Disappointed with K3 - Redux

[bluemoonjules]

e-pub will only win if Amazon adopt it! 65% of all ebooks are bought from Amazon!

[FF2]

Originally Posted by WS64

Choose a different pw.
Like "qscft" (check it on the keyboard and you will see what I mean).
Very easy to enter and hard to guess.

I have not checked the password function on my kindle, no idea if there are some restrictions on the password, but even if there are using a graphical pattern instead of a word should be possible.

Darn - now you know my password! I have thought about changing it but, well, qwerty is so ol' hat. And I still need to find the ENTER key (the 5-way pad does not enter passwords).

But the password was an easy example of the failing of the keys' iconography. Radium ink would have been nice if I did not occasionally have it tucked into my lap

[jlmwrite]

Originally Posted by simplyparticular

To the OP - have you considered any of the new Sony Readers, or the Kobo? Or a Bookeen device? They all offer thumbnail views.

Yep. For about 10 minutes until I finished playing with them. The Kindle is my choice! There a few things I don't like about it, but overall the Kindle is pretty darn great.

[ManosHandsOfFate]

Originally Posted by WS64

Choose a different pw.
Like "qscft" (check it on the keyboard and you will see what I mean).
Very easy to enter and hard to guess.

Ha. I do this with my voicemail passwords on a phone keypad. It's easier to remember a pattern than a number.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by simplyparticular

To the OP - have you considered any of the new Sony Readers, or the Kobo? Or a Bookeen device? They all offer thumbnail views.



I don't purchase or borrow books by their cover, but I certainly like seeing the visual reminder once they have been added to my library for selection.

Also, I think a lot of the people at MR who started e-reading on a E-Ink device have different expectations than those who started e-reading on handhelds. The handheld software options offer more features, like book covers and organization, because it is more mature technology.

*meh* if it's that much of an issue I can go to where I got it from

[whitearrow]

Book covers on an e-ink device just have little meaning for me, and I have no interest in having part of the screen (and battery life) being eaten up by a LCD screen just for book covers.

[ProfCrash]

I only use the password when traveling. Specifically, if I am staying at a hotel or just before leaving for the airport.

[FF2]

I enabled the password because of the 1-click purchase aspect. Not that I have (knock on wood) lost any electronics over the years but the instant access to charging my card gave me some pause. Initially, I was hoping to get this before a two week car camping hiking trip so there would have been times the Kindle would have been in a car or tent while I was hiking. A password between my kindle and credit card is some reassurance - just some. Now I probably do not need it but am also getting the feel for how annoying it is to have it enabled and have to enter it. That's how I determined it is hard to see the keys in the dark, even with the lighted reading cover (even flexing the lamp does not really light up the keys).

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by FF2

I enabled the password because of the 1-click purchase aspect. Not that I have (knock on wood) lost any electronics over the years but the instant access to charging my card gave me some pause. Initially, I was hoping to get this before a two week car camping hiking trip so there would have been times the Kindle would have been in a car or tent while I was hiking. A password between my kindle and credit card is some reassurance - just some. Now I probably do not need it but am also getting the feel for how annoying it is to have it enabled and have to enter it. That's how I determined it is hard to see the keys in the dark, even with the lighted reading cover (even flexing the lamp does not really light up the keys).

Yup, which is why I use the password outside of the house.

[curstpriest]

k2/k3 shows cover art, you just have to push right on the joystick after you select the book. This feature saves battery life no doubt, as it doesn't have to load tons of images and waste more cpu cycles. You can also display images for collections in this manner (hit right on joystick when selecting the collection).

You could always get an ipad or something, then you could have animated cover art! [jokes]
Honestly, what do you spend more time doing? Looking at cover art, or reading a book? I think that was amazon's idea when designing title selection.

[jlmwrite]

Originally Posted by curstpriest

k2/k3 shows cover art, you just have to push right on the joystick after you select the book. This feature saves battery life no doubt, as it doesn't have to load tons of images and waste more cpu cycles. You can also display images for collections in this manner (hit right on joystick when selecting the collection).

You could always get an ipad or something, then you could have animated cover art! [jokes]
Honestly, what do you spend more time doing? Looking at cover art, or reading a book? I think that was amazon's idea when designing title selection.

You know, I'm almost sorry I ever brought up this topic. The whole point of this thread was to revise my initial opinion of my Kindle; that is, that after comparing it to other e-readers, I LOVE my Kindle.

I don't want animation, I don't want color, I don't want an I-anything, and I could care less about using an extra CPU cycle (you know, like every time you refresh a page, regardless of what's on it). I'm not talking about browsing cover art collections for hours instead of reading either.

All I said was I'd appreciate a thumbnail of the cover art thumbnails next to the titles in my book list. They help jog my memory when I've got a ton of new unread books.

If you don't want cover art thumbnails, then be happy Amazon didn't give us any choice to customize our Kindles!

[Ken Irving]

Originally Posted by jlmwrite

(Disclaimer: Part of this post appeared in another post earlier today.)

Some letters on the nook (especially the lower case "d") aren't well-formed and the contrast is striking after long periods of reading.

In which of the three fonts and at what size(s)? I haven't noticed this myself, and I spend all day working with fonts in Indesign layouts.

[jlmwrite]

Originally Posted by Ken Irving

In which of the three fonts and at what size(s)? I haven't noticed this myself, and I spend all day working with fonts in Indesign layouts.

Ken, I returned the nook already so now I'm going on memory alone.

I used the default font and the default size (but did try one size smaller and one size larger). The lower case d always appeared a bit off, specifically on top of the bowl a bit to the left of the ascender (sorry, I don't know much about typography). It appeared there were just a few pixels out of whack. I don't know if these fonts are anti-aliased or not but to me it's like a computer screenfont that was improperly anti-aliased in one small area.

It wasn't just my nook either; I spent a minute when I returned my nook to compare that (and the LCD screen lag) to the display model.

[ProfCrash]

It would be nice to be able to customize my Kindle. Maybe set some of those options up in the experimental section. That way the folks who want to try the features can and they are out of the way so they don't screw up people who are not interested in them.

[Albright]

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.

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?