Review: Kindle 2 and the Kandle Book Light

I love my Kindle 2.  After owning it for nearly 2 months now I have used it constantly.  I believe I have had the full Kindle experience.  In that time I have read The Picture of Dorian Gray, Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, Sherlock Holmes, Faust, and The Count of Monte Cristo.  That is a testament to what the Kindle has done for me and reading.  I have slowly been working through all of the classic books I always meant to read, but never did.  I owe much of that to the Kindle store making it so easy for met o find and buy books.

The Kindle is a slow gadget, but that's OK.  I don't think you'll find yourself browsing Amazon exclusively on your Kindle.  When you do need to the store experience is slow, but solid.  You can try a sample of a book or purchase it using the credit card you setup on your account.  The really fantastic thing is the delivery. Amazon's WhisperNet wireless delivery is really great.  When I purchased The Count of Monte Cristo from Amazon.com and sent it to my Kindle it took about a minute to download, and that's a 1,400 page book.

Using the WhisperNet to browse Wikipedia and other websites is a decent experience if you want to look up a quick article.  With a mobile phone and tons of other Internet capable devices nearby I rarely use the browser.

Picture: XKCD #548

The e-ink screen, long battery life, and lightweight design is what makes the Kindle work as a paperback replacement.  With the Amazon branded leather "book" cover the Kindle weighs roughly 1 pound.  Alone the Kindle only weighs 10.2 ounces.  Amazon markets the Kindle as being thin as a #2 pencil (it is) and the same height and length as your average book.  It's small enough to fit inside the back pocket of my jeans with the cover on (not that you should keep it there).  The battery easily lasts 1 week if you leave the wireless on all the time.  I frequently turn mine off and find myself reaching about 50% battery after 1 week.  I believe Amazon's claim of a 14-day battery life on a single charge is pretty accurate.

The e-ink screen really does look like paper.  Of course, you lose the slight imperfections of paper and printed ink and you don't feel the pages beneath your fingers, but my eyes never get tired looking at the display and that is the whole point.  The font size can be adjusted and most books are formatted very well.

That is really my only issue with the Kindle - the formatting.  Some books are formatted poorly or have frequent typos, but this isn't Amazon's fault.  This requires me to read reviews about Kindle editions to make sure I get what I want.  Other problems can crop up with the Table of Contents.  Sometimes the e-books don't have linked tables, so you can't click the chapter to "open the book" at that chapter.  Some of this can be frustrating, but the only formatting issues I've run into were with free, or very cheap ($0.99), versions of classic books.  It's worth it to just pay the extra money for the better quality e-book.

Some people complain about the keyboard and 5-way jog wheel, but I find nothing is wrong with them.  I use them so rarely that I might have forgotten to even mention them in this review.

The Kindle 2 does offer a Text-to-Speech function, but it's very difficult to listen to.  I tried it on a few books and it was alright, but very hard to listen to if you are trying to do something else (which is the point - right?).  The voice is just so robotic that I had a difficult time concentrating on it.  Not all books have this enabled (at the request of the publisher who thinks it will hurt their audiobook sales).  Some books are not read very well at all.  When I tried it on Murder on the Orient Express the robotic woman said "block quote" at the beginning and end of every line of the dialog for some unknown reason.

The drawback of the Kindle's e-ink display is there is no way to read in the dark.  What makes the display so easy on the eyes is the lack of a backlight.  To overcome this you will need a book light.  I recommend the Kandle from Ozeri:

http://www.amazon.com/Ozeri-WideLip-designed-readers-Shipping/dp/B0031116K8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1269804193&sr=8-1

At the time of this writing it's an extra $25, but it works great.  It provides a very nice white light for reading and the anti-glare Kindle display doesn't reflect the light back at your face.  The arm pivots at two points allowing you to find the position that works for your reading angle.

The Kandle is bigger than the other book light options available, but it's not too big.  Ozeri calls this their WideLipTM grip.  The grip is a wide close-pin style clip with soft pads on both sides that help the Kandle hold onto your Kindle tightly without scratching it.

