I got my Kindle Wi-Fi 5.5 months back, and I must say this is one of the best investments in technology I have ever made!
I had mentioned in an earlier
post that I am not so much of a book reader; but then I am somewhat of a gadget fan. Honestly, I was also getting a bit bored of my Nokia C7 and I was looking for a different kind of e-experience. More so because I had to put up with a daily mockery of my ‘smart’phone running the dying Symbian^3 O/S. Ergo, the Kindle purchase.
This blogpost is purely about my personal experience with the device and what I like/don’t like about it.
When you try looking up on the advantages of a Kindle over a physical book, most online forums will talk about free internet access, downloading stuff on the go, storage capacity, browser, email, music etc. In fact everything else except the actual experience of reading itself. Really strange!
Why would I want my book to do any of those things at all? The whole point of reading a book requires you to stay away from such unwanted distractions after all. For this very reason, I dont fancy the idea of using tablets for reading a book (Of course the strain of reading on LCD screens is another aspect to it)
So here is why I think Kindle is a better experience than a physical book:
1: A kindle, owing to its compact size is easier to handle especially when you just want to curl up on the bed and read. Really thick books make it even more cumbersome to hold in the hand in their hard copy forms and can get quite heavy too. On the other hand, I can just hold my kindle single handedly and navigate through pages. I can curl up on the bed and read, I can even eat my food while I read without a hassle.
2: Bookmarks – If my hand slips off a book, the book will close off and I will have a tough time figuring out where I stopped. No such worries here. The Kindle will start off at the very page you stopped reading. It will also automatically go into sleep mode, saving the last page read if you are idle. This also completely obviates the need for bookmarks.
3: Print – Some books have really small print, and some have faded print, especially old editions. In a Kindle, you can adjust the font size to your convenience, thereby minimizing any kind of strain to the eye.
4: Dictionary – The in-built dictionary is a huge plus for a Kindle. I don’t have to put in the effort of getting off my bed searching for a dictionary if I am stuck at a word. I dont even want to get started on the effort required to run through the pages to search the word in the dictionary!
5: Highlights – Lovely feature. You can highlight text at the click of a button and all the text you highlight is stored at a single place, so whenever you wan’t to check back you just need to “View all highlights”. On the other hand, imagine running through each and every page of a hard book searching for text you highlighted!
(Not many people would highlight text on books though, I too do it very rarely)
6: Orientation – The kindle is well suited for both left-handed and right-handed people. You can hold the device in any direction you want, portrait or landscape mode as well and simply turn the text orientation accordingly! This is also one of the features that I extensively use.
7: Audio – The Kindle has an audio option, so when you are busy doing other things you can simply set up the audio mode and the Kindle will read out the story to you!
While everything seems perfect with the Kindle, there is just one issue i face, which is not really the Kindle’s fault. The problem is when you convert pdf files to mobi format, a lot of times the text is converted incorrectly (usually just a letter or two is misplaced once in 4-5 pages). Sometimes, unwanted text comes inbetween the pages which makes the page aesthetically unappealing. Of course, if I actually purchase ebooks from Amazon, this issue will never come 🙂
And one more thing, you cannot play games like “Book cricket” with the Kindle, a game where you randomly open up a page in the book and the page number determines your “runs” 🙂
So this concludes my blogpost. Oh yeah, currently I am reading “Guns, Germs and Steel” on the Kindle and I would highly recommend this book to all.
Juggling my thoughts... 