Kindle - First week with an e-reader
- Ryan Hammoud
- Dec 28, 2016
- 3 min read
Merry (late) Christmas everyone!
This past week, I purchased the latest 8th generation 6 inch Kindle from Amazon.
Before getting my hands on the device, I was already slightly annoyed with Amazon's decision to charge an extra £10 for the Kindle without "special offers".
After paying a starting price of £56.99, I shouldn't be forced to endure Amazon's "special offer" advertisments on the the device. Sure, £56.99 isn't incredibly expensive for a entry level e-reader, but it still makes feels like they are trying to scam customers into paying an extra £10 to take control of their newly purchased device.
Unboxing the package revealed the device on the top, a micro-usb cable underneath, and two tiny pages of set-up instructions.
Set-up was a breeze. The device came already charged (about 50%) and just required powering it up, and connecting it to your WiFi network. The touchscreen and onscreen keyboard, initially used to select my WiFi network and type in the password, were much better than expected (I didn't have high hopes).
If you ordered the device from Amazon, you can have it pre-linked to your Amazon account during the ordering process, so there was no need for that. If you don't have it pre-linked, all you need to do is sign into your Amazon account, and set-up is complete.
Now time to start reading!
I have a few books on my laptop in ePub format and was disappointed that the Kindle was not compatible with the format. However, I downloaded an application for Mac OSX (I believe it is also on Windows) called Calibre, which can be used to organise my entire book library, and also will detect the Kindle or any other e-book reader, and convert the books to the correct format and send them to the device.
Once I did that, I had all my books, saved on my Mac, now on the Kindle, (including the book covers!).
Reading on the Kindle is simply a joy. This was my first prolonged encounter with an e-ink screen. And after getting used to seeing something that looks like ink on a paper, move, I was amazed by the quality of the text and the ease of use while reading. (Image below taken from Amazon UK, comparing e-ink, paper, and LCD text)
After being accustomed to reading on an LCD screen, regardless of the resolution, having no backlight, beaming light into my eyes, felt insanely relaxing. I was really enjoying reading. The only way I can describe it is to imagine reading something off a piece of paper, and having the text on the paper disappear and reappear whenever you are done reading the page.
I was also very happy with the size of the Kindle. The fact that it is lighter, thinner, smaller, than most books, and can store thousands of books in the memory, make this an ideal device to travel with. I could easily hold the device up for hours and hours while reading and experience minimal fatigue. I find that reading a book, especially a heavy book, can be quite annoying after some time, and the Kindle completely eliminates that issue. If I could mention one improvement for the device would be to make the left and right bezels thicker, so that I could rest my thumbs on it, instead of having the bottom bezel being the thickest.
The added bonus of the device is it's PDF support and ability to sync with my reference management software, Mendeley, allowing me to read my endless numbers of neuroscience journals on it without having the issue of staring at a screen all day. Despite the beautiful retina display on my Macbook Pro, reading on a Kindle display presents itself as a much better option.
I would highly recommend this device.
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