Friday, February 27. 2009
The Amazon Kindle
Friday, February 27. 2009
Dorée asked me, in one of my status updates, to talk about my experiences with the Kindle. Right this moment, the K2 has landed at my place, but I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet, so I can only talk about the original. So, for now, this (ongoing) note is discussing the K1. I'll update it as I go, to give a thorough discussion of what I like, don't like, and what not of both Kindles.
As many of you know, I am a prolific reader. Primarily, I read trashy books, but also other fiction. This academic year aside - I've been wicked busy and gone down to about one or two books a month, and with my mom's Kindle purchase, I've been severely limited as to when I can read, namely when she's not reading and I'm not otherwise busy - I usually read 3-5 books a week, every week.
For the original:
The biggest con, as someone with a huge library, is the utter lack of organization. You can't create author/series/genre folders (or show ONLY authors/genres/series and then authors/series/books within the selected author/genre/series, etc). You can't tag books, to try to fake a system like that. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with the K2, because for the K1, my mom resorted to buying a bunch of small (128-512 MB) SD cards and organizing by genre (and in cases where the author's been quite prolific, like Nora Roberts, by author), and that worked really nicely.
Granted, you don't need to have every book you own on the Kindle at any one time, and quite frankly, you could just have everything sorted into a book library on your computer (non-Amazon purchases) or use amazon's online bookshelf thing (amazon purchases) and only have the books you want on the Kindle. With the original, it's obvious that that was the intention - it had a tiny storage drive. However, with the K2, the intention is to allow you to have an actual library of book (with nearly 2GB of storage space). If the K1's lack of organization is present in the K2, with the lack of SD cards, it could be a huuuuuge negative.
For the K2:
The buttons on the K2 are much nicer than on the original, and I like the smaller size quite a bit as well. However, my biggest complaints about the original are still present: huge library, no organization. And, in fact, it's probably worse: the K2 offloads your non-downloaded books into an "archive" that you can't sort by most recent purchase (which, to me, would be an OBVIOUS thing to sort by).
For the covers:
I heartily DISCOURAGE the Amazon hinge cover, as it actually BROKE my K2 -- a stress fracture right where the top hinge was, probably because the Amazon cover doesn't attach the Kindle to the cover aside on the hinge. What kind of crack they were smoking, I don't know. I did get my Kindle replaced free of charge, but man: what a pain in the ass!
I do encourage the M-Edge hinge cover. So many color combinations, and it attaches the K2 at the hinge and at the outside edge. It also has a strap (which the Amazon cover lacks), and a nice place for a light (such as the M-Edge Elluminator). I likee.
All in all, I really like my Kindle, but that organization thing... I really wish they would fix that.
As many of you know, I am a prolific reader. Primarily, I read trashy books, but also other fiction. This academic year aside - I've been wicked busy and gone down to about one or two books a month, and with my mom's Kindle purchase, I've been severely limited as to when I can read, namely when she's not reading and I'm not otherwise busy - I usually read 3-5 books a week, every week.
For the original:
The biggest con, as someone with a huge library, is the utter lack of organization. You can't create author/series/genre folders (or show ONLY authors/genres/series and then authors/series/books within the selected author/genre/series, etc). You can't tag books, to try to fake a system like that. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with the K2, because for the K1, my mom resorted to buying a bunch of small (128-512 MB) SD cards and organizing by genre (and in cases where the author's been quite prolific, like Nora Roberts, by author), and that worked really nicely.
Granted, you don't need to have every book you own on the Kindle at any one time, and quite frankly, you could just have everything sorted into a book library on your computer (non-Amazon purchases) or use amazon's online bookshelf thing (amazon purchases) and only have the books you want on the Kindle. With the original, it's obvious that that was the intention - it had a tiny storage drive. However, with the K2, the intention is to allow you to have an actual library of book (with nearly 2GB of storage space). If the K1's lack of organization is present in the K2, with the lack of SD cards, it could be a huuuuuge negative.
For the K2:
The buttons on the K2 are much nicer than on the original, and I like the smaller size quite a bit as well. However, my biggest complaints about the original are still present: huge library, no organization. And, in fact, it's probably worse: the K2 offloads your non-downloaded books into an "archive" that you can't sort by most recent purchase (which, to me, would be an OBVIOUS thing to sort by).
For the covers:
I heartily DISCOURAGE the Amazon hinge cover, as it actually BROKE my K2 -- a stress fracture right where the top hinge was, probably because the Amazon cover doesn't attach the Kindle to the cover aside on the hinge. What kind of crack they were smoking, I don't know. I did get my Kindle replaced free of charge, but man: what a pain in the ass!
I do encourage the M-Edge hinge cover. So many color combinations, and it attaches the K2 at the hinge and at the outside edge. It also has a strap (which the Amazon cover lacks), and a nice place for a light (such as the M-Edge Elluminator). I likee.
All in all, I really like my Kindle, but that organization thing... I really wish they would fix that.
