The Experience of Kindle

In the interests of furthering a better understanding of Kindle's consumers, I wrote up a review for Amazon's latest generation Kindle and emailed it to their feedback address. Here it is, in its entirety:

As I sit back in front of my computer with a cup of tea readily at hand, I think it is high time to write what I think of Amazon's Third Generation Kindle. To start with, I must say that this is the first Kindle I have ever owned, the first e-reader for that matter. Reflecting on the fact that it was decently-sized investment and meant to serve a unique and long purpose, I think Amazon deserves from me some sort of opinion concerning the device's good and bad qualities, its advantages and disadvantages.

Let me start with the pros. The Kindle e-reader is uniquely designed with a variety of supporting features to aid the process of reading. The most important of these features are its size and weight, the screen, and navigation of the reading material. The weight and size of this machine have already been extensively investigated and praised. Indeed, there is not much that needs to be ascertained to come to an opinion on this subject. It is enough to see that the Kindle is so light-weight that one can generally hold it in one hand with ease, although something needs to be said about the stress that may be occasioned on this hand after a good half hour's use and in a state of hospitalization. (But in such circumstances, even the lightest objects became strangely heavy.) The size of the Kindle is a good one indeed, granting maximum possible screen size (comparable to the size of a pocket dictionary's page) in an object that can be carried in one hand without awkwardness and easily slipped into a small book bag.

The electronic-ink screen of the Kindle is its most magnificent feature. It looks like a very smooth paper and ink picture, feels like a slightly spongy plastic surface, and is remarkably easy on the eyes. I have perceived no additional discomfort in reading from it above that felt from reading real paper. The exception to this rule has been the discomfort arising from the glare that inevitably pops up. The reflective screen is remarkably like real paper. You can't see it in the dark. But, mostly due to its very smooth surface, it reflects light much better than the page of a book. Nonetheless, it is a masterful screen. Indeed, upon first taking it up in my hands, I was a minute trying to pull the plastic cover off that I perceived to be covering the screen when, wonder of wonders, I realized this plastic cover was the screen itself! It had words printed on it and the machine was not powered. The screen's ability to sustain a picture while the device is turned off has often left me wonder since.

The third most remarkable feature of the Kindle is the ease with which one can navigate through a book or drop it and pick up a different book. The page turns are effortless and nearly as fast as one can reasonably turn the pages of a real book. Keeping one's place when a book is exited (as if you had had your fingers between the pages all the time) is a very useful feature. A progress bar at the bottom of the page quickly tells you how far you are through a book (and by extension, its plot). Indeed, I get the feeling that nearly everything possible has been done to make the reading process as natural and effortless as possible. As an example, I, who am no fast reader, whipped through three novels of Jane Austen's in less than three weeks time, a somewhat remarkable feat for myself. I will not deny the fact that a reader can get lost in a book while reading on a Kindle.

Given this praise, our friends at Amazon who design the Kindle must wonder whether I intend to raise any criticism. Let me quell those doubts by saying that I do. Though the Kindle's assets (the things that have been done right in the Kindle) are integral to its construction and not minute affairs, its drawbacks, unfortunately (for our friends at Amazon), are small things and easily corrected. The biggest drawback of the Kindle is the clumsiness of its software and input interface and the formatting of its books.

Given that this device was largely designed for reading books, this first issue I will raise may not seem particularly important. But, it is annoying nonetheless. It must be said that the five-way controller is kind of a drag. I guess it is competent for moving from one book to another or perusing one's library, but it is absolutely deficient when it comes to web-browsing and even tedious to use when one is indexing the table of contents of a rather large work, say the Bible, for example. Well, it is possible, this drawback is not so easy to correct, but it was worth mentioning anyway.

Something that would be very easy to correct is the formatting of the e-books. Please... how hard can it be to add page numbers? How distracting would be a small number appearing alongside the column of text. Think how such a slight change would aid the expansion of its use. Then, students could follow along in class with their Kindle edition book while their instructor guides them with the printed copy. Citations could be made. The Kindle could then be used for some manner of informal research. I have heard this complaint raised by another party in a product review, and frankly, I agree. It shouldn't be that hard to fix.

In addition, unless you fiddle with the text size, you are bound to find prematurely terminated lines sprinkled throughout the book you are reading. Not only is this distracting, it is just plain unpleasant (and probably not very hard to fix). I have also observed a number of misprints in several of the free Kindle editions of the classics. Perhaps, these are the natural result of freely available e-books. Or, maybe they are just signs of sloppy conversions of the text to electronic format. Whatever the case, they disturb me because I like to be confident that I am reading an immaculate copy of a text, especially when I am reading a digital copy.

Well, I am done criticizing the Kindle for now. Let me just conclude by saying that the Kindle is just about everything I wanted it to be. It has even surpassed my expectations with regard to ease of reading. I have read mostly novels on it, though. So, while it is uniquely designed to enable this endeavor, it may not be suited for many other activities. Whatever the case, Amazon has created a nice little device that I foresee will be well used in the next few years. In addition, books being even cheaper when read through this medium, my intake of literature is already growing. Thank you, Amazon. Not a bad job. Not a bad job at all!