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Old 11-07-2010, 12:37 PM   #1
LDBoblo
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Curses, I like the Kindle 3, sorta.

I bought a Kindle 3. I kinda expected it would be OK, and a nice incremental upgrade from my Sony PRS-505. By that, I mean the text rendering would be slightly better, and the response times would be slightly better. After playing with them for a while side by side, I have to say that I'm much more satisfied with the basic performance of the Kindle than I thought. It's not amazing or anything, but quite good, and the price was very fair.

I do not use the Kindle store, and I do not have any MOBI books, but I do make my own PDFs for my Sony, and have moved many of them over to the Kindle, just to try out. I was irritated when I discovered that when auto-resizing my 6" PDFs, it would cut out intentional white space. I have overcome this issue by defining the corners of the page imperceptibly, and while there's a little more margin than I had intended, it's quite minor.

What struck me right away, as it has many others, was the darkness and density of the text compared to older Vizplex. Typefaces that I thought little more than tolerable on the PRS-505 became, dare I say it, rather pleasant on the Kindle. I went back to some font test files to see how other typefaces would look, and came away pretty impressed overall. Even my Chinese fonts, which discouraged me from making any Chinese ebooks for the PRS-505, were pretty readable, and some rather good on the K3. There's still room for improvement...I'd still really like to see higher resolutions, but I've reached the threshold where I'm actually kinda satisfied with the way text looks for now.

The speed of the device is also OK. It still isn't really up to some types of reading and navigation, but it's a very welcome jump up from my old Sony...far from just a little improvement.

I've got things I don't really like about the Kindle of course, and I'm sure that if I took advantage of other aspects of the device, I'd uncover even more gripes, but in the 2 areas where I was really let down by the PRS-505 as a reading device, the K3 has impressed. I hadn't expected that.

I took a photo of my K3 and Sony in the same lighting and decided to crop out some text and juxtapose them directly. Can you guess which is which?
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Old 11-07-2010, 12:41 PM   #2
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Kindle on left
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Old 11-07-2010, 12:56 PM   #3
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The left one.

I recently went from a Sony PRS-500 to Kindle 3 3G recently as well. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. My only qualm is that I'm in Canada, and 3G subscriptions to periodicals cost extra money, and also the device itself seems kinda flimsy for the price.

Even though I loathed using my PRS-500 towards the end of its lifetime, I have always felt that it is solidly built, but with the Kindle I feel the quality of the built isn't that high.
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Old 11-07-2010, 12:59 PM   #4
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I miss the build quality of my PRS500. The Kindle feels cheap and plastic like in comparison. Aside from that, nothing else. I love having wifi and a Kindle email address. The ability to load books and newspapers wirelessly from calibre is priceless.
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Old 11-07-2010, 01:10 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LDBoblo View Post
I bought a Kindle 3. ............ It's not amazing or anything, but quite good, and the price was very fair.

I took a photo of my K3 and Sony in the same lighting and decided to crop out some text and juxtapose them directly. Can you guess which is which?
Congrats on upgrading to a Kindle.
I think and hope the left one is the Kindle.
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Old 11-07-2010, 01:56 PM   #6
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The better text quality on the Kindle is exactly why I switched from my Sony to a K3. I just couldn't read books on my Sony, it was so light (and blurry, because it was a touch version). And of course the page turns are faster as well. Yay!
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Old 11-07-2010, 02:43 PM   #7
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Congrats to those of you who "guessed" that the one on the left was the Kindle.

Here's another snap with the two stacked, showing a Chinese test file I was using...it's a pretty big picture and may require that some folks load it in a new window to see it completely. Interestingly, the visual difference in real life seems to be even a little greater than it is in the photo.
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Old 11-07-2010, 03:17 PM   #8
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But to give the 505 the credit that it is due... the K3 has the new Pearl Screen but if you compare it to the K2 the screens are the same... exactly the same down to the part number
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Old 11-07-2010, 03:23 PM   #9
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I'd buy the Kindle if they would sell it to me for the price I want to pay for it - $100.
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Old 11-07-2010, 03:56 PM   #10
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I'd buy the Kindle if they would sell it to me for the price I want to pay for it - $100.
It is not too much more as it is...
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Old 11-07-2010, 03:56 PM   #11
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I purchased by K3 as a extension to my S505. I still love my 505 and won't be parting with it anytime soon. I still have another 505 new in the box as a backup. I paid an awesome price when they were bringing out the new models. I still prefer the build quaility of the 505 and the open architecuture for the file system, epub, etc. The K3 is great for everything else, I never thought that I would use the 3G as much as I do, it is a great convenience to have. Neither device is good for PDF (IMO) but that has more to do with the PDF format then any other short comings. Although the S505 potentially can more storage the 4GB that the K3 has is enough for me and probably most users unless media other than books are consumed.
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Old 11-07-2010, 04:02 PM   #12
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I'd buy the Kindle if they would sell it to me for the price I want to pay for it - $100.
I'd buy a BMW if they would sell it to me for the price I want to pay for it, too.
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Old 11-07-2010, 06:24 PM   #13
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Congrats on your purchase! Note though that the 505 is an older model - I wonder how the performance and screen compares to the newer Sonys?
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Old 11-07-2010, 07:08 PM   #14
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I don't know the differences in the performance with the old vs. new. However I have really noticed a lag in page turns on the S505 after receiving the K3. I always knew of the lag which was not a big deal, until now because I have now gotten used to the performance of the K3.
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Old 11-07-2010, 09:08 PM   #15
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Congrats on your purchase! Note though that the 505 is an older model - I wonder how the performance and screen compares to the newer Sonys?
I'm glad you like your new Kindle, LDBoblo!

I'm a dual user and happy with both brands. The K2 screen is similar to the Sony 505 & 300. The K3 screen is similar to the new Sonys (350/650/950). The new Sony models have different touch-screen technology and don't have the extra layer that caused glare and contrast complaints on the older models (600/700/900).

My opinion is that my K3 text is slightly darker at small fonts compared to my new Sony. It's really only noticeable when I compare them side-by-side. At medium fonts they are similar. My Sony default screen is more grey while the K3 default screen is brighter. Although the Sony models have the ability to change brightness and contrast for all types of books (EPUBs & PDFs). The K3 can only be customized for PDFs.

Therefore, with ability to change settings on both the Kindle and the Sony to your own preferences, my opinion is the K3 and the new Sonys are about the same! Both are definitely an improvement to my 505.

Last edited by Bookworm_Girl; 11-07-2010 at 09:10 PM. Reason: Corrected model numbers
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