Quote:
Originally Posted by ski_power
I'd love to know of what you think are flaws for a first timer. The one thing I can think is the page flash.
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I recently got a Kindle 3, as the first and only e-book reader I've owned. I've been really skeptical about e-readers, but as I'll possibly be moving to another continent next year, I figured it may be time to wean myself off of space-taking physical books, just as I did with music. (That and the $140 price tag really put it into impulse purchase territory, especially considering I'll eventually make up the cost through cheaper book prices and not having to pay shipping.)
At least when reading books, the screen flash is a non-issue. I noticed it at first, but after a few minutes, I didn't even notice it anymore - much like I don't notice it when I turn a page when reading a physical book. I notice it more when using the web browser, but that's understandable as I'm doing more paging and scrolling about the screen and such.
I also don't really find myself lacking for a bookshelf view. Whenever I reach for my Kindle, I already know what I want to read on it, and since it will usually be something I had recently been reading or have recently purchased or loaded, it will be right there on the front page. Also consider that, from a UI perspective, the Kindle's list is one-dimensional; we can navigate through it using only the up and down keys on the five-way button (or whatever it's called). Presumably we'd need to use the left and right keys also to navigate a two-dimensional bookshelf view. I suppose we could meet halfway and just have the book cover art appear next to the book titles in the one-dimensional list, but as I said, I'm not really suffering without them. (The iPad's touch interface makes the one-dimensional/two-dimensional thing less of an issue, and its higher resolution gives more room for book art.)
So those are things I don't mind. What do I mind? First and foremost is that the previous/next page buttons seem unnecessarily small and hard to press… at least until I figured out they were best pressed at sort of a diagonal angle inwards instead of straight down. But what is my non-tech-savvy mother going to do? She's going to see the button on the face of the unit and try to press it straight down, which, unless you're pressing on the outside edge of the button, doesn't work too well. Also, couldn't the buttons have taken up more space on the face of the unit? There's a lot of empty space between the buttons and the screen. Seeing pictures of other Kindle models, it definitely looks like they've shrunk…
On other button-related issues, using the keyboard is pretty miserable. I can actually type at a pretty good speed on it… until things come to a screeching halt because I want to type a comma or a slash or a @ sign or a freaking number and have to get the SYM key involved. (Yes, I figured out the trick with Alt-Q, Alt-W etc, but even then it can be painful… Let's see, which one is eight? One, two, three, four…) Also, at times, there's a notable lag between typing and when the characters appear on the screen, which can be annoying.
The PDF reading capability is neat, but it seems sort of useless for longer texts due to the lack of reflow or flexible zooming.
Screen-wise, I'm mostly satisfied, though I wish the background were more white. The contrast between paper and ink just isn't there. For text, it seems to be good enough, but I sometimes had a hard time making out illustrations, and I think the lack of contrast is the main issue.
I have more praise and complaints with regards to the music player and web browser features, but since they're both experimental and this message is getting into tl;dr territory, I'll reserve them for now. But I will say that I'd like to see both features developed further.
Finally, a question from a Kindle novice to veterans; how do system updates work on this thing? Do they download and install themselves? Will it show me any notification when this happens?