I've only had it for about 24 hours, so it's early days. Still, my first impressions of this, my first e-reader, are very promising.
Just about everything has gone without a hitch so far. Happily, there was nothing rattling around inside the Kindle when I took it out of the box (a problem that some people here have reported). The first thing I did, before turning the machine on, was to charge it fully; it took less than 2 hours to get the green light. Connecting to my home wireless network was a cinch (once I got the password right
). I don't know if it was necessary or not, but in an abundance of caution I restarted the Kindle after connecting to Wi-Fi; after rebooting, it reconnected to the network hands-off. I kept the unit plugged in for another few hours while it downloaded and indexed 33 books or collections that I had in my Amazon queue. While that was happening, I browsed the dictionary and a few of the downloaded books; however, I avoided trying the browser until indexing was finished as I'd read here that this had caused freeze-ups.
I did try the browser later, visiting nytimes.com, and found it serviceable but not problem-free. "Article mode" is a good idea -- actually, on a 6-inch screen it's indispensable -- but, after switching into Article mode with the beginning of an article on the screen, I found myself in the middle of the article with no evident way to get back to the top (PageUp did not work). Maybe this is a bug, or maybe I'm just missing something.
The heart of the matter is the Pearl screen, which I find to be excellent. When reading with compact-fluorescent or incandescent lighting, it's comfortable; when reading by daylight, as I did on the ferry this morning, it's superb. I'm in the middle of James Bradley's
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, enjoying both the book and the reading experience immensely.
The page-turn buttons are small but, I find, comfortable and quiet. Page turns are quite fast; the flash-to-black is brief and no more distracting than the turn of a physical page. I find it handy to toggle the display into landscape orientation so that I can rest the Kindle on my lap and read while sipping coffee or eating. Flipping to upside-down portrait orientation is convenient if you want to hold the Kindle in your left hand with the front cover bent back all the way around and nestle a couple of fingers between the front and back covers, a position I find comfy. (The leather cover from Amazon folds back easily.)
That's about it for now. Will check back in with further impressions or if I encounter any glitches, but it's been smooth sailing so far.
