I love a book, actually several books if I’m away for any length of time. You can get lost in a good book (much the same as I can get lost in secondhand bookshops!) so when my wife started hinting about the Amazon Kindle at Christmas I went looking…. We’re now a month after Christmas but it’s better late than never!
Reviews of the technical features, the screen, the Kindle store and any other feature of the Kindle have been done to death – so I’m not even going to discuss them… I just wanted to chat about the how’s and why of how I’ll be using it.
Firstly it means I won’t have to pack seven paperbacks for a week away, and with our first child well on the way that’s got tbe a good idea!!
Secondly it’s not all about the books! Let me explain….
I’ve bought a few books for it, downloaded the free classics and I will be reading them, that’s what the Kindle was invented for. However for me the biggest thing was being able to use InstaPaper with it, and sending PDF’s to it.
When you register your Kindle you are given an email address for it and can setup authorised emails that can send to it. If you have the 3G version (I don’t!) you may be charged for what is sent to your Kindle via this method – so check that before you go doing any of this.
PDF’s
I don’t print most things, I have a PDF printer driver that can combine prints into one large PDF. So I highlight all the things I want to read hit the print button and select combine, a PDF is on my desktop in seconds that I can simply email to my Kindle, it’s synced onto it in seconds.
Instapaper
I’m a huge fan of Instapaper.com, I’ve setup their “Read Later” javascript button in all my browser toolbars across all my machine. If I see something I want to read later I just click it (this has removed me emailing myself all the time – clearly the first sign of madness!). It’s then available on the Instapaper site, from there it’s available on my iPod Touch and Android phone.
Now it’s available on my Kindle, it appears as a periodical and updates itself everytime I add new items – fantastic! The only downside I’ve found to this is there is no two-way sync to tell the website what I’ve already read – I’d love to find a way of doing that as well on the Kindle but as I use it offline I guess it’s something I’ll have to live with and do manually!
You know, I got a Kindle about 8 months ago and I went on a reading spree for the first 4 months. I haven’t touched it since…maybe I should get back into it or donate it to someone who needs it more than I. I’ll check out your links and see if I can rekindle (lol) my lost love of my Kindle. Thanks!
My sister has one like it and are very well made machines. They are like books, not flashing the image. Note that it is not a screen. It’s all very quiet and gives great peace reading. Just like a real book.
The biggest thing keeping me from purchasing a Kindle is the lack of color. Eventually I think I’ll wind up getting a solid pdf reader as the prices go down and the technology improves
The beauty of the black and white screen is the battery life.. I don’t want distractions, games and pretty pictures – I want a good book 🙂 If I wanted the other things I’d probably have an iPad.
Fully agree with this – I absolutely love my Kindle. Huge battery life, great selection of books, easy on my 9 hours a day computer seared eyes. My old book collection has gone and I’ve got loads of shelf space back.
Although, get the official Kindle leather case with the reading light built in; I broke my first Kindle by sticking it in my back pocket and sitting down….
Hi Kieren,
I wouldn’t say it’s replaced all the books on my shelf yet… That would be a costly exercise they’re two deep in places!!
I’ve got a normal booklight I could use I suspect if I needed to!