I am reviewing the Kindle with keyboard & 3 G WiFi. I now have two of these devices & although the 2nd one does not seem to have as capable a 3G WiFi connectivity as my 1st one, I find these readers to be excellent.
Start-up is a cinch - just follow the easy instructions - its almost "out-of-the-box". If you get a second device, ALL your previous content is there; albeit in the archives.
Readability is another great aspect as you can set the font, size, spacing to suit yourself. I'm sure having a lighted cover is a bonus; but I've wracked up over 2,000 hours on my Kindles without one. And there is no glare - you have no problem on the beach or in your favourite backyard lounge.
Cover: I would strongly suggest a cover for your Kindle, if like me, you use it a lot &/or take it everywhere - cafes, the beach, your backyard. Protection from the elements as well as spills & minor drops. Oops...
Special Offers: My 1st Kindle came with the Special Offers; which, means I saved $50 & in sleep mode the face displays various ads for different products. These do not pop-up while reading & in no way interfer with your reading pleasure. Now my second one does not have Special Offers & in consequence, cost me more & comes with a variety of very attractive pictures (mostly authors) when my Kindle is in the sleep mode. In summary, I say save your money - you can buy books with the $50 & have the pleasure of them for naught.
Portability. Its remarkably lightweight - think of it - a whole library, 100's of books, weighing just over a 1/2 pound plus in a package smaller than a single paperback... At no other time has the world been able to access so much information & reading pleasure in such a small package.
3G WiFi: Well, I live in a remote area where regualr WiFi & cell phones have constant problems: days can pass where the connectivity is non-existent to sporadic. I can honestly say, that save for one or two very stormy days, I had no problem with my Kindle, either in downloading or using the Experimental option for Wikipedia & Google. And as I travel, I find it very convenient.
Travel: And yes, you can travel with your own personal library, anywhere in the world. I am a senior with terrible arthritis; ergo, I spend my winters far away from North American's cold, snow & ice: with 3G, I can access the Kindle store, Wikipedia and Google anywhere I choose to go: Europe, USA, Mexico. Previous to owning a Kindle, I had to pack books for my winter sojourn - at least 1/3 of my luggage was paperback books - I'm an avid reader & consequently was in constant search of places that carried, sold or exchanged novels to meet my reading needs. Now my Kindle has over 400 books on it & I'm never without a good read.
Cost. The initial cost is less than a dozen new hardbacks, 20 paperbacks; in other words, very reasonable. And the cost of adding books is up to you; I personally avail myself of the older books in the public domain that Amazon delivers to your Kindle at no cost. From this free selection, I have enjoyed such books as Arnold Bennett's "Anna with the High Hand", several cozy mysteries by Mary Rhinehart, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie & Sir A. Conan Doyle as well as such unlikely reading as old-time camping guides, memoirs of homesteaders & cookbooks from bygone eras - so fascinating for anyone interested in human nature or for a self-proclaimed history buff. For a dollar or two, the list is unlimited: true some of these are self-published & one might wish the writer had done a better job at editing; but the looney bin includes such books as "The Stone Arrow", several George Orwells as well as Virginia Wolfe. Plus the treasures available for under $5 include: "1929", "Prodigal Summer", "The Maltese Falcon" & "Testimony". Some of these are classics, some written by well-known 21st century authors: all are great reads.
Research: And with 3G WiFi connectivity it gets even more impressive. It allows the questioning mind, the "Doubting Thomas" to do instant on-line searches and checks. For me, this is a great feature - I used to check encyclopedias, then I progressed to on-line searches & now, NOW its all-in-one. Its Kindle. Kindle allows you to order a book, read it, make notes, share your thoughts AND if the author mentions another book, article or idea, you can check it out immediately, either in ebooks, in Wikipedia or GOOGLE. Its tremendous - you do not need to make a note to look it up later - you can do it NOW.
This truly enhances the reading experience for me. You might think this was more for non-fiction books; but, it works for fiction as well where I like to verify historical references or the quotes so many authors like to place at the start of a chapter. Finish a book, want to check out further offerings from the same author, or genre - its easy with the drop-down menu to search & shop. Indeed, with the 3G WiFi, you can access the internet almost anywhere & anytime: it has truly revolutionized reading for me. As an example, I read NMO by A. Wieshaupt: in it there are references to the holy grail of King Authur lore as well as the travels & ideas of Helena Blavatsky. With my Kindle, I was able to download & read "King Arthur & His Knights" by M. R. Warren as well as relevant pieces by H. P. Blavatsky. Basically, without leaving my armchair, I accomplished in minutes what it would have taken hours, if not days, of library research. Of course, it took me a little over 3 hours to read the selected texts; but, what it added to my understanding, not to say my appreciation, of the text I was reading, was remarkable.
Battery Life: A quick word on battery-life: I generally re-charge my Kindle every other day & in my 15 month ownership & travels with my original Kindle, this has proved to be no problem as recharging takes 3 hours or less, & is usually accomplished while I sleep. I've bought foreign adaptors from Amazon & at airports; so again, no problem. (If you pre-plan, CTC sells adaptors for most countries at a great price.) And my original Kindle still takes & holds a charge after over 2,000 hours of usage.
Nook vs Kindle vs iPod: I have to say I liked the fact that Nook puts out their books with pages as opposed to percentage read, a very clumsy mode for this function. But, I am a Canadian & several months ago, B&N said they no longer processed out-of-country accounts - so there went that option. As to iPod, I do not have one, and I can only retell my brother's experience: not happy with the iPod's performance, he's going to buy a Kindle.
With the 3G, keyboard, huge selection of reading material, experimental internet options plus all of the above, I feel Amazon has put together an excellent package with its Kindle product.
Amazon: And finally, thanks Amazon for a great product as well as great books.
