The Kindle DX IMHO

Well I broke down and got a Kindle DX even though it the type of device that is against my nature. This is, it is:

• Proprietary - Only from Amazon and Only books form Amazon. (like not an open standards device)
  
• Too Expensive - May need to be added to my pile of once cool things that I no longer use.
  
• Not General Purpose - Why not have a program that will do this on a Touch Pad or Netbook or LapTop?
  
• Another Electronic Gadget - I have too many devices. A "smart Phone", laptop, more other gadgets than I am will to tell my wife.
  

However, I have way too many books in my office and have long been out of book space and the ability to for me to remember where I put the books that would not fit. Then there is the "instant gratification part". Some article mentioned a book and I went to Amazon and they had it in kindle format. Cheaper and I could have it now; so I got a kindle and the book.

I have only been able to use it for about an hour, so I may have missed some of the basics; but here is what I know, or more feel about it at this point in time.

The kindle finally came. (Remember the "instant gratification part"). Now it seems to me, if the desire was to sell more books you would want to almost, anyhow, give away a book reader especially when the only source for books was your store. Also seems like, if you charged nearly $500.00 for the device, you would ship free and next day air. But that's just me.

Cool things

• The Kindle is lite and thin. Keeping in mind I carry a laptop that weighs a ton.
• Stylish, kind of looks like something Apple would make. (The association ends with the style)
• Easy to Read from.
• Charger is a USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) device with a AC adapter and a detachable USB cord.
• Headphone Jack is 3.5mm. Both will work with my new Palm-Pre.
• The book I ordered before I received my Kindle was there like in seconds. (Remember the "instant gratification part").

Reading The Book
Read some of the book and it all looked pretty good. Easy to read. Changeable type sizes. Portrait and landscape auto-rotation, nice.

Could be a little faster on page-to-page navigation. My wife implies I have a short attention span, so that hesitation could cost me to go off on some other thought path. So far, it is not an issue, other than I noticed it.

Love the way it remembers the last page I was on. (yea the short attention span thing, or is that the shot/short memory?)

What's Missing
Yes I saw all the options for the covers and such, but I guess, I supposed that I either had something or it would come with some sort of cover for the nearly $500.00 device. No, no cover. And I think I will need one as I am rough on my toys.

Read-to-Me
Not good. First, on the Kindle DX page, it states: "Read-to-Me: With the text-to-speech feature, Kindle DX can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud to you, unless the book's rights holder made the feature unavailable".

This was one of the major reasons points in my decision to purchase.

When the Kindle arrived, I could not find it in the help section. Finally found it under "Experimental". Well, the first several attempts, I would rate it more like alpha-functionality at best experimental not working well at all. I just went and checked and on the Kindle DX page, it does show, at the bottom, experimental. Darn. I honestly hate to read and would really like to listen.

Now, when I go read into the fine print on the Kindle DX page, It does mention the "Read-to-Me" under Experimental. It also lists the "Basic Web Browser" and "Listen to Music & Podcasts" as under Experimental also, but these two were not mentioned at the top of the page as the "Read-to-Me" was listed with no mention of Experimental.

Some things I found as issues with text-to-speech". Very difficult, especially since I could seldom hear anything, to determine if the device was reading to me or not. There is a volume control on the side, but no visual feed back on screen for the volume level.

I will look into this more and hopefully provide some feedback.

PDF Documents
So far, this looks good. One of my buying decisions was that I would be able to read some of the many PDF technical documents I need to go through for the work side of my life.

I knew I could email them to my special email address (somename@kindle.com) but also to my delight, after using the USB to my PC, drag and drop them to the Kindle. Cools. Dropped a couple and they were there.

Viewing them appears to be fine. You can set bookmarks within the PDFs and that is a good thing. Sure would be nice to be able to, form the table of contents, jump to the indicated page, like could be done in these particular PDFs when in the Adobe Reader. You can though, jump to any page you type in.

Well, got to go play with the Kindle DX some more. Hopefully I will be able or more so willing, to get back with how me and the Kindle DX are getting along.
-jim