Reasons why I love my Kindle 3>

A few days back, I announced the arrival of my Kindle 3 and also blogged on Amazon shipping to Mauritius (for some items). Loads among you have been asking for a yashvinblogs.com review of this wonderful piece of technology. Before proceeding to the review : 2 of my friends already purchased theirs at nearly the same time as me and I can say in advance that after reading this review, you will most probably want to grab one immediately!

Don’t forget the video at the end!

A Kindle? An Ipad/Galaxy is much better!

Just like you need a speaker for playing sounds or a fridge to keep your items cold, the Kindle is among those things which you purchase only if you have a specific need in your mind. Can you think about doing anything else with a speaker or a fridge? Similarly, the Kindle is made for book addicts. Nothing more, except a few experimental features, we will come to that later…

You want to surf on the Net or play games, Apple’s Ipad or the Samsung’s Galaxy Tab might be made for you. So, don’t come and tell me the advantages of having one of those devices, I simply don’t need any of their extras.

Key features

Talking about the specs of this ebook reader, here are a few :

• 241grms, 190 mm x 123 mm x 8.5 mm
• 6″ E-Ink screen at a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels (simply impressive)
• 4GB internal storage capacity (abt 3GB available for book storage)
• Long battery life (up to 3-4 weeks, depending on usage)
• Text to Speech (Choose a male/female voice to read your book)
• WIFI
• Built in dictionary
• 3.5mm stereo earphone jack + stereo speakers at the back
• Microphone ( Amazon included one even though it does not offer any feature to use it right now. Perhaps they might be planning to release software upgrades (which are automatically installed) later on to add voice notes, who knows?)

These are only a few of them, there are loads more. As compared to previous Kindle generations, the Kindle 3 is lighter, thinner, better screen contrast, more storage, enhanced and new features and faster page turns, among others.

Yes, that’s a screen…

There’s no way you can compare the display of a Kindle to anything else. Displaying only in monochrome, the Kindle offers a pleasing experience with its unique and advanced E-ink technology. No eye strain, no glare even in bright sunlight (as shown in the first picture of this post).

You find the font too small or the lines too close together? Just press the “Aa” key and adjust your display.

You can even read your books in landscape mode as well!

E-what?

The E-Ink (electronic ink) is very similar to the ink used in the traditional books you know, to one difference. As the name suggests, the ink is spread electronically over the plastic display, giving a printed text like result. To sum up what I read on the net :

“Electronic ink is made up of millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. Each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a positive or negative electric field is applied, corresponding particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white or black at that spot.” [Link]

That’s explains a bit how the Kindle device can have such a long battery life (3-4 weeks) and the B&W display . While idle, absolutely no power consumption is required. However, when you change page, an electric field is needed.

Mobility

Not later than today, I had to travel to Port Louis by bus. I took a seat, paid the fare, took out my Kindle and continued reading my text book. No hassle about finding which book I was reading previously or even page I reached, the Kindle had everything saved in its mind. Just wake it up, that’s all you need to do.

Now, imagine yourself, sun bathing on the beach, reading one of your favorite classics or in a classroom (or lecture), pressing the previous or next buttons while all your class mates are busy going through a bundle of papers.

You will be The Geek, with everyone glaring at you with envy!

Never miss an important quote!

Did you just come across some interesting fact or need to add a small note for whatever reason? Use the physical QWERTY keyboard and the 5 way controller to move your cursor over the screen to select the text and highlight or add some note to it.

Access your highlighted or notes via the menu at anytime. Press “ALT + Enter” at anytime to share the selected text on Twitter or Facebook!

Increase your knowledge

Move your pointer over a word, the meaning is instanteneously displayed at the bottom of the screen. Look up for words definition in the dictionary or even on Wikipedia, right from your device.

Turning green

Being green is gaining much importance nowadays. Save thousands of trees by reading your books directly on an electronic device which you need to recharge only after a few weeks.

Buy online and get delivered in less than 60 seconds

I tried it, and it is amazing… Select a free ebook or any book (starting from as low as $0.99) and the book is instantaneously sent to your Kindle. If your device is connected via wifi or 3G, the book automatically appears on your home screen! In case you are not, the book will be available the next time you get onto the net.

Convert your documents on the fly

Although the native support of PDF documents on the latest Kindle, you can easily convert them into a more adapted e-book format for the Kindle.  No need to download any extra software. When you register your device, the latter gets an email address (example : “yourname”@free.kindle.com). Just mail the documents to be converted to the email address with the subject “Convert” and few minutes after, you will

• Get the converted docs on your Kindle if it is connected to the web
• Get a mail with the links to download the document to your computer.

Experimental features

As I said at the beginning of this post, Amazon included 3 experimental features on the latest generation of the Kindle:

• Web browser
• Listen to MP3 playing in the background while reading your book
• With “Text to Speech”, just relax and listen to the voice reading out your text or helping you to navigate through the menus

Price tag

For an additional of $20, DHL delivers the device at your doorstep, in Mauritius. It took only 4days for the reader to reach Mauritius, and 1 day for processing. You might also need to pay 15% VAT. I said “might” because one of my friends got her’s delivered without any extra charges.

I paid my VAT like a good boy and the total price came around Rs5515. Don’t forget to keep an additional budget of $20-$50 to get hold of a case or sleeve to protect your new toy.

What about a video?

In case you wonder if it plays video, the answer is No.

But if you ask to view a small video of the Kindle 3 in my hands, I will happily invite you to watch my demo below or directly from youtube. Covered in this vid : Look and feel of the device + Text-To-Speech feature + Web browsing

My sincere apologies for the annoying sounds of the motorcycles passing by 😛

Some amusing incidents

Before ending this long review, I wish to share a few incidents lol.

1. First use

When DHL dropped the parcel at my office, I immediately ran to my desk to open it (or rather tear the box). It looked like the shot below :

I grabbed it in my hands, and made head and tail to remove the “Amazon Kindle” white paper which you can see above. I looked at every corner, tried to scratch the thing to remove it off the display area so that I could have a look at the real screen.

After a few seconds, I gave up. I told myself that it was better to read the user guide first before I break things. I took the USB cable, plugged it into my laptop and to my surprise, the display changed! YES! It changed! *blush*

The thing you see above is actually the screen, there was no protective cardboard or paper as I blindly believed! I was ashamed of myself lol. But instead of keeping this to myself, I shared it with my colleagues and to you, my dear readers because I believe that I am not the first one trying to scratch the screen (isn’t it Jaya?), despite the Step 1 and Step2 clearly written above! LOL.

2. No, it is not a touch screen!

Guess what was the first action of apprx 99% of the people who got hold of my Kindle?

They swept their fingers across the screen, thinking that it is a touch screen device! One after the other, most of them did exactly the same thing. I finally used this as a kind of test and at each time, I laughed when anyone tried to change pages by touching the screen!

[yashvinblogsfan]

The review ends here…

I really enjoyed the last 3 hours writing this blog article and I sincerely hope that you have a better idea of what is a kindle and how good it is at fulfilling its main purpose, reading ebooks.

If you like this article, I will be most thankful if you LIKE this page and SHARE it on your Facebook profile. And why don’t you join my Facebook Fan page if you haven’t yet? That’s how you gonna make this blog more popular and also, share what you know with your friends.

Any questions or comments, feel free to use the comments section below!

Looking forward to do another review for you soon, till then, keep reading my blog 😉