Jan
04
2010
Kindling
I was an early adopter of Amazon’s Kindle. I loved it for a couple of months and then fell out of love with it, kind of like the dog my parents got me when I was a kid. At first having a dog was a lot of fun and I loved having him tow me around the yard in the winter. I even enjoyed walking him for the first week or two. But then he showed his true colors–he made a mess of the yard and ate a few cats and just generally misbehaved and suddenly all I could see was his flaws. Eventually mom and dad gave him away. They told me they had given him to a family that had a mentally challenged son and who lived on a farm where the dog could run and run, tongue lolling out, eyes bright, just the way a dog ought to be. In retrospect that sounds like the kind of thing parents say when they’ve really dropped the dog off in the middle of the countryside to fend for himself. I should ask them about that sometime. Or not.
But I digress. I loved my Kindle at first. It was like so many other new technologies–it wowed me with all its great new features. I saw all the joy but little of the pain. But then I got used to it and couldn’t see past its obvious flaws. It was slow; it was ugly; I kept wanting to write all over the screen with my ever-present highlighters; it was not good for doing serious reading. In the end I traded it to a friend for a stack of commentaries. We both thought it was a good deal. Last I heard my buddy was still in love with it.
But now there is a Kindle 2. I had Amazon send one to me while I was in Atlanta last week. I justified purchasing it on two grounds. First, it is significantly cheaper than its predecessor. Second, Amazon worked out many of the flaws (like the way-too-long page-turn times and the oops-I-touched-the-side-and-it-turned-a-page flaw). Third (oh wait, I said two) it will pay for itself very quickly with all the bestsellers being only $9.99 (compared to $20-$30 at the local bookstore). And fourth, it now offers Whispernet service in Canada (though it carries a $2 surcharge, much to my chagrin). And just think how much room we’ll save in the house without all those books demanding shelf space. Overall, the 10MillionWords project offered me good reason and good justification to turn back to Kindle.
Overall, the Kindle 2 seems significantly improved from the first generation. It’s thinner, lighter, snazzier and faster. Heck, it even stays in its folder now, thanks to some handy little clips (I always thought the idea of trusting in gravity to keep a $400 machine in a leather folder was quite a weakness of the Kindle 1). Of course there are a few downsides, such as a still-awful keyboard and an Apple-style battery that can only be replaced by Amazon. It is not a thing of beauty and is not half the machine it will be in a few years, I’m sure. But it is beginning to show a bit of the promise we hoped for it from the beginning. Still, there’s probably a 50/50 chance that in six months I’ll be several commentaries richer and one Kindle poorer. Especially if Apple wows me with the long-awaited tablet.