Kindle 3 First Impressions

[zetareticuli]

Any first impressions with Kindle 3. Even though mine has arrived (WiFi + 3G), I have not had any time to use it. I have been spending more hours at work than at home.

[Alisa]

I got mine on Friday night so I've had time to do a fair amount of reading on it. My first impressions:

The screen is gorgeous. I find myself still just staring at it. My K1 looked like a mass market paperback that had been on the shelf a couple years. Perfectly readable but a little dingy. I feel like I'm reading a fresh hardcover with this screen. Well, only it's a lot lighter.

It's quite noticeably faster. Granted I come from a K1 which is pretty pokey. The dictionary lookup is so fast! Page turns are even a little quicker. I have the 3G but AT&T isn't the best in my area. Having the WiFi to take advantage of my fast broadband connection rocks.

It's really thin and light. It's so comfortable to hold.

The lighted cover is very convenient. Some people don't think the light is even enough but it works quite well for me. I like that it turns off automatically when the Kindle goes into sleep mode, I don't need separate batteries, and it's right there when I want it. I usually don't carry the light with me. It stays in my night stand. So if I'm in a low light situation otherwise, I'm out of luck. Now I always have a little light.

The buttons are smaller but well placed. I thought losing the huge buttons would bug me but I like that I can hold the Kindle on the bezel and not accidentally change pages. The placement is such that it's still a mindless flick of the thumb.

Now for the negatives:

Collections are cumbersone. Maybe I haven't found it but I haven't seen a way to manage titles in bulk. Adding a book to a collection takes too many clicks. Also, I haven't seen how I rename a collection. I need to spend a little time with the manual me thinks.

Wikipedia formatting isn't as good as it was in K1. When I searched Wikipedia before, it came up nicely formatted for the Kindle. Maybe it was using the mobile version. Now it comes up in the browser looking like the full web page and I have to manually switch it to article mode. If I click on a link in a Wikipedia article, I have to switch to article mode again. It's slightly annoying.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Collections are cumbersone. Maybe I haven't found it but I haven't seen a way to manage titles in bulk. Adding a book to a collection takes too many clicks. Also, I haven't seen how I rename a collection. I need to spend a little time with the manual me thinks.

Create a collection-->use the right arrow to view it's properties-->select add/remove items and then just select each book you want in the collection.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Create a collection-->use the right arrow to view it's properties-->select add/remove items and then just select each book you want in the collection.

Thanks!

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by zetareticuli

Any first impressions with Kindle 3. Even though mine has arrived (WiFi + 3G), I have not had any time to use it. I have been spending more hours at work than at home.

I've got K2 and DX, US versions.
And I've got DX Graphite and now the new one.
Is it K2 Graphite or is it K3?
Whatever the name, I'm a bit disappointed.
The buttons for turning pages certainly have improved.
But I really hate the smaller 5-way-button.
I don't care about the slightly smaller form factor.
The display is great, but I already knew that from DX Graphite.

So, if I compare:
From DX to DX Graphite definitely is a bigger improvement, than from K2 to K2 Graphite/K3.
Would have expected a bit more...
On its own it's a nice enough reader though...

[dmin7th]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Also, I haven't seen how I rename a collection.

You may have noticed it by now, but when you right-click on a collection there's a Rename Collection option.

[tomsem]

Now for the negatives:

Collections are cumbersone. Maybe I haven't found it but I haven't seen a way to manage titles in bulk. Adding a book to a collection takes too many clicks. Also, I haven't seen how I rename a collection. I need to spend a little time with the manual me thinks.

Wikipedia formatting isn't as good as it was in K1. When I searched Wikipedia before, it came up nicely formatted for the Kindle. Maybe it was using the mobile version. Now it comes up in the browser looking like the full web page and I have to manually switch it to article mode. If I click on a link in a Wikipedia article, I have to switch to article mode again. It's slightly annoying.

If you are migrating from a K2, you can import any existing Collections from it (an option you'll find in 'Archived Items' on the new one), and any Amazon content you pull in from Archived Items will automagically categorize itself in the same collections. You are on your own with 'personal' content and Samples, though. And it is onerous if you have a couple of hundred items that you need to put into one or more collections. Note you can start with an item and add it to 1 or more collections, or start with a collection and go through all of the items to find the ones you want to include in it. But it's still a chore, and some people would prefer a collection scheme based on file system so you could use a computer to drag files around instead. That has its limitations as well though.

rename is easy: find the collection on your home screen, click Right on 5-way, select 'rename collection'.

K1/K2 used 'en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=searchterm' for wikipedia searches launched from the search bar. So that's the 'mobile' interface to wikipedia. I guess they felt confident enough about the new browser to just use the regular version for this purpose, and in any case there's no provision for changing the behavior short of hacking.

I typed in the 'm' URL and it certainly loads much more quickly. But it also doesn't load the entire article, just the summary. You have to click on buttons to bring up additional sections, or on a link at the bottom of the article to load the regular interface with everything shown. Since it is going to be a matter of personal preference as to which of these behaviors is 'best', amazon had to make a choice and risk annoying everyone who would have chosen otherwise. It's not core functionality so a preference setting just for this would be overkill.

