Kindle in my own hands
04/06/09 09:58 Filed in: ebooks
Well
finally, I got to play with the Kindle 2.0. Spent
about an hour with it. One thing I didn't realize is
that with the new speaker ability, yes, it will read
books to you in a acceptable-but-computer-sounding
voice, but it will also play audio books. I didn't
know that. There wasn't an audio book on there, but I
was reading about it in the instructions that come
with it. It would have been nice to to listen, and
you can play background sound (music) while you are
reading something else.
My friend says she has read an entire book on it, and said she could fall into reading easily. I asked her if she could "disappear" into the book, and she said yes. I felt the response time was slow - turning pages takes a moment, and the screen flashes black with a negative image of the next text in white on it, then resolves itself into the next page. That is annoying and totally breaks the flow of reading for me. I found myself scanning instead, and not reading as if I was reading a novel. The screen is remarkably easy on the eyes. The text is crisp, and the resolution in the monotone images is very nice. The fonts are nice. Changing the font size was well done - the leading and spacing resolved itself nicely to each new size. The line length was pleasant. While I was on a page, the reading was pleasant, but that page change and shift to black? Well, maybe you get used to it, but it is slow, like a slide transition effect in powerpoint.
I also used it to access the web. VERY SLOW. This was in a good signal strength area, and it takes you to a specialized page for Amazon, one optimized for Kindles. The iPhone is much faster at this, and resolves pages normally. I went and took a look at our own Indexer's Network page. The Kindle sets up the page vertically, with each linkable item in a column. So instead of our menu bar across the screen at the top, it listed the links down.:
Main
Invite
My page, etc.
Then we hit the recent member icons, and each was listed in a box down, Then the latest activity. I didn't make it down far enough to look at the blogs. That would have been in the next county. So for web browsing, it is slow and annoying. I don't think it is feasible to use this as a web replacement, to look at your email for instance.
I didn't find an active index in any of the books on the friend's list. Many of the TOC's were inactive as well. So it really varies - the publishers can either prep a book well with hyperlinks, or just stuff it on the Kindle without. The one index I found had all the page numbers removed, and the only way to actually search for the terms was to use search. As we all know, that's not great, but it did show each term in context - somewhat helpful to choose a location to read. I believe the first kindle did not show you terms in context when you searched, only a menu on the side that listed location numbers.
You navigate with a menu key and a little square widget that moves up, down, or sideways to select items. Again, I found this very slow. Widgeting up or down to a word to search, or to put in a bookmark, seemed awkward and slow - and my friend didn't seem much faster at it. "Wait a minute, let me bookmark that before we do something else," and then the slow widgeting about to place the bookmark. I didn't look up words. I suspect that would be really useful, but with all the widgeting about to get the word selected, it seemed a pain. On my little Palm PDA, there is a touch interface, so I could just touch where I want to edit or do something. This was more like being in Word and moving your cursor letter by letter with the arrow keys. Once in a horizontal line of text, it did jump word by word. I kept yearning for the end key, or a triple click, all the nice features we have gotten used to in our indexing software.
It will display PDF files nicely - the first edition had problems with that. You still must email yourself the pdf, but the one I looked at retained all the special characters in Swedish, and my friend, who translates from Swedish and Norwegian, said it was wonderful for that. The pdf she had received had been in single space and small characters, unworkable for her, and putting it on the Kindle meant she could enlarge it and read it. It was solely a text PDF, so I didn't see what happens with pictures within a PDF.
All in all, I think they need to up the speed of response. I know, I'm picky, and I also read very quickly. Watching the screen go black then white is really disruptive and takes quite a while, much longer than a page flip. I was starting to feel as though I must be hyper, waiting, and really, I'm not. (At least I don't think so.... I could be hyper and you all have been gentle with me and hid it from me all these years.) I guess when I read, I am on to the next thing and expect the interface to be there already, because with print, it already is and has been waiting.
My friend says she has read an entire book on it, and said she could fall into reading easily. I asked her if she could "disappear" into the book, and she said yes. I felt the response time was slow - turning pages takes a moment, and the screen flashes black with a negative image of the next text in white on it, then resolves itself into the next page. That is annoying and totally breaks the flow of reading for me. I found myself scanning instead, and not reading as if I was reading a novel. The screen is remarkably easy on the eyes. The text is crisp, and the resolution in the monotone images is very nice. The fonts are nice. Changing the font size was well done - the leading and spacing resolved itself nicely to each new size. The line length was pleasant. While I was on a page, the reading was pleasant, but that page change and shift to black? Well, maybe you get used to it, but it is slow, like a slide transition effect in powerpoint.
I also used it to access the web. VERY SLOW. This was in a good signal strength area, and it takes you to a specialized page for Amazon, one optimized for Kindles. The iPhone is much faster at this, and resolves pages normally. I went and took a look at our own Indexer's Network page. The Kindle sets up the page vertically, with each linkable item in a column. So instead of our menu bar across the screen at the top, it listed the links down.:
Main
Invite
My page, etc.
Then we hit the recent member icons, and each was listed in a box down, Then the latest activity. I didn't make it down far enough to look at the blogs. That would have been in the next county. So for web browsing, it is slow and annoying. I don't think it is feasible to use this as a web replacement, to look at your email for instance.
I didn't find an active index in any of the books on the friend's list. Many of the TOC's were inactive as well. So it really varies - the publishers can either prep a book well with hyperlinks, or just stuff it on the Kindle without. The one index I found had all the page numbers removed, and the only way to actually search for the terms was to use search. As we all know, that's not great, but it did show each term in context - somewhat helpful to choose a location to read. I believe the first kindle did not show you terms in context when you searched, only a menu on the side that listed location numbers.
You navigate with a menu key and a little square widget that moves up, down, or sideways to select items. Again, I found this very slow. Widgeting up or down to a word to search, or to put in a bookmark, seemed awkward and slow - and my friend didn't seem much faster at it. "Wait a minute, let me bookmark that before we do something else," and then the slow widgeting about to place the bookmark. I didn't look up words. I suspect that would be really useful, but with all the widgeting about to get the word selected, it seemed a pain. On my little Palm PDA, there is a touch interface, so I could just touch where I want to edit or do something. This was more like being in Word and moving your cursor letter by letter with the arrow keys. Once in a horizontal line of text, it did jump word by word. I kept yearning for the end key, or a triple click, all the nice features we have gotten used to in our indexing software.
It will display PDF files nicely - the first edition had problems with that. You still must email yourself the pdf, but the one I looked at retained all the special characters in Swedish, and my friend, who translates from Swedish and Norwegian, said it was wonderful for that. The pdf she had received had been in single space and small characters, unworkable for her, and putting it on the Kindle meant she could enlarge it and read it. It was solely a text PDF, so I didn't see what happens with pictures within a PDF.
All in all, I think they need to up the speed of response. I know, I'm picky, and I also read very quickly. Watching the screen go black then white is really disruptive and takes quite a while, much longer than a page flip. I was starting to feel as though I must be hyper, waiting, and really, I'm not. (At least I don't think so.... I could be hyper and you all have been gentle with me and hid it from me all these years.) I guess when I read, I am on to the next thing and expect the interface to be there already, because with print, it already is and has been waiting.