First impressions with the Amazon Kindle
I recently received a new Amazon Kindle as a gift, and was very positively surprised by the product. It provides an intuitive way to read books, and even better, it provides online access to lots of content.
The first form of online content is, of course, the Amazon kindle store. The primary reason why Amazon provides free wireless (EVDO) access is to be able to easily sell books in their store. However, you don’t really need to pay for everything on Amazon. First of all, you can browser all the titles in the store. For most of them, you can get a free excerpt of the book. Frequently, the excepts are significant parts of the book, so you can decide if it really makes sense to buy it or not. For example, I downloaded yesterday the except of two books: a probability analysis book (mathematics) offered the first two chapter for free. The second book was a novel, with the first few chapter for free (in the case of a novel, of course, it make sense to offer enough to make the reader want to see the rest).
The kindle also has an (experimental) web browser, which will let you see very basic web pages. Its main restriction is that Javascript does not work properly. Since most modern websites are dynamic, this makes it very hard to have a good web experience (some people even hate it). However, a few sites are still usable: wikipedia is available, as well as Google search, and some news web sites.
The main functionality of the device, however, works really well. You can quickly browse books, and the battery lasts very long. The kindle uses a new type of display that consumes very little power, and is easier on the eyes then most computer screens.
It has been nice having access to so much information in one device. The only thing that I believe would really improve the experience with Kindle is to have more options for document formats. Right now, it accepts the mobi format (which is Kindle’s native format), along with text files. Other document formats can be converted using a free service from Amazon that can be accessed by email. However, accessing more formats directly, such as doc and pdf, would make life much easier.
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About the Author
Carlos Oliveira holds a PhD in Systems Engineering and Optimization from University of Florida. He works as a software engineer, with more than 10 years of experience in developing high performance, commercial and scientific applications in C++, Java, and Objective-C. His most Recent Book is Practical C++ Financial Programming.
