Gadgeteer reader Sandee Cohen writes in with some potentially good news for Amazon Kindle Keyboard owners:

Julie,

You might want to write this up as a post.

I got a Kindle Keyboard model Christmas 2010. ByNovember 2011, some of the letters on the keyboard had started to fade. (I play a lot of word games that require typing on the keyboard.)   By the end of January 2012 the “I” “O” and “A” were completely blank. And it was very hard to read the “S”.

I wrote to Kindle-feedback@amazon.com and told them how disappointed I was with the situation.   Almost immediately I got an email back telling me to contact Amazon by phone. (They have a cool way of entering your phone number on their web site and then your phone rings and Amazon is on the line.)   After explaining the situation, the fellow told me that “your machine is out of warranty, but we make an exception for this issue.”   I take that to mean that this is a known problem with the Kindle Keyboard versions. And although Amazon doesn’t sell the keyboard models anymore, they do have ones available to exchange for damaged ones.

The new machine arrived and indeed the letters on the keyboard are raised from the plastic and look like they will last much longer.   I think this information should be made more public so those who are struggling with faded letters can get a new machine.

Perhaps you will use the Gadgeteer to publicize it.

Best,
Sandee Cohen

Note: Images can be clicked to view a larger size.

I asked Sandee to send me some close up images of her old Amazon Kindle Keyboard reader and the replacement she just received.

Old Amazon Kindle Keyboard	New Amazon Kindle Keyboard

In the image on the Left, you’ll notice the I, O and L keys are worn pretty badly. Sandee commented that they look much worse in real life than they do in these macro shots.

It’s good to know that Amazon will replace this older model eBook reader even when it’s out of warranty. That’s great service!

Thanks to Sandee for sending in this info. Hopefully it helps someone else.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Amazon, Kindle

Does your Kindle Keyboard have fading letters? Amazon might send you a free replacement originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 4, 2012 at 1:00 pm.

In my article Amazon Kindle 3G-The Perfect Travel Companion, I talked about how useful I found my 3G Kindle while travelling overseas.  One of the comments left on that article pointed to a blog that said that Vietnam was one of the only places that the author couldn’t get any 3G signal.  This confused the heck out of me, as I had full coverage (and also full web access) from North to South for the 3 weeks I was over there. What was going on?

US Kindle 3 3G Coverage

I went to Amazon.com to look at the 3G coverage map. Huh? No 3G coverage in Vietnam? Had I slurped back too much Pho, or had the sun addled my brain, or was it just like an episode of Dallas and it was all a dream?

Then I remembered there’s actually two versions of the 3G Kindle , a US one that is only available in the US and uses an ATT sim card and also an International model that uses a Vodafone sim card.  Now, Australia being NOT being part of the US meant I had an international model. So I went to Amazon.co.uk and check the Vodaphone 3G coverage map there.

Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage

So you can see while the US (ATT) Kindle 3 offers ZERO 3G coverage in Vietnam, the International version (Voda) gives almost full 3G coverage. The same applies for Cambodia.

US Kindle 3 3G Coverage

Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage

Tasmania US v Intl 3G Coverage

For interest sake I then had a look at Australian coverage.  I live in Tasmania, that little island just underneath Victoria, but couldn’t get my screenshot to include in the map above, so I added separately. (We hate being left off the map of Australia ).  You can see  that there’s dramatically different coverage between the International and the US Kindle 3 3G . Looking at the maps above, in reality I’d be much better off with a US Kindle 3 3G than the International model. Vodafone has notoriously bad coverage in Australia, and it’s a bit ironic that a US Kindle would give me better coverage than an “International” version.  But of course if I had a US model, I’d have NO coverage while in Vietnam.

A quick comparison of the maps shows some obvious areas where coverage is different, Morocco (I), Namibia(I), Cote D’Ivoire(I), Belarus(I), Malawi(I),Ecuador(U), Tanzania(U) and Bolivia(U) amongst others, and the degree of difference in coverage varies.

I’m guessing that this “anomoly”  has to do with the partners that the respective Telcos have in the different countries. The long and short, if you’re intending to use your Kindle while travelling, it’s worth checking out if the US or International will give you the best coverage in the countries that you’re going to visit. Be aware though that it’s not possible to get a US Kindle 3G directly from Amazon internationally and conversely an International Kindle 3G in the US, but there are ways of doing it.

