Mar
15

Amazon Kindles Review

Amazon is Pushing e-books back into the limelight with the launch of its $399 Kindle e-book reader and corresponding service. The device leaves some room for improvement, but it has succeeded in renewing my interest in reading e-books.

The Kindle comes with 180 MB of user-accessible memory (Which the company says can hold about 200 books) and support SD cards up to 2GB. Instead of an LCD, a 6-inch electronic-paper display from E Ink occupies the top portion of the reader. The monochrome display – Which is designed to save power – supports four levels of grayscale, but no color. The screen was easy to read in most circumstances, except in dim lighting, as it lacks of backlight.

I found the Kindle’s design finger-friendly. A rubberized surface on the back of the device makes it comfortable to grasp, and the unit’s thickness tapers from left to right, so it’s easy to hold.

What’s especially notable about the Kindle, though, is its integraded 3G cellular radio, which allows the device to connect to Amazon’s Whispernet EvDO service for wireless tranmission of e-books. You don’t need a PC to make a purchase: Just browse the Kindle store and downloadyour reading material. Books take less than a minute to download, and their prices vary; new realeses cost $10. At launch, the Kindle store offered about 90,000 titles

The Kindle includes a basic Web browser intended for use with text pages, not graphics-heavy sites. It’s handy for quick news, weather, or Wikipedia lookups. Not as usefull is the Kindle’s stab at daily relevance with its newspaper and blog delivery, in which Amazon charges you for services available elsewhere for free on the Web. You can subscribe to various newspapers, blogs and magazines.

The Kindle’s design won’t wow anyone, but its usability touches alone are enough to make me consider buying an e-books reader.

Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device Buy Now!