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Kindle fever...
Aug. 29th, 2008 12:01 pmBen M., the program director during my recent Baikonur campaign, was kind enough to let me use his Kindle for a while during the runup to launch, and although I was not able to take advantage of the device's full range of features (downloading of material via the cellular network, if I understood that feature correctly), I think I got a pretty good taste of what it's like to use it.
As a means of reading printed matter, I found the unit to be pretty utilitarian. Ben had a number of books on his Kindle, and I was able to read Heinlein's Double Star with very little problem. On the other hand, if what you're reading has graphics in it (as I found to be the case in The One-Page Project Manager), you'll be wondering just what it is you're missing in the diagrams.
There is an ability to bookmark test, add notes, and highlight passages, which I did with the late Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, but doing so is awkward, in my opinion. Hopefully, the new version of the Kindle, rumored for this October, will address this shortcoming.
One thing that doubtless isn't going away, seeing as we're dealing with Amazon, is the DRM associated with files (which means never having to deal with "used" Kindle books). I was told that you could send documents to Amazon and have them converted for use with your Kindle for some pittance, so conceivably, you could send them texts from Project Gutenberg and enjoy classic books that way. However, I just don't feel up to talking about DRM right now, so I won't.
Cheers...
As a means of reading printed matter, I found the unit to be pretty utilitarian. Ben had a number of books on his Kindle, and I was able to read Heinlein's Double Star with very little problem. On the other hand, if what you're reading has graphics in it (as I found to be the case in The One-Page Project Manager), you'll be wondering just what it is you're missing in the diagrams.
There is an ability to bookmark test, add notes, and highlight passages, which I did with the late Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, but doing so is awkward, in my opinion. Hopefully, the new version of the Kindle, rumored for this October, will address this shortcoming.
One thing that doubtless isn't going away, seeing as we're dealing with Amazon, is the DRM associated with files (which means never having to deal with "used" Kindle books). I was told that you could send documents to Amazon and have them converted for use with your Kindle for some pittance, so conceivably, you could send them texts from Project Gutenberg and enjoy classic books that way. However, I just don't feel up to talking about DRM right now, so I won't.
Cheers...