Happy travelling

Filed in categories: Articles, eBook Readers and Gear, Travel Gear

Tagged: 3G, Kindle, Travel gear

Amazon Kindle 3 3G International Coverage – US vs International model originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 3, 2012 at 11:00 am.

Amazon introduced their first Kindle device back in 2007 when the dedicated eBook reader population was made up almost exclusively by Sony’s Reader line of products. The eReader population has grown to include more brands than I can count and in the last 5 years, we’ve seen the technology in this category evolve from e-Ink devices to readers with color LCDs. After several popular e-Ink Kindles, Amazon’s first color device is the Kindle Fire. Although it may look and act like a tablet, Amazon does not want you to compare the Fire to an iPad or dedicated Android tablet. They say the Fire is just a content consumption device for books, magazines, music and video.  Of course telling people not to compare their device to other tablets, will cause them to do the opposite. I’m going to take a look at this already very popular device and let you know what I think.

Note: Click the images in this review to see a larger view.

Hardware Specifications

Processor: 1Ghz Texas Instruments OMAP 4 dual-core processor
Operating System: Android
Display: 7″ multi-touch 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors
On-device Storage: 8GB internal (approximately 6GB available for user content)
Battery Life: Up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as web browsing and downloading content
Charge Time: Fully charges in approximately 4 hours via included U.S. power adapter. Also supports charging from your computer via USB
Connectivity: Wifi 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or enterprise networks with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks
USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Audio: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8
Size (in inches): 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″ (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm)
Weight: 14.6 ounces (413 grams)

Included in the Box

Kindle Fire
U.S. power adapter (supports 100-240V)
Quick Start Guide

Let me start out by showing you how the compares to the iPad 2 as far as device size. For me personally, a 10 inch display like the iPad’s is the sweet spot when it comes to web browsing and magazine reading. The smaller 7 inch display of the Fire is definitely great for portability, but it feels cramped when I’m using it for web browsing and viewing magazines. That said, I find the screen size of the Fire to be just fine for reading books, watching full screen video and playing games.

The Kindle Fire has a very spartan design. It’s available only in Black and you’ll find no flashy chrome trim, LED status lights or menu buttons on this device. Actually it has only one button… a tiny power button located on the bottom edge.

The front of the device has the display with a narrow bezel around all the edges.

The display is crisp and clear, with colors that are bright and vibrant. It’s not Samsung brilliant, but it’s still very nice. The image above does not do it justice. It’s very difficult to photography glossy color LCDs like the Fire.

The back of the Fire is made of a soft rubber like material that attracts smudges and grease.

Along the top edge are two speakers. Don’t expect to be able to hear audio in noisy environments. Even at max volume, it’s not very loud. In a small room, it works fine though.

On the bottom edge you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack, micro USB connector for charging and the power button. That’s it. No dedicated volume buttons, microphone and no camera. These omissions definitely restrict the Fire from being considered a full fledged tablet since you’ll be unable to use it for Skype calls and other video chat type applications. The omissions do not end with the microphone and camera though. The Fire also does not include a flash memory card slot for file expansion and it lacks Bluetooth connectivity as well. The lack of Bluetooth means you will not be able to connect a wireless Bluetooth keyboard or headphones. The lack of a flash card slot isn’t a deal breaker since Amazon gives you free file storage in the cloud for all their content and the built in 8GB of memory (6GB available for user content) enables you to store 80 apps, 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books directly on the device.

In hand the Fire feels really solid. It feels like a slab of Lucite with no flexing, creaking or cracking. It’s comfortable to hold in your hand because the edges are rounded and the back has a slight grip to it.

User Interface

The Kindle Fire is powered by the Android operating system, with a highly modified front end.

The home screen uses a familiar bookshelf motif that consists of multiple shelves. The top shelf is a carrousel / cover flow style stack of icons of the latest accessed apps, books, music, videos and webpages. You can flip through the icons by dragging your finger across the stack. I don’t really like flipping through the icons because frequently I’ll tap an icon and nothing will happen or it will flip to the next icon in sequence and launch that one instead. You can add your own icons to the bottom shelf, which is designated to hold your favorite apps, books and magazines. If you add more than 4 favorites, a new shelf will be created to add more. Then the whole home screen will scroll up and down.

At the top of the screen is a search box that will allow you to search the content on your device. As you type a book title or app name, you’ll see a list of matching items that filters as you continue to type the search criteria. The search feature will not drill down into books though. It will only allow you to find items based on titles, authors and artists.

