So far, I almost love my Kindle 2

I've been looking at e-book readers for some time.

Naturally I looked over the Sony line; very attractive, the new one. Touch screen, "real" notes on the page, all that. Book availability not so bad. But they so screwed up the screen with the material they used for the touch overlay, I couldn't get myself to spend the five hundred. And of course, who wants the old one, I'll just wait for the next one.

The first Kindle was another option, but c'mon, it was ugly and clunky looking. Now that I'm all Mac and we're in a smooth, ever-flattening flat screen world, devices have to be attractive; I would have really NEEDED an e-book reader to buy a Kindle 1.

A quick note on other readers; I looked at iRex, all that sort of thing. Expensive, and with questionable futures insofar as formats, book availability, ease of purchase, etc. Good, targeted devices, but not "consumerish" enough for me.

Kindle 2 though; a friend recommended it. I looked it over; sleek, looks nice in the leather cover, Whispernet (Sprint 3g I believe) for FREE, one click purchases, etc. etc. etc...I saw all my programming and music theory books, as well as my blog subscriptions and such, getting collapsed into a nice, clean device that I could carry easily in my slim 13 inch laptop bag with my slim 13 inch macbook (got tired of lugging and finding room for the 17, which sits home mostly now), and I pulled the 400-ish dollar trigger (with cover and reading light).

I have to say I like the device; I'm close to love, but not there yet. Here's why.

- Contrast. It's about 25% less sharp than I'd like. There is an excellent reversible hack that allows you to put darker fonts on it (https://sites.google.com/a/etccreations.com/kdesignworks/Home/font-install-files), and this took it to about 15-10%, but...why the hell did they make the background so grey? You can wrap the kindle in a black wrapper to create the illusion of more contrast, but fact is, PAGES ARE WHITE. NOT LIGHT GREY.

Note: this is the one area where the old Sony shines. It has great contrast.

- Size. You get the device, and read a blog or textbook (of course I had to put the Hobbit on immediately). It's great (with the font hack). Then I put a programming book on it...hmm, the examples, probably on one page in the printed book, are now on two, or three, depending on your font size. Manageable, but inconvenient. Then I tried a music theory book; worse yet. Many of the standard notation passages are images, which are downsized far too much to fit the paperback-sized screen. Yes, you can zoom, but then you have to turn the device (it zooms in landscape), and it takes you out of the context of the page.

Note: A few days after I ordered the Kindle 2, and the day after I received it...Amazon announces the Kindle DX, which has a 9.7 (or some such) inch screen. Does this solve the problem? Nope...because I don't want to read a paperback on a 9.7 inch screen.

So, it dawns on you...when I buy the print books, they are certain sizes for specific reasons. Thinking all books would fit on one device was short sighted. Ah well...here's five hundred more dollars for the Kindle DX, which is on pre-order, I expect to have it in a month or two.

- Bag size: I would typically carry 2-3 books in my bag (chess, music theory, programming), along with my laptop, Bose headphones, assorted DVI adapters and keychain drives, etc. BULKY. Now all one slim, 10oz device. Fits right into my campaign to carry a lot of power in a slim, light package. Sure a lot of people say, "get an ebook reader on your laptop", but I'm not pulling out a new 13inch macbook in a nice restaurant bar or on a subway.

- Book Cost. My theory and programming books are EXPENSIVE. True, I write them off, but they are way, way cheaper in e-book form. The money for the devices (The 2 and the DX together, with case, are about 1k) will even out soon enough, especially with all the new Adobe and iPhone dev books coming out.

Note: Whether or not the life of the device is long enough for this even-out to happen, I don't know. They're already talking about an 8.5x11 Kindle, with touch screen and so forth, by Christmas! True, the first run of that device will probably be shaky, but still, say half a year later they get it right...I'm sure that device won't be free to Kindle 2/DX owners, there probably won't even be a discount (there was no discount for the Kindle DX for Kindle 2 owners).

- NO CD (if it normally comes with the book). Easily fixable; the publisher could just put the MP3 tracks on a website, and you could pull them down and dump them on the Kindle 2, which can store and play MP3s. But I haven't seen that become a practice yet. This is a pretty big drawback in the world of music theory books.

- Storage/Green: I throw away tech books by the box every year or so, and have at least two big shelves, and a floor pile, dedicated. That problem goes away. I store all my books, large and small, in two sleek devices. I love that.

- Page turning: Turning pages on a music stand or a book holder on your desk is annoying. Pushing a button is great.

- Bookmarks, notes, highlights: Easy to create, and saved in a separate "book" so you can review them en masse. It'd be like making notes all over a newspaper and having them automatically dumped to an appendix and indexed. GREAT.

- Multi devices; Kindle reader for iPhone. Yeah, it's not an Ebook. But if I'm waiting for somebody in a bar and don't have my bag, or it was too warm to wear a jacket with a big enough pocket for the smaller kindle, I can get by with the iPhone reader. The integrations are pretty seamless; everything syncs to your online Amazon Kindle account, so any book I buy can be pulled down to as many Kindle devices, as many times, as I need (a good thing, storing lots of books on my iPhone first gen would force me to remove one of the two movies I carry).

- Daily updated blogs etc: I love that I just open up the device, and my TechnoCrunch, Amazon Daily, Boing Boing, etc. is ready for me, and I can easily flip through articles, bookmark/annotate things for later review, and all that. Makes it easier to stay up with the trends, which is important for folks in the tech industry.

- PDF support; The Kindle 2 allows you to mail PDFs and word docs to your kindle account (yourname@kindle.com), and it converts it for you, making it available as an archived item on your device...not bad, but high end PDFs can come out sketchy. The Kindle DX has integrated PDF support, so that's better. I carry around a lot of PDFs, it'd be nice to have them on the reader instead of depending on the computer.

All that, and I've actually been using the device for five days.

I'm sure I'll talk more about it as they do firmware upgrades and all that (they are hinting at contrast fixes, which would nail it for me), but for now, that's where I'm at with this truly interesting device.