Thoughts on Kindle
Sep. 18th, 2009 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowanfSo for the last few weeks I have been reading books on a Kindle that belongs to work and I thought I'd write a little about the experience.
Pros
* easy to read
* good battery life
* reasonable book selection
* reduced carbon footprint
The Kindle is a little heavier than I expected but isn't too bad as a reading device. The battery lasts for about 2/3 of a book at my reading speed. I worry about that for airplane reading. Amazon has quite a few books available via Kindle, but I would prefer a device that allowed me to buy from multiple vendors (and thus shop around for prices). I have had no problem downloading things to my Kindle at home but sometimes it gets an error message at work. I haven't tried out in the world. The regular Amazon web interface is way better for finding and order books than trying to do so on the device itself.
CleanTech did a study which concluded that in a spine-to-spine lifecycle analysis, the Kindle 2 outperforms physical books. The study, combining previous research, finds that a Kindle is responsible for 168 kq of CO2 over its lifetime. Replacing three physical books a month for four years with Kindle books will save 1,074 kg of CO2. The less voracious will still break environmentally even halfway through their 23rd book, the point at which the impacts of the Kindle's existence are offset. (Quoted from a blog post at TreeHugger so I don't have to do the math myself.) That is a pretty compelling argument for me. I read a lot of books!
Cons
* flat UI
* don't really own the books
* no "book management" features
* can't lend them to friends
* no page numbers
The UI is clunky and there does't seem to be any way to arrange your books other than alphabetical order. I want to be able to put "books I've read" into a folder or something or even *gasp* manage that online or on my laptop like I do with my palm OS ebooks.
Amazon's actions in deleting books from people's devices and not being able to indicate to you how many times you can download a book you have "bought" has make it clear that you don't own the books.
As a user of Fictionwise for many years I am used to (a) downloading books to my computer, in multiple formats if needed, and (b) having them archived online in my "bookshelf". I manage them on my laptop by having "read" and "unread" folders and genre folders and such. I only upload to my Palm with few currently in the queue for reading. I haven't figured out any way not to have everything you have bought on your kindle and given the "don't own" item above deleting things seems fraught.
The first book I bought for the Kindle was _Burning Bright_ by Melissa Scott. That is because my friend Dan had lent me the 5/12ths of Heaven series and I had liked it alot. I think Dan would like _Burning Bright_... but I can't lend it to him. Fail! This is really a huge barrier to my actual adoption of Kindle. Of the four books I bought I own the hardcopy of three of them (but in a heavy omnibus edition and I thought it would be nice to give me shoulder a break and not carry it around). I am not keen on buying any more books I don't already own and thus can lend if necessary. I am currently reading A. Merritt's _Ship of Ishtar_ which (a) I own and (b) is available for free in many formats already (including Kindle). There were a few free books that I downloaded. Once I'm done with those I'll probably turn the device back in to the office.
It didn't really matter that much to me that there aren't page numbers. But if this is going to be adopted by scholars or students... how do you do citations? I couldn't help but wonder.
Conclusions
I think that we will all have ereader devices eventually. I hope that they will be, if not DRM free, setup for sharing and ease of management in ways the Kindle doesn't afford. I'm also hoping for touch screens, handwriting recognition for notetaking (am I the only person who really misses grafitti?) and lots of options for how to manage your content.
Pros
* easy to read
* good battery life
* reasonable book selection
* reduced carbon footprint
The Kindle is a little heavier than I expected but isn't too bad as a reading device. The battery lasts for about 2/3 of a book at my reading speed. I worry about that for airplane reading. Amazon has quite a few books available via Kindle, but I would prefer a device that allowed me to buy from multiple vendors (and thus shop around for prices). I have had no problem downloading things to my Kindle at home but sometimes it gets an error message at work. I haven't tried out in the world. The regular Amazon web interface is way better for finding and order books than trying to do so on the device itself.
CleanTech did a study which concluded that in a spine-to-spine lifecycle analysis, the Kindle 2 outperforms physical books. The study, combining previous research, finds that a Kindle is responsible for 168 kq of CO2 over its lifetime. Replacing three physical books a month for four years with Kindle books will save 1,074 kg of CO2. The less voracious will still break environmentally even halfway through their 23rd book, the point at which the impacts of the Kindle's existence are offset. (Quoted from a blog post at TreeHugger so I don't have to do the math myself.) That is a pretty compelling argument for me. I read a lot of books!
Cons
* flat UI
* don't really own the books
* no "book management" features
* can't lend them to friends
* no page numbers
The UI is clunky and there does't seem to be any way to arrange your books other than alphabetical order. I want to be able to put "books I've read" into a folder or something or even *gasp* manage that online or on my laptop like I do with my palm OS ebooks.
Amazon's actions in deleting books from people's devices and not being able to indicate to you how many times you can download a book you have "bought" has make it clear that you don't own the books.
As a user of Fictionwise for many years I am used to (a) downloading books to my computer, in multiple formats if needed, and (b) having them archived online in my "bookshelf". I manage them on my laptop by having "read" and "unread" folders and genre folders and such. I only upload to my Palm with few currently in the queue for reading. I haven't figured out any way not to have everything you have bought on your kindle and given the "don't own" item above deleting things seems fraught.
The first book I bought for the Kindle was _Burning Bright_ by Melissa Scott. That is because my friend Dan had lent me the 5/12ths of Heaven series and I had liked it alot. I think Dan would like _Burning Bright_... but I can't lend it to him. Fail! This is really a huge barrier to my actual adoption of Kindle. Of the four books I bought I own the hardcopy of three of them (but in a heavy omnibus edition and I thought it would be nice to give me shoulder a break and not carry it around). I am not keen on buying any more books I don't already own and thus can lend if necessary. I am currently reading A. Merritt's _Ship of Ishtar_ which (a) I own and (b) is available for free in many formats already (including Kindle). There were a few free books that I downloaded. Once I'm done with those I'll probably turn the device back in to the office.
It didn't really matter that much to me that there aren't page numbers. But if this is going to be adopted by scholars or students... how do you do citations? I couldn't help but wonder.
Conclusions
I think that we will all have ereader devices eventually. I hope that they will be, if not DRM free, setup for sharing and ease of management in ways the Kindle doesn't afford. I'm also hoping for touch screens, handwriting recognition for notetaking (am I the only person who really misses grafitti?) and lots of options for how to manage your content.
