Nerd Toy
I bought the new Kindle Paperwhite. It arrived last Thursday. I'm digging it.
I bought a first generation iPod over three years ago and, other than the iPhone that my office provides to me, I hadn't bought a new electronic gadget since. Three years is a lot of time in the world of technology, so maybe my enthusiasm for the Kindle Paperwhite is misplaced, but:
1. The screen is great, absolutely great. I can set it to low settings in the dark, high settings in the bright sun. I'm almost tempted to say that the screen is better than an ordinary book page, but I fear such a statement could be optically absurd.
2. Even though it's wasn't mentioned in any of the literature, the KP contains an "Experimental Browser," which gives me very limited access to the Internet. It's an odd feature. It primarily provides access to all of Wikipedia, but it also allows stunted access to Google, Twitter, Facebook, the NY Times, the BBC, and Amazon, but I can't access any of the links at the other sites. Like I said, it's odd, but neat: I expected no browser capabilities at all, but it comes with Wikipedia, which I often want to access while reading ("Who is . . .?").
3. It allows me to cut-and-paste passages from books for later reproduction in articles, blogs, notebooks, etc. This has always been prohibited, probably for copyright reasons, but it's possible with the KP . . . if you employ its workaround. You have to share through Twitter. So I went ahead and set up a Twitter account for TDE, which you can find here. At this point, I'm just experimenting with the TDE Twitter, so it's nothing great, but feel free to check it out (and hey, you could become the first TDE "Follower"; as of this writing (Sunday night) it has none).
4. I didn't pay the extra $20 to get rid of the ads, and I'm glad I didn't. They don't pop up at all while reading. They're simply on the screensaver, homepage, and library pages (see pic above for how the ad appears in my library--banner ad at the very bottom). And though most are banal, a few have piqued my interest, and they even hooked me into buying one of the Kindle "Deals of the Day" (Hunter Thompson's The Rum Diary, for just $1.99).
5. It contains all the other touted Kindle features: it's small (fits in my front pants pocket), light, easy to hold. It provides "Popular Highlights," which allows you to see what other people have found interesting in the book you're reading (a reliable indicator of worthwhile content, I've found).
In sum, Amazon seems determined to create the greatest reading experience possible. The KP is a major step in that direction.