Below the search box is a navigation bar that takes you to the 7 areas on the device: Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps and Web.

Like other Android devices, you can view your notifications by swiping down from the top left corner of the display. To access the volume slider and other hardware settings, you tap the little gear icon in the upper right corner.

You will also notice a Home icon and back arrow at the bottom of the display. This is a menu that isn’t static on the screen. You usually have to tap the screen to have it appear. I really prefer a dedicated home button (and volume buttons) of some sort on my devices.

Reading Books

Here we see the book area. You can view your library by cover art grid view…

Or display it as a list which shows the title and author. In list view it also shows a percentage of how much you’ve read for each book.

It would be great if there was a way to file books in named folders, but the only way to organize the book list is by author name, recently read or by title.

Notice the Device / Cloud button at the top of the display. You’ll find these buttons on the Books, Magazines and Apps pages. When you’re on the device tab, you’ll see the books, magazines and apps that have been installed directly on your device in the 8GB of built-in memory. The cloud on the other hand, is an online storage space for you to securely store and access all of your own personal content, from your own personal movies, mp3′s, documents, etc. You can access your “Cloud Drive” on Amazon from almost any device that can access the internet.

Your amazon account includes 5GB of free cloud storage. For $20 per year more, you get 20GB of storage space, plus unlimited space for your mp3 music files. If you need even more memory, there are additional paid plans.

Of course you can access Amazon’s store to browse and purchase books. You’ll need a WiFi connection though as the Fire does not include built in 3G connectivity like other Kindle devices.

I like the interface for the store a lot. It’s simple and easy to navigate. I always found the store on older (non-touch) Kindle’s to be a little tedious to use.

I love that you can download a free sample of a book that you’re interested in buying. The samples show up in your library with the rest of your books.

I found the book reading experience on the Kindle Fire to be enjoyable. I’m already very comfortable reading on devices with a color LCD as I do almost all my reading on an iPhone. I always switch the background to black and the letters to grey, but you can also have a white or sepia background.

When you’re reading there are no distractions on the screen. Just words.

To see the clock, you have to tap the center of the screen. Turning pages is accomplished by tapping the left or right side of the screen. You can select words or phrases for a definition. You’re also able to highlight and make annotations.

You can then view your notes and highlights for each book by clicking the menu button at the bottom of the display.

Reading Magazines

Reading magazines on a 7″ display isn’t a wonderful experience in my opinion because you can’t easily read the magazine pages as intended due to the screen size.

The Fire’s magazine reading interface does offer a solution to that problem by allowing you to toggle into a Text Mode. If you look at the image above on the Left, that’s the normal magazine page. In order to comfortably read the small text, I have to zoom in. But if I toggle to Text mode as seen above on the Right, the article text is reformatted in more of a book style. Pictures are still shown and you can even search text. However, you can’t annotate, highlight or bookmark pages in magazines.

FYI: turning the Fire into landscape view makes things worse. It shows 2 magazine pages side by side with even tinier text.

Listening to Music

The music player on the Fire isn’t overly fancy. It has the necessary features to get the job done. Just remember, that the max audio output from the built-in speakers is pretty low and the Fire does not have dedicated volume buttons. The music player has a volume slider right on the screen though.

You can use the music player to stream music stored in your cloud drive. But of course, you’ll need to have a wifi connection to do so.

Watching Video

The Fire comes with a free month of Amazon Prime service. Amazon Prime gives you free 2 day shipping on tons of products and unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows at no additional cost along with newer movies and TV shows that can be rented or purchased. For example, right now you can rent The Help for $1.99 for 48hrs. Or buy episodes of The Vampire Diaries for $1.99.

I did cartwheels (ok, not really…) when I saw that the original Star Trek episodes were available for free. I watched the very first episode, which I had somehow managed to have never seen. The episode streamed perfectly with no hiccups, pausing or stuttering.

It’s important to note that the Prime Instant Videos are streaming only. So you’ll need a Wifi connection to enjoy them. However, rented movies and purchased TV shows can be downloaded so that you can view them even when you’re offline.

Apps

The Kindle Fire is powered by Android, but you will not be able to access the standard app market with this device. You’ll only be able to use Amazon’s own appstore, which is a bit of a bummer considering that Amazon’s appstore does not include all the apps that the app market has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, Amazon offers a very good selection of apps and even offers a paid app for free each day. But I hate not having it all. I’m greedy. One example of an app that I’d like to install on the Fire which is not included in Amazon’s appstore is the official Gmail app.

