Of course you all knew that I'd plunk down my money to get an Amazon Kindle. I've held off buying a eBook reader for quite a while. The Sony reader looks nice, but it takes a PC (not a Mac) to use it, and Sony's eBook store isn't the thing of my dreams. So when my friend Jeffrey gave a thumbs-up to his new Kindle, I ordered one.
It's a much nicer package than I'd anticipated from looking at pictures of it. It fits the hand beautifully and is very easy to use. (A few nits: the page turning buttons are too easy to hit, and the scroll wheel button is too hard to press. Sigh...) It uses the same electronic paper technology that Sony's reader uses, which means it takes very little power to run. Under good lighting the page actually looks like paper, and it's extremely readable from any angle.
Amazon's Kindle store is a dream. They have over 90,000 books available, and with the built-in wireless receiver you don't need a computer to use it. You don't need a computer network, either, because it runs off of Sprint's wireless data network. I get very good reception here in Cedar Rapids, and the store is effortless to access. I've bought several books so far, and gotten wireless delivery in under two minutes.
Is this a first version? Certainly. But it's an extremely good first version - one that I've been enjoying in the middle of our on-going ice storm.
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