Yeah, I'm a year late and reviewing a discontinued device. But I've had this thing about a month and have finished, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 novels so far. I thought I'd share my impressions of the device, in case somebody is also looking to buy the K1 relic.
I'd been wanting a digital reader for a long time and really wanted the Sony 505. But the release of the Kindle 2 spurred a lot of Craigslist K1 availability and I found a nearly new one for cheap and couldn't pass it up.
BOOKS -
Almost all of the books I've read have been 'free' from project Gutenberg, or were converted LIT books I already owned. I have also figured out how to convert public library ebooks to the Kindle. Maybe the DRM police will take me away for saying so, but I don't care.
Converted .LIT books look wonderful. .MOBI books of course are perfect. PDF books are hit and miss. Some have been good, others have so many formatting errors they're unreadable.
At any rate, I've found that the Amazon store if very easy to use and the prices are low. The books I've bought have been formatted well and were delivered quickly and easily, just as advertised.
In
general, formatting of ebooks is not very good. It's pretty rare these days to find formatting errors in a printed book, but not so in ebooks. I suspect all of the conversion to new formats is happening without a lot of proofing.
I am aware of the DRM evil and have contributed my thoughts on this in other threads so I'll leave it alone for now.
I have not subscribed to any RSS feeds or newspapers and I doubt I will, I'll probably use it only for reading books.
DEVICE -
The device itself is very nice. It's easy to hold and just
feels like it's well built. About the page forward/back buttons being hit accidentally - it's true. It's almost impossible not to hit them by accident. It's irritating.
The internal memory seems large enough to contain at least 5 or 6 'pages' of books, maybe more (maybe 75-100 books?) This to me is more than enough. The Kindle was obviously designed to be a reading device, not a mass storage device. In other words you're supposed to keep your entire library somewhere else, like Amazon or your computer. I know a lot of people prefer to keep ALL of their books on the Kindle, but personally I don't see the need. I like to read at most two books at any time, but I much prefer only one. Of course, you can plug in a memory card and store a huge library if you want to.
I never thought I'd use the Dictionary, but I find myself using it more and more. In fact now it's probably my favorite feature. I guess my vocabulary isn't as vast as I thought it was.
My biggest gripe so far is the lack of some kind of built-in light. I read at night mostly and try not to awaken my wife. I use the paperback-sized Light Wedge now and it works OK.
I understand a backlight isn't feasible with these devices but I'd love to see some kind of built-in light that shines down on the screen. My Thinkpad laptop has a small light built in above the screen that illuminates the keyboard. Something like this would be great on the next Kindle.
OVERALL
I called it a 'relic' because once the K2 came out the K1 seemed to be forgotten. But it's of course perfectly usable and still a great device. Personally I like the Kindle and intend to use it until something massively better comes along. I suspect that'll be 3 or more years. I'm glad I can easily replace the battery to keep it running, or add memory.
I find myself reading more than I used to, mainly because it's so much easier to get new books. With two small kids, work and hobbies it's sometimes very difficult to get to a book store or a library. With an ebook reader all that legwork is gone. Without even using the Amazon store I've been able to tap into a huge number of classic works I probably wouldn't have read otherwise.
With printed books I would almost never buy hardcover. Now, with prices around $10 I can be part of the 'cool crowd' and read first-run books at a fair price.
I am a techie by trade and nature so I had no trouble converting from paper to ebooks. But now I'm becoming nostalgic for paper books. What will happen in ten years? Will my MOBI and LIT books be even remotely usable? I know that my old books will be.
I should also give a plug to Calibre. Without it, managing an ebook library by hand would be a major pain. I would urge people to use it and donate to the author, who is actively supporting it. I think he releases a new version every week or so. It's also in the Ubuntu repository for 9.04! I'm running the beta.
In general I'm very happy with the Kindle. It was expensive (even bought used), but I read more. That's pretty much the bottom line - I read more. There isn't a person out there who couldn't use LESS television and although I watch it very seldom, I'm very happy to be reading more books.
Greg