The Kindle: A Review and a Recipe for Survival

I checked out a Kindle 2 from work a couple weeks ago. I love books and I love reading. I like the feel of paper pages and the durability of a good book. I find I can't read extended works on computer screens because of problems with eye strain. Can the Kindle overcome these roadblocks and help me better appreciate digital texts?

While using the Kindle for reading is quite unlike reading a book, it does allow one to read text and view black and white images quite clearly in even low light without any of the eye strain associated with traditional electronic displays, like LCD or CRT displays. The E Ink display is indeed clear and crisp, and the Kindle itself is thin and light. I read through several novels on it with no headaches. I tackled a novel by a friend of a friend on the device and the first 11 Conan novels by Robert E. Howard. Because the display only draws power when it changes or is updated I only had to charge the device once, when I first got it.

While the Kindle is reportedly not as friendly to ebook formats as the current crop of Sony Readers, the new firmware allows it to view PDF files in addition to its native format and unprotected MobiPocket files. Have a Word document you need to read? Just use the MobiPocket Publisher program to convert your Word document to MobiPocket format and transfer it over. To the computer the device shows up as a flash drive with a few preset directories, and with 4 GiB total storage there's more than enough room for whatever textual materials you want to throw at it.

The kindle remembers your last location in each of the ebooks contained on it and allows you to create a number of bookmarks for each ebook. Further, you can highlight passages for later reference. There is a QWERTY keyboard of sorts on the face of the reader below the screen that lets you enter text, especially useful when utilizing the device's search function, which allows you to find words within the ebooks.

It is not without flaws, however. The E Ink display is slow to refresh, a problem not, reportedly, unique to the Kindle. As time goes by and the technology develops I'm sure refresh times will improve. As the screen is now it's not a problem, really, but the refresh delay is quite noticeable. You can't scroll the documents you view but only navigate a page at a time, much like with a real book. Another gripe is that too much of the face is devoted to the QWERTY keyboard, making the device larger than necessary. This is just a symptom of a larger problem: the device tries to be too much. The result is that many of the functions don't work as well as on a dedicated device and the Kindle carries too high a price tag. At $260 the Kindle is a luxury. "But it does so much," you say. "It allows you to buy books via the cellular connection on the go and it can read books out loud and play MP3 files, and who knows what else! Amazon's even making an app store for it!" I explored the narration via text to speech functionality and found it lacking. It's reluctant to activate and sounds, as expected, relatively computerized. The device also has trouble with MP3 files, playing them back with some odd noise in the background.

As it is now, the Kindle 2 is a device meant for people with disposable income. This device simply isn't ready for the masses. We already have cell phones that try to do everything, we don't need a second device to lug around. Rather, I think the future of the e-reader market is dependent upon appealing to the masses. Many technology bloggers think the future of the ereader is in the same direction the cell phone has gone: a multifunction computing device with various apps that has moved from being an effective phone to a portable digital gadget that just happens to offer passage phone capabilities. They see the ereader as needing app stores and touch screen capabilities and all sorts of other add-ons. I say anything that increases the cost and brings it into competition with cell phones is a bad thing.

No, the recipe for success is to simplify. We need a reliable, durable, and above all affordable device that does what it does well, rather than many things in a mediocre fashion. I think manufacturers need to push toward making the wonderful E Ink display technology cheaper. The device that finally throws open the doors will be an e-reader that comes in below $100 and doesn't try to be everything to everyone. It needs to have a large enough display and a clear enough E Ink screen, and basic navigation buttons. It would be a shame to lose search functions, but those are not necessary for most books, I suspect, so the QWERTY keyboard can go. Cell phone and wireless capabilities are also unnecessary for a basic reader. Playing MP3s is nice, but should only be included if it works flawlessly. Goodness knows much cheaper devices have been doing so for years now.

There will always be a place for a nice, always connected device like the Kindle 2, but such a device is not for me. It has managed to convince me that the technology exists to bring portable ereaders up to par with the book, if not as a replacement as a peer of sorts. The time of digital books is finally, definitively upon us, but success is contingent on a measure of ubiquity, and the only way that will happen is if ereaders successfully carve out their own niche instead of trying to be like every other portable device on the market.