve been helpful and I’ve no complaints there. If the issues recur they’ve said a swap-out will be possible. I was kinda hoping they’d say ‘Because of all these horrible problems that have so disturbed you, we’d like to upgrade you to a 3G’ but alas no such generosity. The word online is that a software update should fix the freezing issue – it seemed to happen when the Kindle was given more than one action to perform within a few seconds.

Got some audio books you want to listen to? The Kindle handles Audible in its own way but if your audio books are in mp3 format then just add them from your PC and play as ‘music’. You can’t do anything fancy like add a bookmark but the device will remember where you left off listening, so no worries there. It isn’t sophisticated in terms of navigating to particular mp3 files but you’ll get by – it’s not an mp3 player after all. Useful for audio books, nice to have for background music while you read, but that’s about it – and that’s not a criticism.

Do I wish I’d got a 3G version, instead of the Wi-fi only? At £40 more, probably not; it’s not good value, for me. But would I like to have it? Of course! Not that it would be overly useful, but for those occasions when it would be useful out & about to have the newspapers or blogs I subscribe to delivered, excellent. Except I don’t subscribe to any and probably never will. So, 3G: bring it on, but make it a tenner.

Pricing of books isn’t yet what it ought to be, nor indeed what it was. It has measurably regressed since the advent of the iPad, with books now generally more expensive than they were. Yes, they’re mostly cheaper as Kindle versions but often only a few pence cheaper over paperbacks. This is not how the future was meant to look. Come on Amazon, part of my justification to ’er indoors for buying this thing was that 20 or so books later it will have paid for itself. Well, not at this rate it won’t. If she goes ballistic, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer. And my plastic surgeon.

The Experimental section includes a rudimentary browser. No great shakes – if you’re desperate, it’s there. But I doubt you’ll live such a sad life as that. Maybe those with the 3G version will find they use it out & about but not 3G-less me.

Accessories – I bought a nice Amazon leather case to go with it. which offers great protection and is in the Moleskine style (albeit a burnt-orange colour in this case). But it adds some (non-literary) weight to the reading experience and I think I’m beginning to prefer using the Kindle without it. It may be sent back and a more minimal pouch take its place.

Conclusion- These are still early days for the Kindle, for the majority of users. It has some occasional niggles and every user will build up their own wish-list of additional features (touch screen for me is the very top of that list, along with Evernote integration). But, as it stands, it isn’t just competent, it’s both impressive and immersive. If they can drop it down one more price point (go on, Amazon, try £89, or maybe even £79) it will be as popular as a Stieg Larsson novel. Or even Tony Blair’s memoirs. Now there’s a thought.

Richard.

I won’t go through all the details about size, weight, button configuration etc – you can probably get those elsewhere. All I will say is: it’s small, it’s light, but most of all: the screen. Yes, it’s not touchscreen (and we’ll come back to that) but my-oh-my it works.This wasn’t my first sight of e-ink; I have, now and then, seen and handled a Sony Reader, but up close and in daily use this is just magnificent. However, it does begin to struggle in less than optimum lighting conditions. If you like to sit in the lounge with just a few tablelamps on you’ll need to sit next to them to use it – there’s no backlight with e-ink).

I’m no stranger to ebooks – I’ve read them for years, on a whole variety of devices (from Palm to Pocket PC to iPod Touch to the Kindle app for PC). But this takes that reading experience to a whole new level – and it’s not just about the screen. There’s something properly immersive about the experience, maybe because of proximity to the screen (reading on a PC monitor or laptop there is always more stuff in your peripheral vision).

But I also wonder if something is happening at a subliminal level, too. Because it feels like a book, it taps into a well of memory that has attuned the mind to absorb information or engage with a narrative, in way that reading on a monitor cannot offer. I say that as someone who has read a number of books on the Kindle app for PC. This is different. I ‘get into’ what I’m reading far, far easier on the Kindle than on other devices.

