Reviews Blogged

This review is not about the specs of a particular Kindle model. It is about how I use my Kindle (which happens to be a Kindle DX) on a daily basis and how it has benefited my working life.

On average I read a tech book per month. I would normally buy my books from Amazon or occasionally head out to my local Borders (which has since closed) or Waterstones store and have a browse through their shelves.  When ordering from Amazon the titles would normally take two or three days to arrive. I like to read tech manuals cover to cover occasionally skimming chapters which are of little interest to me. As I progress through a book I make short notes on the inside front cover so I can reference pages of interest at a later date. As a programmer I need to reference things I have read all the time. Sure Google is wonderful for quick searches and snippets of code I can rip but all too often I find myself digging through my tech library of books trying to track down something I have read in the past. My hand writing has always been terrible (give me a keyboard over a pen always) and when I jot down my notes balancing a book on my knees the output is often an illegible squiggle. First I have to remember what book it was that I actually read in the first place which contains a distant memory of a piece of information that may possibly help me with whatever project I am currently working on. Then I check my often illegible squiggles inside the cover and hopefully find what I’m looking for. That was all before I purchased my Kindle. I had been looking into Kindles for a while. What put me off was the size of their screens. A mere 6 inch display just seemed too small for my usual reading which could contain screen shots of code or workflow diagrams. I held out until the Kindle DX was released in the UK at the end of January 2010. The DX boasted a bigger screen so I treated myself to my very first ebook reader.

Kindle DX Display

9.7 in diagonal (5.4″ (137 mm) x 7.9″ (201 mm)),

824 × 1200 pixels or 0.99 megapixels,

150 ppi,

16-level grayscale

electronic paper

On turning my Kindle on I found the menu very user friendly and easy to navigate. The Kindle manual is of course on the device already so that was the first ebook I read. I then easily navigated over to the Amazon Kindle store and was pleasantly surprised when I saw how many tech titles the store contained. Also the prices are cheaper as there is no book to print and publish etc. After a quick browse I purchased my first ebook. Within a minute the title was on my device and I was reading it. Far better than having to wait days to get your hands on your book. With a recent firmware update (July 2010) you can now also group books on the Kindle under your own folders which makes organising your ebooks that little bit easier on the device.

Some might say that there is no point in having a Kindle when you could have an iPad. In my opinion that is wrong. Im lucky enough to own a Kindle and an iPad and yes you can read books on the iPad but the Kindle is primarily designed as an ebook reader first. The fact that it doesn’t have a back lit screen and uses electronic paper is far easier on the readers eyes. Its true that you cant read the Kindle in the dark but neither can you read a book without adequate lighting. Either use a table lamp or light of some sort or better still invest in the Kandle. At the time or this writing I could only find the Kandle available for purchase in the US but luckily I have a friend who travels to the US frequently and he picked one up for me (cheers Chris).

Of course the iPad has many strengths over the Kindle but reading books, believe me, is not one of them.

Then there is Whispernet \ Whispersync. This is a powerful technology that syncs the last page you read across your Kindle devices. It also syncs any bookmarks or notes you have made. This has proved incredibly useful in my line of work. The Kindle client software can be downloaded free for a number of platforms including PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. Making notes on the Kindle couldn’t be any simpler. You navigate to the text you want to highlight using the navigation joystick (or nipple as I call it) then click the nipple down. This is the start of the text you are making a note or bookmark about. Then navigate to the end of the text or picture you want to note and click again and that’s it. No pen or knee balanced squiggles required. So now I can buy and download books in seconds, read them on my DX and highlight points of interest. My digital book library is synced across all my devices so I can pull my iPhone out and have instant access to all my books wherever I am and continue reading from wherever I left off.

The real game changer for my work life has been I can access the notes I made on my kindle directly from my PC using the Kindle client software search feature. What’s more, I can even copy and paste code snippets directly from my ebooks directly into the project I’m working on. In summary, my Kindle has changed the way I work.