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A Hop, a Leap, and a Bound from the Kindle 1!
I had a very good relationship with my Kindle 1 and was unsure if a newer generation Kindle would ever win me over. Sure the K1 had its quirks but the thing had stolen my heart so much so that its grievances hardly bothered me. It was not until I realized how many hoops the Amazon team jumped through to get the K3 ready for the dog and pony show that I was convinced. I then did the very hard thing of looking at my K1 with a critical eye and recognizing the innovations that had been made on its new cousin. Below is a summary of the highlights and the lowlights of Amazon's efforts with the K3...(To skip to the main points, simply read the headers of each section.)THE GOODS:Text as Crisp and Pristine as Ever-Book readers and K1 veterans alike will notice the sharpness of the K3's text. One side effect of the K1 text was the fact that the edges of letters had a slight fuzziness to them and were a little on the skinny side. This is certainly not the case with the K3's text...its big, its bold, and its beautiful. Funny enough, I even encounter the mythical "read faster" effect on the K3 because the font is so easy on the eyes.Ferrari Page Turn and Interface Speeds-The K1's speed could be best compared to that of turning a page on an actual book. Sure that may be decent but it is only natural to expect our technology to be more responsive than their real life counterparts. The duration of the classic e-reader flash is incredibly short on the K3 and should jar those who disliked it on the K1 much less. However, the star of the speed category should not only be awarded to the page turns, but the interface speed itself. I hardly notice any delay when moving the cursor around or using the menus on the K3.From a Respectable Middleweight to a Light as Air Featherweight-The K1 was hardly a brick in the hand even after outfitting it with a cover. However, the minute you popped the thing in your pack you would feel that you added on some undesired weight. The K3 has gone on quite the diet and rests like a feather on the hand. Covered or uncovered, you will not notice it at all in your carrying case. I swear one of these days I'll have forgotten which bag I put it in heh...Still the Same Great Selection-The Amazon store always manages to stock any book I'm looking for. While there will be a few select instances where one obscure novel or another has not had the Kindle treatment, pretty much any mainstream book in existence is still 60 seconds away. Also the great thing to keep in mind is all the free books at your finger tips. You're guaranteed to find almost any 100 year old public domain classic either within the Amazon catalogue or other great sources. The only irksome quality about the store itself is that it only sells the Kindle proprietary format, as that is the only type of ebook that can be read by the Kindle...I will cover more on this later.Wonderful Wi-Fi-While I did chuck up the extra dough to get the free 3G coverage, I knew I would primarily start utilizing the Wi-Fi feature. Hooking up to the home wireless was a breeze and many out there who settled for the $139 Wi-Fi only Kindle will not be disappointed. So far it doesn't seem to suck up the battery like the 3G might and the connection is as reliable as the Wi-Fi on my laptops. Enjoying Wi-Fi on your K3 may take a bit of tech-savviness though, especially if someone other than you set up your router and put a password on your network. Other than that, you should be hooked up fairly quickly after a simple brushing up on the basics of wireless connectivity.THE BADS:Memory Card Slot Axed-Some ebook/media hoarders will be angry that the memory card slot was axed. 3,500 books is more than enough for me but I can certainly understand that my needs do not reflect everyone else's needs. Memory cards also serve as a nice physical backup of content as well. I even know of some folks who categorized their K1 books via memory card to compensate for the lack of the K2/K3 collections feature. While those who took the plunge to purchase the K2 got over the demolition of this nice feature, I still believe in the future Kindle generations to come, a memory card slot should return.Lackluster Web Browser-The web browser on the K3 is still on the sluggish side unlike the other speedy interfaces on the device. I never bought the K3 thinking I'd use it for web browsing but several people still desire a Swiss Army knife quality to their gadgets. Those who are picturing their decent Blackberry browsers, neat Iphone/Ipad browsers, or similar things will probably be disappointed upon looking at this. As I said earlier though, this was never a biggie to me and at the end of the day the most use the browser on the K3 will get from me is for emergency internet access.PDF Viewing Still Leaves Alot to Be Desired-While I do appreciate Amazon's efforts to correct PDF viewing on the Kindle, its still not simple and snappy enough to leave me satisfied. The zoom feature is utterly essential and does great in a pinch but the fact still remains, that if a PDF is not properly formatted for the Kindle, it will look terrible. Thankfully I am aware of the techniques to easily accomplish this task or if I'm lazy can email a file to Amazon to let them have a go at it. However, many out there who simply want a device where they can pop a file on it and be done with it, will be quite disappointed. Another grievance regarding PDF viewing is that auto-rotation, while present on the Kindle DX, is not included on the K3...meaning that you have to open up another menu when you want to view something in landscape.Still No ePub Support-Though there are several programs which can correct the pitfall of no ePub support on Kindles (Calibre or Mobipocket Creator for example), the fact still remains that there is no native support for ePub. Even with software solutions, DRMs can get in the way in which case there is no chance at all for you to convert your favorite ebook to Kindle format (legally that is). However, it may not be fair to point the finger at Amazon regarding this issue. Most of the e-readers on the market are limiting the format of books they can recognize to their own proprietary formats. At the end of the day, this "bad" can pretty much apply to most of the e-readers on the market in general.Unfortunately there is only so much that can be covered in a review and the K3 bears other numerous improvements that I did not mention (TTS integration, quieter page turns, longer battery life, etc.) At the end of the day, the breakdown above should generally give you an idea of what was done successfully or unsuccessfully on Amazon's newest Kindle. Whether you are still an eternal lover of the printed page or a K1 oldie hesitant to give up on a good thing, the K3 will improve your reading experience and then some.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2012
Offer Type: With Special Offers $139Color: GraphiteVerified Purchase
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2010
