Thursday, February 26, 2009

It's Here!

Christmas came two months and one day late today. When Dave and I got home from work, there were two boxes sitting outside our door: our Kindle Readers had arrived. Even better, they were upgraded to version 2.0, which was just released this week. Santa is very good to those who wait.

Mine has been open, plugged in and charging for an hour - I've also browsed through the manual; Dave is just opening his as I write (only because I bugged him about his box still being unopened). My Kindle already has 21 books, and book collections, on it, as I pre-ordered a bunch of them a month or so ago. The book collections include the Complete Works of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Aristotle, Jules Verne, etc. All of these collections cost less than $5.00 each. I also got Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass for $ 0.25. Yes, that's right - 25 cents for one of the greatest collections of American poetry ever written. I even got several books for free. Amazon and several major publishers have been putting together some limited time offers on selected books by lesser known authors. Yes, unknowns can be risky, but, at that price, I can afford to experiment.

So, what does the Kindle 2 look like? I'm glad you asked. Here's the basic view:



Here's a view that shows how thin it is:



It's very lightweight - about 10 ounces. That's the first thing Dave said when he opened his. Version 2 also handles images better than version 1 did, although they are still just grayscales. The font sizes are adjustable and the text is very easy on the eyes, as the display is not backlit. Other than that, I don't know too much about how to use it yet. I won't be subscribing to newspapers, blogs or magazines with it, as I can get a lot of that content for free on the Internet. I also don't anticipate using it to play audiobooks or MP3 files either; I can play music on my iPod. So, I may be a Luddite about cell phones, but when it comes to reading materials, I can say that I've moved into the 21st century and am well on my way to the Star Trek universe.

2 comments:

Barbara said...

I am so jealous!!! I really wish we could get those up here.
Have fun with it. I can't wait to hear more reviews about it when you get used to it.

Catharine said...

You really would look like Star Trek with one of those. COOL.