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Hi there! Two weeks ago or so, I was finally in the possession of the money to get me a device. I wanted to be able to read Japanese comics on it, and comics in general! And then, I supposed, the occasional book would be alright too. But, I hated battery life on most devices. So short! So, after research, I supposed the Kindle was very attractive. And at a nice price, too!


I got it in last Saturday. Amazon pre-registered it to my account. Awfully nice of them! I turned it on, and checked out the eInk. It was so nifty! It was like looking at a book with menus and stuff! Granted, I was in the menu and not reading anything, but it was nifty. Felt really futuristic.... An electronic book.

Immediately, I went to my favorite section on any device. Settings. I began setting stuff up. Then, I booted up Calibre, a program I've been adjusting myself to for a few months. I had a comic I had converted to .mobi. Very small file size, so I liked it!

Transferred it over, and booted it up. Text was extremely small because the picture wasn't taking up the full screen! I had a toolbar up at the top, and the tool bar at the bottom. I swear I was losing a clean inch and a half due to those toolbars, with no full screen button in sight! I sighed, and put the Kindle in the box. I said to myself, "15 minutes with it, and I'm already ready to return it."

But, I'm a computer guy. And what us computer guys do is.... We tinker. And tinker.

I began converting to PDF. But calibre didn't want to convert them into PDF. Fine! So, I decided to use Mangle. Converted them all into pictures. I was able to full-screen them, and 95% of it was readable! Hurrah! But then I ran into another problem.

I like organizing things into groups and stuff. I wanted a "Manga > [Title] > [Chapter]" setup. But, I couldn't figure out how to group it. Only 1 'collection'! If I put all the chapters of the comic into seperate folders, I'd spend forever scrolling through which I want to read. So, I lumped all the pictures into a single folder, and let Kindle remember where I left off.

I couldn't bookmark a picture, so when I let a friend see it, I told them to not lose my place! Else I'd have to fiddle around and remember where I was by picture, as there was no visual representation of where I left off. No "location" or "picture name" to remember. One time I accidentally set something on the "next page" button. IT scrolled a good 200 pages into the future.

Rather than click hte button 200 pages, I plugged it onto the computer. Mangle creates a "manga.save" file. I often wondered what those files were. I opened it up in notepad++, and sure enough it, it tells the manga where I last was! So, I went into window's explorer and found the picture number I was on, and edited the file. Turned on the Kindle and it was there! Manageable, but cumbersome. Wish there was a bookmarking feature for pictures!


I read that comic for the past week, and finally finished Friday. I decided, "Well, might as well try reading...A book?" Now, I'm not much of a book reader. I went to the kindle store and downloaded one of my favorite books from junior high, "White Fang." and I was amazed. It was just like reading a book! There and everything!

I went to feedbooks and set up an RSS feed, though wasn't happy with it.
Then I set up feedbook's "Kindle User's guide" and mobileread's online schmeal.
But ran into hte problem. I had no idea what I wanted to read. Everything it had was the old pre-1923 book which interested me none.

So, these past two days, with my comic finished, I've been thinking.
I'm more than likely going to return the kindle. There's nothing wrong with the device aside from no bookmarking of pictures, or mobi can't be full-screened, and converting to PDF is finicky.. Those are my only qualms.

But, it's more so that... Well... I don't read enough to warrant such a device! I'd be better off waiting on a sub-$200 7" android tablet running 2.1
The Cruz reader looked promising... Looked.
It's a slow clunker. Blast it!

Archos home tablet's running android 1.5. What a trip! Another one down.

And anything that DOES meet my 2.1 requirements and is speedy... Is either over $300 or just not out yet (or ever will be out.) Why can' they cram a 1 GHz processor into a 7" 2.1 tablet and make it $200? I'd pay up to $230 at this point.

But yes. The kindle has been fun. I've still got 3 weeks to play with it. Maybe I can breathe new life into it. But, I don't quite know how. It's not a multi-purpose device. It reads! So, unless I can motivate myself to read, I don't quite know if I'll be able to use it to it's full potential. Once again, the Kindle's a fabulous product. It's moreso a user-related deficiency!



Also, slightly off topic...
Friday, I found that the kindle does games. so I downloaded "every word." Level 1. The letters were ELADKE. I had to make the longest word to continue?! Shenanigans! I spent 30 minutes trying to figure it out. I had to meet up with a friend to do something right quick. I began telling him about the long word requirement. Then I said, "The letters are something like ' L-E-A-K-E-D'"

I paused..... And wondered if that was an act of some higher power. Went back to my kindle and typed it in, and sure enough. I laughed to myself.