Ozeri says the Kandle has about a 25 hour battery life and uses 2 CR2032 batteries.  The light ships with 2 spare batteries on top of the two already installed.

I love my Kindle.  It really has motivated me to read a lot more and I'm really enjoying it.  I keep it in my bag whenever I go out for the day.  I've also begun using it for school books.  It's fantastic.  I highly recommend the Kindle 2 for anyone in the market for an e-book reader.

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How Google + Android and Amazon + Jungle Disk Keep My Life In Order

Long, long ago I was fortunate to have a friend who offered me an invite to Gmail. Ever since then I have been addicted to trying whatever comes out of Google Labs. A few years later I attended a .NET conference and learned about Amazon's new web service offerings. I was thrilled by the idea of Amazon giving me space on their servers for me to store backups and other files, so I immediately got myself an S3 (Simple Secure Storage) account. Today I combine these two services with my Android phone and an application, Jungle Disk, to keep my life in order.

This might seem scary to some people, but Google stores my contacts, calendar, and e-mail. All of my important stuff is backed up, but I keep all this with Google so that it all syncs, in real time, to my Android phone. I can manage my schedule or change a contact's phone number and it all gets pushed to my phone without a USB cable. If Google Tasks was more than just a To Do list my entire line up of productivity apps would all be Google (Astrid on Android for tasks right now).

On my laptop I use Offline Gmail and Google Calendar. This allows me to compose e-mails and/or alter/create/delete calendar events while away from WiFi and have these changes synced with Google the next time I connect. It works great and makes life easy. Of course, with Android (or actually any web enabled phone can browse to Google's mobile apps), I can do all this on my phone as well. This means I can continue to take care of these tasks even when away from an internet source.

I use Google's Chrome browser on all of my computers.  With my Google account I can sync my bookmarks into Google Docs and any Chrome browser I log on to will download those bookmarks for me to use and change.  It's like I'm always using my primary computer regardless of where I might be.

Google and Android simplify a lot of my daily life, but Google Docs doesn't do much for me beyond hosting a file or storing my bookmarks. I need a way for documents to sync between computers through the cloud. I want to be able to change a document while either online or offline and have it sync with my other computer. I also want to have all these documents backed up somewhere and I want that to all be automatic. Too much? No.

Using my S3 account and Jungle Disk - Desktop Edition I have various folders setup to sync changes on both my laptop and my home PC. That means if I delete or change a file on my laptop that file will reflect that change or appear in the Recycle Bin on my desktop within a minute if I am connected to the internet. These synced files also sync to a folder (called a bucket) on my S3 drive. Lots of software does this sort of stuff (HP even ships some new laptops with capable software for this), but Jungle Disk keeps copies on S3 and does so much more as well.

Jungle Disk can also mounts my buckets as network drives and/or create AES 256 encrypted buckets. Another very special function of Jungle Disk is automatic backups. Every night at 11:30PM Jungle Disk is set to check certain directories on my home PC for any changes. Any new or altered file it finds is copied to a special encrypted bucket on Amazon's servers. It's a fantastic piece of software. Even if it only mounted S3 buckets as network drives I would recommend it, but you get that and so much more with automatic backups, encryption (AES 256!), and syncing.

Lets recap! Google and the Android OS are great and keep me on time and on top of tasks. My phone cost me a one time fee of $150 (Motorola Droid) and, of course, my Verizon Wireless contract, but the Google account is free. With Amazon and Jungle Disk I have an automatic backup of my most important files every night, automatic syncing of files across the internet, solid AES 256 encryption and SSL connections for backups/syncing, and I have my S3 buckets mounted like network drives. S3 costs me between $0.20-1.00/month. Amazon's rates are dirt cheap. I've yet to see a bill over ~$0.30, but I'm ramping up my backups this month, so I'm figuring closer to $1. Then Jungle Disk costs me $3/month.

I can expect to pay roughly $4.00 for all of that. That's a great deal as far as I am concerned.

The only draw back is it is possible that there could come a day I lose my internet connection and lose my backups. Amazon could one day pull the plug on S3 or a disaster might destroy my data. That's why I still need local backups, but this is still a great relief.