I ordered the new Amazon Kindle the other week, not exactly sure why. It just felt right for some reason and I like to go with my guts (or the adverts finally worked on me!). I received it very promptly from Amazon and opened the box, expecting a nice wow-moment, but was mildly disappointed with the look and feel of the device.
I kept the plastic film on it and started exploring my new e-reader, still not sure whether to return or keep. So the jury has been out on the Kindle for a couple of weeks and finally reached its verdict. I have come to terms with the fact that it’s not a ‘cool’ gadget but rather an excellent reading device that saves me a lot of time and money.
This blog post will list the benefits of the Kindle as I see it (perhaps to internally justify my purchase!), so here we go:
Multi-task reading
If you sometimes struggle to read long books, the Kindle can help. As you can store gazillions of books on it, you can do a bit of reading in your War & Peace, take a break and read something merrier for a while. The kindle remembers where you stopped reading so you can dip in and out of the volumes of your choice.
A few weeks after buying my Kindle, I have ploughed through stuff from Eckhart Tolle, Seth Godin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Richard Dawkins. When Tolle gets too profound, I switch to Godin and when he gets to repetitive I read another short story by Doyle and then let Dawkins lay down some science.
You could argue that the Kindle allows you to have the attention span of a goldfish but still read very solid books, all at the same time.
Read all of those ebooks and reports
I have a habit of always downloading free reports, eBooks and white papers that people offer out there on the Interwebs. What do I do with them? Obviously not reading, I just store them in a nice folder for a rainy day when my WiFi crashes.
This has now all changed. With a clever application called calibre, you are able to convert any document (typically a PDF) into the Kindle .mobi format. This means you can read all those downloads away from the distractions that your computer.
So if you’re a blogger, I can bet you have downloaded enough material on blogging, SEO and list building to keep you going on a Kindle for a few weeks.
More convenient
An e-reader is more convenient than books from a few perspectives. The first one is the fact that you don’t have to go to a bookshop or get books delivered, a few clicks of a button and you have downloaded virtually any book you can think of in about ten seconds.
The other factor is that the device can store 5,000 books and still is as sleek as a pencil. So if you’re setting off on the Inca Trail for three months, the Kindle will save lots of precious rucksack space. If you like decluttering like myself, you’ll love the fact that you can chuck out old books that you never read – knowing that you can easily access them on the Kindle anyway.
You can change the look of the pages on the screen, if your eyesight isn’t what it used to be you can just increase the font size. Along with page numbers, you’ll see how far you have gotten through a book as a percentage which is handy sometimes.
Although the additional technical features are a bit limited, you are able to highlight sections in books, look up any word in the dictionary and even listen to music from the Kindle. These aren’t exactly killer applications but they just save a bit of time here and there and add to the overall reading experience.
But what about the iPad?
Yes I will admit that an iPad is way cooler than a Kindle and it will impress your mates a lot more. Some would say the Kindle is a poor man’s iPad, I wouldn’t agree with that.
The Kindle does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s for reading books and that’s it. Not having all the bells and whistles is actually a good thing in my mind, mainly because you can’t get distracted by email notifications, Skype alerts or Windows updates (not to mention social media).
If you’re looking for a tablet computer to play with, don’t even consider the Kindle. If you are looking to up your daily reading time, do consider the Kindle. It’s moderately priced as well and if you are a bookworm you’ll notice that you’ll break even soon as Kindle books are cheaper than ‘real’ ones.
Bottom line
As you may have guessed already, I am a big fan of my new e-reader. Anything that gets me reading more away from a computer screen is very welcome in my life and the Kindle has done just that.
Do you own a Kindle or other e-reader? Please share your experience!
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