Rather spookily the new Kindle arrived pre-setup to know it was mine. Out of the rather natty, simple but effective, packaging with a solid green feel it powered up calling itself Stephen’s Kindle. This was the 3G version which connected immediately to ‘Whispernet’ as Amazon calls it. It sort of out Appled Apple doing that. Very impressive.
A little smaller than I expected, it looks rather good and it is the size of a slightly large paperback except it’s really thin and it’s light.
The screen is amazingly good for reading text from books or magazines but is less good for illustrations and is poor when looking at web pages via the beta internet surfing.
I’ve bought it to trial The Independent and The Daily Mail the newspapers of choice here (don’t ask!). If the Kindle proves a successful replacement for the printed page, it will save at least 50% of our paper bill. It will also save the wait for the delivery when it’s late, as it has been far too many times recently.
All the newspapers and blogs give two weeks free trial so more after that.
I guess the other question is how does it compare to an Apple iPad or even a new iPhone for reading books. This will require time to tell. At present it feels strange going back to a Monochrome screen. I’ll give it a couple of weeks and report back.
Very conveniently I’m going to attend the Milan Top Audio show soon, which will give the ideal opportunity to try the Kindle as a traveling book. It’s lighter and smaller that the sort of books I usually buy to read while journeying so it may be a real winner.
