Author:  Jim Cobb

I always knew I’d get an e-reader. I read all the time, everywhere and I tend to read big, heavy hardbacks. Lugging them around at my age can be positively unhealthy. Yet, I’ve been caught on the “bleeding edge” of technology too often to dive right in to the concept. I waited for the technology to settle down, prices to drop and, most of all, the iPad.

While waiting for Steve Jobs to sweep me of my feet, I checked out some of the older offerings. Barnes & Noble has the Nook which seemed to be nice, but Barnes & Nobles ripped me off once and I’m still mad. Borders is a nice company but their Sony reader is unimpressive. Amazon has been pushing the Kindle at me for months. I have a good relationship with Amazon, but I wanted to see how the iPad would scoop everything.

I watched Jobs’ premier of the iPad on the Net, waiting for the magic word that would sweep all other e-readers away. That word never came; nothing about the price of books and who would provide them. Many features I never wanted were there but not PDF. The low-end model cost twice as much as the low-end on older e-readers. Sorry, Steve, underwhelmed again.

True to your School

I’ve been spending most of my retirement money at Amazon since 1995. I’ve been treated well by them and, after iPad’s disappointing arrival, I took the plunge for the $260 low-end Kindle Global. This model is beige, measuring 8" x 5.3" x 0.36" with a 6” diagonal monochrome viewing area. A larger model is available for $498. Simple navigation is done with “Next” and “Previous” tabs on the left and “Next”, “Home”, “Back” and “Menu” tabs on the right. A small keyboard is at the bottom and should be fine for the people who text. Clumsier folk like me can still use it with hunt and peck. A key there can change fonts, words-per-line and have text-to-speak for some books. The male and female voices are nice and earbuds may be used. A spring-loaded slide button at the top wakes an inactive screen up and shuts the unit off.

The key to navigation is a stubby button on the right that pushes four ways and down.  Using it with the menu, one can go to the on-line net store to buy and download books in 60 seconds, move around and search a book, add bookmarks, notes and highlights. Notes are retrieved from “Home” which lists everything loaded on to the machine. The only nit is that pressure down on the stub must be straight down and heavy; otherwise, the cursor moves.

Reading is surprisingly easy with the default settings. Backlit, the e-Ink font can be read in dim surroundings like bars or in direct sunlight in beer gardens, thus spanning the poles of my habitat. The Kindle is very light and a $6 plastic cover doesn’t hinder the tabs. The screensavers are delightful and maps and drawings show up well; photos aren’t in the books so illustrations still need to be handled better.  The screen also shows connections bars for the proprietary Whispernet and an icon showing battery levels.

Batteries bring up the purely technical issues. The Kindle uses a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that can go a week without recharging. The unit comes with a USB 2.0 cable with an AC/DC adapter plug. The battery can be re-charged either from an outlet or a computer USB port. When plugged into a computer, the Kindle turns into a two GB hard drive, allowing transfer between machines – and the Kindle reads PDFs. A large, friendly on-line community will provide many tips and tricks for extending battery life and maintenance.

All This with No Lifting

The big questions are what can customers get and at what cost. The answers are a lot and cheap. The wireless Kindle store is supposedly accessible almost anywhere in the world and not dependent on WiFi spots. However, some areas still have connectivity problems. A workaround is to buy the product on a computer and transfer it to the Kindle via the USB cable. Once connected, the screen opens to the customer’s home page at Amazon with the typical selection of favorites. The keyboard allows searches as usual. Readers can choose from 116 newspapers from all over the world, most offering two-week trial subscriptions. Magazine offerings amount to 52 and the blogosphere runs into the thousands. One-and-a-half million books are available for free and most top-sellers are $9.99. I downloaded the complete works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Josepheus for free as well as the Bible. For pennies more, some of the editions come with hot-linked table of contents. Not all books are cheap: I bought Gabriel’s Military History of Ancient Israel for $70 but that was still $20 less than the used print price.  My favorite example is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. I have the unabridged hard copy version in three massive copies. I’d rather take an elderly Jarhead on in close combat than wrestle one of those tomes. Instead, I can hold the same thing in my hand for $4.35.  The Kindle can store 1,500 books. However, readers can delete books from their unit to have them archived at Amazon for future use.

Readers who want to see a comparison between the Kindle and Nook can watch this vide http://reviews.cnet.com/2722-3508_7-537.html?tag=smallCarouselArea.0 . “Life changing” is an over-used, nebulous phrase. However, the Kindle has made my life much easier. I encourage all to give it a look.

About the Author

Jim Cobb has been playing board wargames since 1961 and computer wargames since 1982. He has been writing incessantly since 1993 to keep his mind off the drivel he deals with as a bureaucrat. He has published in Wargamers Monthly, Computer Gaming World, Computer Games Magazine, Computer Games Online, CombatSim, Armchair General, Subsim, Strategyzone Online, Gamesquad and Gaming Chronicle.

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