Fit for Kindling

Hey,

So the last three books I've read have all been read on my new Kindle 3. My first e-book reader. I still long for an e-book system that works like Netflix (I pay a set subscription and then small $1-$2 fees for books that get downloaded to my sealed reader that wipes them when I'm done), but this is probably what I'm stuck with for now.

Anyway, the Kindle. There was a bit of a burn-in period as I figured out how to hold it. I kept wanting to put my fingers down on the keyboard or on the page-turn buttons. I think I've got it figured out though. Plowing through the 900 pages of The Crippled God was pretty comfortable for me.

I got the Kindle with free 3G on it. I figure if Amazon is going to pay for the data charges, there's no reason not to have it. And, in fact, it paid off rather quickly. One night, shortly after I bought it, I was at home when the power went out. The house was dark and there was pretty much nothing I could do that didn't require electricity or more than a flashlight to see by. I pulled out my Kindle -- I'd also picked up a case with a built-in LED light powered off of the Kindle's battery. So I opened it up, flipped on the light and said, "huh, there's no wireless in the house, but there's still cell phone coverage. Guess I'll buy me a book to read." And that's what I did and it all worked like a charm.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Kindle. Most books I buy once and never read again. With e-books I can buy them for (slightly) cheaper and they don't take up shelf space. The reading experience is a bit different than with a physical book, but the only real downside is that I will sometimes flip back/look at the previous page to re-orient myself in the story. That's a bit more cumbersome with the Kindle, but I suppose it's also forcing me to read through the whole page rather than skim out near the bottom.

There are two, more serious, technical features I'd like to see though:

1.) So the Kindle has two paddle buttons on both the left and right side of the device. The larger, lower one clicks the page forward one page, the smaller, upper one clicks the page back one page. I'd like to be able to customize this so that (for me) the buttons on the left are reversed. The lower, larger button clicks you back and the smaller one clicks you forward. I want those large buttons to be "back" and "next" not "next" and "next".

2.) Page numbers. Kindle has a software update that includes them, but it's a clunky implementation and the books have to be encoded with page info so it isn't in all current e-books. What is most readily available is a "percentage of book read" indicator which really sucks for me. Here's the deal: I try to read about 100 pages in a sitting. Now, if I'm reading a 400 page book, that's 4 sittings and I get through 25% of the book in a go. If I'm reading a 1000 page book, that's 10 sittings and I get through 10% of the book in a go. Further, in the 400-page book, it takes 4 pages to go 1% and in the 1000 page book it takes 10.

But none of those percentages really matter to me. In a physical book, I just look at the page number and after I go through 100 pages, I feel like I can quit reading if I want because I've made good progress. And note that here, 1 page equals 1% of the reading I'm doing that day, and the page numbers reinforce that sense of progress.

With the Kindle, I have to look up the page count for the book and then estimate what percentage roughly equals 100 pages and then I'm clicking through page after page after page and that stupid "percent read" counter never budges a tick. It seems like it takes *forever* to get through "100 pages". Certainly that was the case for Crippled God where it took 9 screens of text to move the percentage read a tick.

Still, all of this is minor nitpicking. I'm enjoying the process of reading stuff on the Kindle and I think I'm going to be doing a fair amount of reading on it in the future.

later
Tom

Fit for Kindling

Hey,

So the last three books I've read have all been read on my new Kindle 3. My first e-book reader. I still long for an e-book system that works like Netflix (I pay a set subscription and then small $1-$2 fees for books that get downloaded to my sealed reader that wipes them when I'm done), but this is probably what I'm stuck with for now.

Anyway, the Kindle. There was a bit of a burn-in period as I figured out how to hold it. I kept wanting to put my fingers down on the keyboard or on the page-turn buttons. I think I've got it figured out though. Plowing through the 900 pages of The Crippled God was pretty comfortable for me.

I got the Kindle with free 3G on it. I figure if Amazon is going to pay for the data charges, there's no reason not to have it. And, in fact, it paid off rather quickly. One night, shortly after I bought it, I was at home when the power went out. The house was dark and there was pretty much nothing I could do that didn't require electricity or more than a flashlight to see by. I pulled out my Kindle -- I'd also picked up a case with a built-in LED light powered off of the Kindle's battery. So I opened it up, flipped on the light and said, "huh, there's no wireless in the house, but there's still cell phone coverage. Guess I'll buy me a book to read." And that's what I did and it all worked like a charm.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Kindle. Most books I buy once and never read again. With e-books I can buy them for (slightly) cheaper and they don't take up shelf space. The reading experience is a bit different than with a physical book, but the only real downside is that I will sometimes flip back/look at the previous page to re-orient myself in the story. That's a bit more cumbersome with the Kindle, but I suppose it's also forcing me to read through the whole page rather than skim out near the bottom.

There are two, more serious, technical features I'd like to see though:

1.) So the Kindle has two paddle buttons on both the left and right side of the device. The larger, lower one clicks the page forward one page, the smaller, upper one clicks the page back one page. I'd like to be able to customize this so that (for me) the buttons on the left are reversed. The lower, larger button clicks you back and the smaller one clicks you forward. I want those large buttons to be "back" and "next" not "next" and "next".

2.) Page numbers. Kindle has a software update that includes them, but it's a clunky implementation and the books have to be encoded with page info so it isn't in all current e-books. What is most readily available is a "percentage of book read" indicator which really sucks for me. Here's the deal: I try to read about 100 pages in a sitting. Now, if I'm reading a 400 page book, that's 4 sittings and I get through 25% of the book in a go. If I'm reading a 1000 page book, that's 10 sittings and I get through 10% of the book in a go. Further, in the 400-page book, it takes 4 pages to go 1% and in the 1000 page book it takes 10.

But none of those percentages really matter to me. In a physical book, I just look at the page number and after I go through 100 pages, I feel like I can quit reading if I want because I've made good progress. And note that here, 1 page equals 1% of the reading I'm doing that day, and the page numbers reinforce that sense of progress.

With the Kindle, I have to look up the page count for the book and then estimate what percentage roughly equals 100 pages and then I'm clicking through page after page after page and that stupid "percent read" counter never budges a tick. It seems like it takes *forever* to get through "100 pages". Certainly that was the case for Crippled God where it took 9 screens of text to move the percentage read a tick.

Still, all of this is minor nitpicking. I'm enjoying the process of reading stuff on the Kindle and I think I'm going to be doing a fair amount of reading on it in the future.

later
Tom