Maybe it is not too hard to hack it, though, to restore K2 behavior: just find the 'en.wikipedia.org' string, wherever they keep it, and change it back to what it was on K2. You might post on the Kindle Developer forum here to see if anyone can figure out how to do it.

[matt314159]

Got mine about a half-hour ago.

First impressons:

• Nice, no-slip coating on the body of the kindle, I like!
• Wait, where's the power slider? Oh, that's right, they moved everything to the bottom. I've read enough reviews that I should have remembered that.
• Nice screen, definite cut above my PRS-300 or the K2i that I sold last week.
• But, is it just me, or is the screen more reflective than previous models? I'll be sure to compare it to my PRS-300, but I don't have the k2i to compare directly anymore. Sitting next to a window, I could see my face in the screen. Seems my older models were more matte than this, though could be it's just an exceptionally bright day out or something.
• Webkit Browser is great, lots faster than the k2, and renders pages nicely. Article mod is really cool, too.
• However, navigating pages with lots of graphics, the screen does NOT clear itself as well as it should before displaying the next page. Almost every time I turn a page on the browser, there's a ghost image of the previous page still there, and strong enough to be distracting. I don't remember this from the k2's browser. Seemed like it properly wiped the previous image before displaying the new one.
• I connected to my WPA2 / PSK network just fine, but after doing that, the first time I tried to go into the experimental menu to load the browser, the system crashed, and started rebooting. Stuck itself on that page for a few minutes with no progress moving on the bar, then acted like it power-cycled itself and started over,and this time booted successfully. A little flakey, if you ask me. And I had only loaded one book out of my archive on it. Maybe it was still indexing, but i woudlnt' expect it to be so flakey with only one book on there.
• Page turns are fine if you're sitting up and holding the kindle, but if you're laying reclined and holding the kindle essentially upside-down, it's hard to hold the kindle with your thumb near the page turn buton. I have to hold it beneath the screen instead, it makes holding it while laying down more awkward. with the k2 I could hold it with my thumb right near the page turn button, then just kind of rock my thumb to change pages.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the improvements, but I don't think it's perfect, by any means. Hopefully a lot of the stuff (ghosting) can be fixed with a fw update. Screw the 20% faster page turns, if they're not properly clearing the screen, they need to slow it back down!

That's my two cents for now, after using it maybe 20 minutes total.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by matt314159

Got mine about a half-hour ago.



• However, navigating pages with lots of graphics, the screen does NOT clear itself as well as it should before displaying the next page. Almost every time I turn a page on the browser, there's a ghost image of the previous page still there, and strong enough to be distracting. I don't remember this from the k2's browser. Seemed like it properly wiped the previous image before displaying the new one.

Yes, I'm seeing that too, but I can't say it's any more than K2. I don't notice it when paging straight text. ALT, G (in sequence, or together) refreshes the screen.

[matt314159]

excellent tip, thanks!
sent from my k3

[matt314159]

*edit* might as well make this double-post something useful:

I just got home and compared the screen to my PRS-300 and the glare on the 300 is worse than the K3. I can then infer that it's the same or better than the K2, because i remember the K2 and the PRS-300 being about the same in regards to reflectivity and glare.

It must have just been how near the window I was sitting or something that exacerbated the glare.

[Blackterrier]

Most of my first impressions are shared by others, so I'll only add that the mp3 player is better sounding that I expected, and better than the k1 player, both through the speakers and through earbuds.

[elmoglick]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Yes, I'm seeing that too, but I can't say it's any more than K2. I don't notice it when paging straight text. ALT, G (in sequence, or together) refreshes the screen.

I find it even easier to just quickly double-tap MENU.

[SensualPoet]

My Kindle 3 arrived yesterday. It's remarkable the improvements Amazon has made. I use both the Kindle 2 and Kobo on a daily basis, swapping from one to the other depending on the content at hand (and, occasionally, reading the same novel on each just to experience the differences).

The Kindle 3 contrast is striking -- I was expecting incremental but its more than that. And while the screen size is the same, the "real estate" is larger because the top bar with the title has been removed and the text is allowed to fill the screen -- it results in extra lines.

The font controls are improved: more sizes, a choice of serif and sans serif; and a "condensed serif " mode which allows for a larger font without sacrificing words per line. You can adjust the line spacing as well.

Finally the form factor: Kobo and Kindle 3 are the same size; the Kindle is slightly thinner. In its lighted case, the Kindle 3 now feels like a paperback vs the Kindle 2 which felt like a trade edition.

All these things add up to a significant advance.

(Plus, the wifi only unit is pretty speedy -- relatively speaking -- in browser mode and has a number of useful options to make casual browsing credible vs the tedious 3G browser of Kindle 2.)

Bravo, Amazon!

[pchrist7]

Haven't had that much time yet, but
The screen is superb.
User interface - hmm, so, so, but guess I'll figure it out.
Biggest issue is how to handle series within collections, so www search here I come