subject: The Amazon Kindle - Is It Any Good? [print this page] Amazon have been promoting their Kindle to be THE eBook reader that everyone should have. This may not happen, though Amazon are really going out to show the kindle is way ahead of the other eBook readers.
The first thing that sets it apart from the rest is the size and weight. At only 5.3 inches x 7.5 inches x 0.7 inches and weighing only 8.7 ounces the Kindle is small and compact enough to take anywhere and use anywhere. Reading can last as long as 2 weeks without using the WI-FI and up to 10 days with WI-FI active thanks to a good battery life. Charging of the battery is also quite fast so you shouldn't have any long periods of down time when using the Kindle.
E-Ink is another good feature that the Kindle has. It supposedly mimics the reading of a real book and is doing just that to a certain extent. E-Ink is the solution for those of you that have trouble reading eBooks for a prolonged amount of time on an LCD screen.
A minor drawback of the Kindle is the lack of support for colour. Black, white and shades of grey are the only thing you will see inside the Kindle. You won't be able to use it to view any coloured print or pictures.
The older version of the Kindle was not prominent at flipping through the pages. It could be quite slow and the touch screen function could compromise easy reading of your book. The new version now has buttons on the side, dedicated to ease the page turning function and is comfortable to use.
Built in WI-FI capability on the Kindle does allow you to surf online but since there is no colour support the pages can only be viewed in black and white. This is quite a large setback of the devices overall capability and leaves you wondering wether WI-FI support was really worth including.
The internal memory has a storage capability of up to 3500 eBooks so you won't find yourself having to remove older books in order to download new ones. Apps are also available to enable you to read a Kindle eBook on the iPhone or PC.
Besides reading your eBooks and (if you really need to) surfing the internet, there is not much more you can do with the Kindle. Amazon have not yet introduced any kind of open standard so there will be no apps within it. 3rd party applications should be introduced in the near future but given the specifications and restrictions the amount of apps is going to be small.
Most of your eBooks on the Kindle will have Digital Rights Management (DRM) on them. Some people may remember the scene caused by Amazon when they automatically deleted a book from every single Kindle that downloaded a book that was later banned. This leaves an issue with privacy and what they can do to your eBooks inside your device.
