I’ve been a happy Kindle owner for the past 8 months and I am delighted by the overall experience. First of all, I recharged the batter only a few times, say every three weeks, which is awesome and close the battery recharge cycle of a real, paper book.
The most amazing aspect is that you can purchase a book without visiting a library. Plus, you get hundreds of reviews – try to do that in a real library. Overall, Amazon made it very easy to purchase a Kindle book – with one click, you have it on your device. Combine that with low prices, at least compared with paper books in Italy, and you’ll find yourself purchasing multiple books in a matter of a few minutes. You must be careful, in a way.
I used to purchase lots of paper books from Play.com, but the very fact that you have to wait a couple of weeks to get them delivered allows Amazon to win hands down. When I purchase a book, I want to start reading it immediately, very much like it happens with books purchased in a library.
The only thing that is not good, in my opinion, is using the store directly from the Kindle. It’s very slow and navigation feels sluggish. Much better to use the full store website on your PC and then sync your Kindle.
Regarding Kindle’s hardware, I have 3rd gen device. The e-ink screen is very good, although it’s not as white as real paper. At any rate, reading feels very comfortable in all light conditions. I think that Kindles are going to be replaced by tablets over time, even without e-ink screens and much lower battery duration. Justifying the purchasing price of a dedicated device is going to be much more difficult and they’ll turn into a niche that will be killed, especially if you consider that Amazon is rumored to be planning to sell an Android tablet very soon.
I used to believe that paper books were better than ebooks, but that’s not true. It makes no difference to me. Quite the opposite perhaps. With big thanks from our friends the trees.