The good news is that there’s an email app included on the Fire. I set it up to connect to my Gmail account. Yay right? Well… not really. The app is ok for reading and responding to messages.

In portrait mode you can thumb type.

Or kinda touch type on a very cramped keyboard when in landscape orientation. But here’s the bad news… you can’t connect to your gmail/google contacts. What is up with that? Grrrr…

Good news again… you can use the Fire’s web browser to access your Gmail and your contacts.

Web Browsing

Browsing my favorite sites on the Fire is an ok experience. It’s not nearly as comfortable as browsing on the iPad due to the screen size though. You can browse in tabbed mode as shown above.

Or full screen mode, which gives you a few extra lines per screen.

In landscape mode, it’s much easier to read the text, but you have to scroll more often.

Browsing on a small screen can also cause frustrations when tapping links when they are small and next to each other. A lot of times you’ll need to zoom in so that you can tap accurately. I don’t know how many times I tried to tap something and would end up tapping an adjacent link and then have to press the back button.

Book marks can be viewed by thumbnail or list.

One of the touted gee whiz features of the Fire is this new web page loading technology called Amazon Silk. According to Amazon, it’s supposed to be a revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated “Split Browser” that dramatically improves web page loading times. Unfortunately, I really haven’t noticed it being any quicker than surfing on my iPad. If anything, it actually feels SLOWER to me. I wanted to do some speed test with my favorite Speedtest app, but guess what? It’s not in the Amazon market and my attempts to sideload it failed.

Another weirdness I noticed is that some flash based sites like CNN’s video pages, prompted me to install the latest Flashplayer and thought the Fire was an OSX device. Of course trying to install it didn’t work.

I had the same issue with Hulu.com. Android fans always brag about being able to load flash enabled sites but it feels hit or miss to me. I never really notice the lack of flash on my iPad because I don’t visit many (any?) flash enabled sites.

Performance

Changing from screen to screen, app to app, loading books, magazines, etc, all feels snappy. The Kindle Fire has a dual core processor, so it’s not laggy by any means. The only lag I can really complain about is with the web browser. I’m not the only one complaining, so I’m hoping and expect Amazon will improve the tech behind Amazon Silk.

Battery Life

No complaints here at all. Battery life is great. I can get days and days of use out of the Fire before needing to charge. Granted, I don’t watch many videos or surf for long periods of time using this device.

Conclusion

The Kindle Fire is already a wildly popular device because of its sub $200 price tag and Amazon’s brand reputation. The reasons why I like the Fire are its price, compact size, nice display, snappy performance and good battery life. The reasons why I don’t like this device are the lack of 3G, Bluetooth, dedicated volume and menu buttons, laggy web browser and no access to Google’s app market or core apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc.). I understand that this is Amazon’s first “tablet” device, so I’m cutting them some slack and am hoping that that future models will address at least some of these deficiencies.

I don’t consider the Amazon Kindle Fire to be a real tablet.  But it will be many people’s first taste of Android and using a tablet style device. I think this device is causing ripples in the tablet market which will benefit all of us. Even an iPad fan like myself.

Filed in categories: Android related, eBook Readers and Gear, Featured Items, Reviews, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Android, ereader, Kindle, Tablet

Amazon Kindle Fire Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 31, 2012 at 11:10 am.

I love my Kindle, and I love the Amazon ecosystem for the purchase and reading of novels but did you know that  you can extend  the functionality of your Kindle way beyond that?

The Kindles supports more than just Amazon’s .AZW book format (basically a .MOBI with Digital Rights Management-DRM).  From the web site the Kindle supports:  Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

So maps, pictures, articles and other useful stuff can be loaded onto your Kindle. Amazon promotes this and gives you up to 5GB for storage of personal documents. Anything archived here can be downloaded to supported devices or applications just like your Amazon books. When I’m travelling I like to keep copies of important documents like itineraries,travel insurance documents and medical documents on my Kindle.  That way they’re always with me and won’t get crumpled, lost or wet .

This is a short article to quickly cover the most common ways of getting your own documents onto your Amazon Kindle (note: I am not going to discuss DRM)

Please click on any of the pictures to enlarge the screenshots.

Direct File System

By plugging your Kindle into your PC or Mac, you can get access to the Kindle as an additional drive. This way you can just drag and drop supported files onto your Kindle.

Documents can be placed directly into the root of the document directory or can put into subdirectories. Similarly, audio files can be manually placed into the music directory or audible books into the audible directory.  Note that putting them into sub-directories does not put them into collections.

