The paperless office somehow never materialized. So, is the Amazon Kindle, the latest electronic device for reading books on-screen, going to do away with the book? Will you be putting a Kindle on your Christmas wish list? The Amazon Kindle is the best ebook reader on the market.
What is the Kindle?
The Kindle is Amazon’s compact lightweight, wireless reading device, for reading books onscreen – and more. Its gray screen is advertised as ‘reading like paper’. Two models are currently available. The slim, small format (6 inch screen) Kindle 2 weighs just over ten ounces. The Kindle DX has a 9.7 inch screen and is suitable for reading newspapers or viewing larger format documents.
The Kindle uses wireless 3G networks (you don’t pay anything) so that you can download reading material from the Internet. An accelerometer means that the DX automatically changes from portrait to landscape format when you re-orient it. You can store 1500 books on the Kindle 2 and more than double that on the DX – ideal for travellers.
Bells and Whistles
The Kindle is a gadget lover’s dream, with loads of fun features. Audio capacity mean that it can ‘read’ your book out loud to you, or you can listen to music while relaxing with your newspaper. There’s also a basic web browser (suitable for accessing text-based web pages), access to Wikipedia and a built-in dictionary.
Users can conduct limited searches within books or documents, bookmark and annotate documents, save clippings and read PDF files (the functionality of this feature is upgraded on the DX). It all sounds like a lot of fun.
Kindle Content
There are about three hundred thousand titles available for download, including current bestsellers that retail at about ten dollars. A huge number of titles, especially classic works, is available from free sources such as the Gutenberg Project, amongst other sites. You can also subscribe to a variety of online journals, magazines and blogs.
The Downside of the Kindle
- It’s only available in the US at present – so that’s a big negative for the rest of us.
- You can’t share what you download.
- Though the screen is more user-friendly for reading than some older, similar devices some people find the screen leads to eye strain.
- Given the rate of change in hardware, there are bound to be improved models available in the near future.
Criticism has been leveled at the removal of the memory card slot on newer Kindle models. Users were also very unimpressed when Amazon remotely deleted material (including George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’) from devices (due to problems with publication rights).
For many book lovers the ins and outs of hardware and software will be irrelevant. For traditional bibliophiles there’s nothing like a book that you can hold in your hand, read in the bath or swap with friends and the Kindle just won’t cut it. But the Kindle no doubt fills a gap in the market and will give pleasure to many.
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Why is the Amazon Kindle the Best Ebook Reader?
best ebook reader
Amazon.com is one of the most popular web sites in the World Wide Web. It started in 1994 and since then, it has come up a long way. One of the most important landmarks in the fabulous journey of Amazon has been that of Amazon Kindle, which is a software-cum-hardware platform. It was developed by Lab126, which is a subsidiary of Amazon.com for reading e-books along with other digital media. The first equipment got released in the year 2007 in the United States. This platform is supported by three main hardware devices, i.e. Kindle, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Apart from that, it is also supported by Kindle for iPhone, which is an iphone application released in March 2009.
The Amazon Kindle has come up as one of the most impressive devices of the current times. It popularity can be judged from the fact, that, the first Kindle device, when released in November 2007 got sold out within five and a half hours flat. In subsequent months, the equipment remained out of stock and was available only after five months, i.e. late April 2008.
This amazon kindle equipment featured a 6 inch 4-level display and was offered at a retail price of $399. However, the price got lowered to $359 and today; you may get one for as low as $299. This ebook reading device had an internal memory of 250 MB which was enough for holding up 200 non-illustrated titles. This memory could however be expanded with the help of an SD memory card.
The first amazon kindle device was followed by the amazon kindle 2, which was launched in February this year. This equipment was available for sale at a retail price of $359, which was lowered to $299 in July 2009. This new portable ebook reader featured a 6-level grayscale display, apart from faster page refreshing as well as improved battery life. The Kindle 2 comes with 2 GB of internal memory and can hold around 1500 non-illustrated titles. It however, does not feature an SD memory card slot, unlike the earlier model.
The stride of the kindle did not stop with the kindle 2 and May 2009, was marked by an announcement of the arrival of amazon kindle dx, which was stated at a retail price of $489 and was released in June. A sleeker design with 4 GB internal memory, to hold 3500 non-illustrated titles, 9.7 inch display, built-in stereo speakers, as well as 1xRTT wireless technology are some major feature, which makes it the best ebook reader on the market today.
As it is, the kindle will be available with a lot of new models in future, each one carrying forward the legacy of perfection, with which amazon is often associated with.