Is it easy to navigate? No, not easy, not really. You do get used to it, of course, but experience of touchscreens on mobiles etc has made it far harder to reach a level of intuitive comfort. It feelsdated. A touchscreen with just a few buttons (forward/back/home/power) would be great.

What sort of books might I read on the Kindle? Well, what sort have I read so far? Novels? Yes. Short stories? Yes. Technical books (in my case, theology)? Yes. Biography? Yep, that too. Cookbooks? No, but there’s a thought – I must try a sample chapter. Hang on…..

Which brings us neatly onto a great Kindle feature (& maybe of other ereaders, too). I often used to wander in bookshops, flicking a few pages here and there, getting a feel for a book. If I couldn’t wander, I’d wonder whether a book was worth spending money on – so I’d read reviews and often buy the book. But I’d also often be disappointed. Now I just ask for a sample chapter. Sometimes you just get the foreword or introduction but more often than not you can at least read a chapter or part-chapter and get a real feel for the writer’s style, the level of the content and, in the case of a novel, whether the emerging storyline grabs you or not.

The sample of Guitar For Dummies worked suprisingly well, although I won’t buy it because it’s meant to come with a CD which I doubt even Amazon can deliver via wi-fi. Peanuts: The Art of Charles Schultz, on the other hand, was just a complete waste of transcribing to Kindle – utterly unreadable. If you buy that one, you’ll need to ask for your money back pronto, Tonto. After challenging myself earlier, I downloaded a cookbook sample (something by Sophie Dahl). No recipes in the sample (maybe it’s not a cookbook after all). So I tried a more trusted source - Yorkshire’s own James Martin.

First up, ‘Spring onion potato cakes with fried duck eggs’ (yep, plenty of duck eggs in our fridge, I’m sure in your. too). List of ingredients on one page, instructions over 2 pages, then a photos of said cakes on another page. Way to go, Jimmy. Of course, not all the ingredient lists will fit on one page but it works very well. But if you’re going to use your Kindle in the kitchen (and adjusting the font is a real boon if you do) remember to keep it inside something protective. There, that’s my good deed for the day done. Second up, ‘Cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup with bacon’ – good grief, it’s a long walk to Jerusalem just to get some cream.

But I digress. I trialled a few newspapers and magazines but, somehow, didn’t really enjoy reading them in this format. Now, I love reading The Guardian app on my iPod Touch but this just feels different, which may be down to the awkward navigation (no touch, you see). It may be that the loss of a layout that is easy to scan in search of items to read is the killer (something that is retained when you use the online newspaper sites). With papers and magazines, you want to be able to flick about easily, from one thing to another, until something grabs your attention enough to stop and read it. That can’t happen on the Kindle; it’s too straightlaced.

But whatever the other reasons for not suscribing to newspapers and magazines, it’s certainly the price too. I just wouldn’t pay £9.99/month for The Daily Telegraph in this format, although, to be honest, I wouldn’t pay that for it in paper either. You can also subscribe to a range of blogs, at a price. Believe me, guys, it ain’t gonna work. There is no way us Kindle users are ever going to give you good money for stuff that was always intended to be read online and for free. This one has got to be a joke.

Then there’s the whole stack of free books that are available too – no need to bother with a sample, just download the full-length work and if you don’t like it you can just as easily delete it, all at no cost. Often the free books aren’t all that well formatted, but they’re ok. Truth be told, some publishers of books that aren’t free also have some formatting lessons to learn, but it’s early days yet. I guess part of their challenge is the varying screen sizes available and the ability to adjust the font – for example, a diagram or table that fits nicely on a single page on the Kindle might not do so if a person needs to make the font bigger, or if it’s being read on the PC app, or on the Kindle DX (the bigger brother).

Tomorrow, we’ll look at other things you can load onto the Kindle, as well as reflect on battery life and other issues. For now, it’s more than holding its own…

Richard