photo credit: Rego – twitter.com/w3bdesign

First things first, I have not seen the Apple iPad.  I am an enthusiastic owner of an Amazon Kindle.  I honestly don’t see what the hype is about.  Granted, I never do with Apple products, but I can’t even see it from Apple’s point of view this time.  The Kindle is perfect at what it does, largely because it doesn’t do that much.  You read order, download, and read books on it.  Period.  The Kindle does that effortlessly and the e-ink is easier to read than paper.  The pages are consistently sized (an under-reported feature of the Kindle that helps quite a bit) and the battery lasts forever.  The Kindle also weighs almost nothing and you do not have to choose between it and a laptop in terms of weight or space.  In sum, the Kindle solves the problem of “I want to read something” quite well.

What problem does the iPad solve?  It will have the low battery life of anything with an actual monitor, so it can’t go that long without being charged, so add in the bulkiness of a charger 40% of the time to the transport of the unit.  It is harder to read (again, relative to the Kindle) so that’s another strike against it.

Perhaps I’m reading this wrong, maybe the competitor isn’t the Kindle, but rather some segment of the iPhone market.  Perhaps there is some segment of the world that is clamoring for multimedia computing power that is available while in motion.  But the obscurity of the Microsoft Tablet OS/PC indicates that there are not legions of people clamoring for walkable computing power.

Happily no one’s products depend on me, so good luck Apple.

This Christmas I succumb to pressure and purchase a Kindle. First thoughts

The Good

• The clarity is superb
• The Kindle screen increases readability slightly compared to the printed page
• The Kindle page is slightly smaller than an ordinary paperback page. This was nice actually.
• The software is intuitive
• It arrives pre-setup for the most part
• Taking notes is quite easy and easy to review
• The dictionary feature is wonderful

The Bad

• It is far too easy to purchase books accidentally. The purchases are reversible
• They should include a cover and light as accessories. Those two items are essential to the safe operating of the Kindle (the cover anyway) and are not included with the Kindle.

On the whole, the Kindle is wonderful and I reccomend it to everyone.