Nov
29
After 4 Years Waiting
Filed Under Education and Love for Learning, Technology |
I realized years ago that computer monitors bothered my eyes; I hate to read books or anything on them. Anyone who knows me well also knows that I’ve talked to anyone I get a chance to talk to about creating a computer monitor that doesn’t emit light. Why not do it the way a book does it? The way God does it? Just let the material on the screen reflect light? You know…more like paper.
When Duane told me about eInk over a year and a half ago, I got really excited and started following the company to see when we’d get something to the mass market. I was really excited about the Iliad and the Sony Reader last year, but they didn’t really cut it. Mostly, the contrast wasn’t good enough yet on the screen and they were expensive and Sony’s was proprietary. More than anything I wanted standard formats, notes (or some kind of input) and simple web browsing (this would save my eyes a ton of strain while doing my research).
I waited with great anticipation for Amazon to do it right with the Kindle and got really disappointed when I first read all the announcements and reviews. Yet, I was disappointed too soon. After reading this insightful article from MacWorld, I realized that Amazon has nailed it. I get…
- Books in .AZW (Kindle-specific), .TXT (this gives me access to the Gutenberg Project library), .MOBI and .PRC - Everyone is complaining about no pdf but I read about the technical reasons for this and realized that Amazon isn’t avoiding pdf for any reason except that the format isn’t flexible and so the device can’t be smart in displaying it)
- Free wireless access to Wikipedia and a free dictionary.
- A web browser! You can just surf the Web in general. Kindle comes with a Web browser called Basic Web, which supports cookies, JavaScript and SSL.
- Note, clip and dog ear pages. Everything is backed up online wirelessly
- It was a real treat to discover that my audible account will work on the kindle as well and I can listen to audio books.
I’ve never encountered a device that better suites my life.
The Kindle is at the top of my wish list. I want one bad.
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[…] When D&H, LLC bought me an Amazon Kindle so that I could work on a consulting project (I originally refused the extra work due to headaches on a computer screen) for their new entity, I finally got to try out the gadget I’ve been anticipating for a long time. […]