Luke with Tina's Kindle
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.
I got to play with an Amazon Kindle today for a few minutes at lunch. I could talk about it for hours but only have the remainder of my lunch break. So here's my top line:
The case design is seriously retro early '80s grey plastic, and this is nothing you're ever going to be able to slip into your pocket.
The screen technology is impressive. Really, really sharp and paper-like.
Nothing book-like about the interface. In fact, nothing familiar at all about the interface. Two big clunky Next and Previous buttons, on the left hand side of the Kindle when I would have expected them on the right. A strangle scroller on the right that displays where you are in a document with what I can only describe for now as "freaky little animated mirrors" (i need to read up more about what they actually are and how they work, but it looks for all the world like little bits of mirror off an old Glomesh purse jiggling around.
A couple of days of reading off a single recharge, and if you turn off the EVDO card you can read all week on a single (2hr) charge.
All your bookmark and note data and all your books/newspapers all backed up and saved on Amazon in case you take the Kindle in the bath.
But I still can't get past the largeness and the totally 1980s IBM PC plastic case. For every geek credpoint I earned pulling one of these out in a coffeeshop, I'd lose 10 sex appeal points. And I have too few of those to go risking any just to read a book!
