But I had a little windfall from Uncle Ernie (the Premium Bonds computer, not the one from the Who's 'Tommy' who fiddles about (only a hundred quid: sorry I can't help with that poor kid with terminal cancer who's using your personal bank account to save up for that trip to Disneyland) and I thought I could risk splashing out on a toy which might end up gathering dust.
I could not have been more wrong about the level of use: I haven't had a technological thingamajig give me so much pleasure since I was first introduced to the Rampant Rabbit©.
One design flaw in the 'Book©' , certainly in its paperback incarnation, is the difficulty posed by simultaneously shovelling chunks of Tesco Finest Pepperoni Pizza down one's gullet and turning pages without either smearing said tome with anchovy or losing your place. The Kindle, however, will happily sit in the place adjacent to the plate occupied in Michelin endorsed eating establishments by the more esoteric cutlery remaining on the required page until encouraged to move on by the merest twitch of the pinky.
And its handy in bed. (Sadly reading being just about the only form of sub-duvet recreation I can manage nowadays.) Indeed its petite frame and negligible weight mean it can be used just about anywhere while doing almost anything.
Battery life is absurdly long: after about a month of near-incessant use I recharged because I felt I ought rather than any demand issuing from the device. Controls are laid out to feel comfortable and intuitive so despite their looking dauntingly small this reader was soon zipping along like a pre-teen on an X-box.
Documentation is clear, meaning that even fresh from the box there's relatively little likelihood of the "How do I make this bleeping thing work," tantrums which often sour the early days of the relationship with a new electronic homemate: it does work and pressing a button does what you would expect it to do.
The display is remarkably easy to read - the font size is adjustable for those with less than perfect vision - and reflection is not a problem.
One of the few things I remember being taught at university is that books are not fetish objects to be revered: they're tools to be used and so annotate. The Kindle gives you the tools to highlight text, make your own annotations and save favourite passages. (One flaw I've found in the instructions is here: I know how to save passages but the documentation isn't so clear on how to remove items without junking the whole 'My Clippings', so until someone can help I seem to be stuck with three copies of the Table of Contents of one book I inadvertently made while getting to grips with this feature.
The best thing is the capacity. Whenever I venture from my burrow I can take up to 3500 books with me. Nevermore a train journey blighted by the station bookstore with the mind-boggling choice of either the latest Dan Brown opus or 'Jeremy Clarkson's Book of Prangs.
There's an enormous and rapidly growing selection of books available, even better many out of copyright works are available free, even more are available at a nominal cost - there is a choice of comprehensive editions of' 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' for less than two quid, as an example. And talking of cheap reads, the Kindle appears to be (cue ominous music) "changing the face of publishing". Will publishing end up looking like one of those middle aged actresses whose face appears to have been applied via shrink-wrapping?
No comments:
Post a Comment