Kindle Version Better Than “Real”?

Here’s a great article that explains very well just why I prefer reading the NY Times on my Kindle to reading the paper version. In addition, the very first time my wife read a NY Times article on the Kindle she also said she thought it was a better reading experience than reading the actual newspaper. So I guess we’re all agreed!

Hundreds of Free Kindle Books

If you got a Kindle for Christmas and want to fill it up with lots of books to read at no cost to you, go into the Kindle browser and enter the following URL:

http://www.feedbooks.com/kindleguide

This will download a Kindle document with links to hundreds of downloadable Kindle books. They are public domain classics and are listed by title, author, and category. In addition this guide contains a link allowing you to download future updated versions of it to your Kindle.

I downloaded Crime and Punishment and a Philo Vance mystery through this guide and they are formatted to perfection for my Kindle. Kindle owners: be sure to check this out!

3 Weeks with a Kindle

Well, it’s been three weeks now that I’ve owned my Kindle and I have to report that I really enjoy reading books on it. It’s so easy to take with me wherever I go and easy to pick up and start reading it whenever I find myself with free time. It’s simply a pleasure to read books on it! In fact, I’ve been able to read much more than I did prior to owning the Kindle. I’ve finished three reading books in three weeks – not bad! I’ve purchased 6 books from Amazon, and created 4 more using the Mobipocket Creator program. I’m also reading the NY Times on it every morning.

What did I do before owning my Kindle?

By the way, someone has already come up with a hack for the Kindle that allows it to read DRM-protected Mobipocket eBooks, so one of the major gripes against Amazon for not supporting this format has effectively vanished.

A Week With The Kindle

Well I’ve had my Kindle for about a week now and here are my impressions, in no particular order:

The NY Times subscription is wonderful. Each day’s paper gets automatically delivered to my Kindle around 5:30 AM EST. It’s really great to be able to read the Times every day again.

My wife, the committed technophobe, likes the Kindle! I passed it to her one day to let her read a NY Times article, and she was really impressed by its small size, light weight, and wonderful screen. I think she may become a Kindle owner sometime next year.

Buying a book from Amazon is an amazingly easy experience. Their current library is very extensive, but of course I want even more books avaiable!

Creating my own Kindle book is very easy. So far I’ve done two – one from Project Gutenberg and one from a university Web site. It’s a breeze to do using the free Mobipocket Creator program and the resulting book on the Kindle is outstanding!

The browser is better than I first thought. I actually used it yesterday at the airport while waiting for my plane (which was late!) to read Mobile Google Reader and the mobile version of Google News. It’s really not bad now that I’ve gotten used to the scrollwheel interface of the Kindle.

I’ve come to prefer reading the Kindle inside its cover. It’s much less likely to accidentally hit a page forward or backward button.

Early Christmas This Year

 

My wife gave me my primary Christmas present early this year: a Kindle! I’ve been playing with it since late last night. I’ve read the entire manual contained within the Kindle, and purchased my first book. I’ve tried the search function, including Wikipedia, and accessed the mobile edition of the Google Reader to try it as an RSS reader.

My first impressions are that it’s simply a wonderful eBook reader, but somewhat lame as a Web browser. It would certainly serve in a pinch, but my Treo 700p is a much better and faster Web browser than the Kindle. So it’s likely I’ll never use my Kindle for accessing Web pages since my Treo is always with me.

I am certainly enjoying it as a book reader, though. Now I’m off to sign up for another Christmas present from my wife: a Kindle subscription to the New York Times!