Useful if you’ve got you Kindle handy and just want the native file put onto your Kindle or if you have multiple documents to transfer. Just as a side point in the example above you’ll see two files with the same name but a different extension.  The .AZW is the ebook itself and the .MBP is your “progress” file for that ebook.

Advantages:

• No Wifi required
• Fast transfer
• Can transfer music and audible books

Disadvantages:

• Need PC/Mac and micro-USB cable and Kindle
• No conversion available
• Not archived in your Amazon Personal Documents storage

Personal Documents  Kindle Email

Amazon supplies you with two email address that allow you to send documents to your Kindle.

@kindle.com – your personal document will be received via either wifi or 3g. Sending via 3g on the Whispernet is chargeable, so you need to be careful how you connect by default ( as I found out from borrowing a friends Kindle 2 to test to see if I liked the Kindle and managed to rack up a $60 bill )

@free.kindle.com – will only send via wifi. Even if the 3g is your default connection it’s only the next time you connect via wifi  that the document will be downloaded (for free).

Where this is additionally useful is if you have multiple users and devices on a single account. In my example above I can send a personal document to one, two or all three of the Kindles attached to my account just by adding their email address. For security you nominate what email addresses are allowed to send documents to your Kindle addresses otherwise I’m sure by now Kindle spam would be a reality

If you send a document and put “Convert” in the subject line of the email, then Amazon will attempt to convert from your format to AZW format.  By converting to .AZW, you can then manipulate like a normal book: change font size and typeface, spacing, style, etc. The accuracy of the converstion depends on format and layout of the source document. You will receive an email when your document is ready for delivery and also a notification on your Kindle when the document is available.

Advantages:

• Does not require Kindle
• Can be initiated from multiple platforms as long as you have an email client
• Can be sent to individual user for multiple user accounts
• Can do conversions to .azw
• Archived in your Amazon Personal Documents Storage
• Can retrieve over 3g

Disadvantages:

• Author becomes email address.
• Can incur Whispernet charges inadvertently
• Document must be less than 50MB
• Email must have less than 25 documents
• Email must go to less than 15 recipients

Amazon Send to Kindle application

Amazon recently released their Send to Kindle app for PC.  Once installed, you then have two ways of sending documents to your Kindle.  You can either right click on a document in Windows Explorer and choose Send to Kindle, or you can use the Print function in almost any Windows application to convert your source to a PDF. You can choose whether to send it via Wifi or Whispernet. You can select whether to archive your document or not. Again receiving a document may incur a 3g Whispernet fee.

Advantages:

• Does not require Kindle
• You can rename the title and author
• Any source can be converted to PDF via Print option
• You get the option to archive in your Amazon Documents Archive
• Can retrieve over 3g

Calibre

Calibre is more than just a means to be able to send documents to your Kindle, it’s a complete e-book manager.  I’m not going to review the full functionality of Calibre here as that’s a subject by itself.  Calibre can be used to convert from pretty much any e-book format to another.  If you click on the picture above you’ll see that I’ve got two documents in my library.  By plugging your Kindle in, you can see that the green tick next to “Locked On” means that that document is already on my Kindle.  By highlighting a document and hitting “Send to Kindle” you can transfer documents from your library to your Kindle.  If you have a lot of documents you can easily see what is and isn’t already loaded on your Kindle.

Advantages:

• Fully featured ebook/document management (and more)
• Support for Windows, OSX, Linux and a portable (thumbdrive) version
• Multiple conversion options
• You can rename/modify any information about the document

Disadvantages:

• Not archived in your Amazon personal documents
• Need PC/Mac, micro-USB cable and Kindle

So there’s multiple ways to get personal documents onto your Kindle, each with it’s own advantages and disadvantages both in terms of procedure, operation and complexity.  One of the big differentiators is if you need the document to be saved into Amazon’s Personal Document storage either for sharing, archiving or for on/off-line access. Personally I use a mixture of all the methods mentioned above depending on my circumstances of what sort of document I need to send, what source format it’s in, what destination format I want it in, where I am and what sort of  ”resources” are available to me. One other thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t have a security code on your Kindle then if you lose it or it’s stolen then anyone can access your personal documents so be careful what you do put on

Filed in categories: Articles, eBook Readers and Gear

Tagged: Kindle

How To: Getting Personal Documents on Your Kindle originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 19, 2012 at 11:00 am.

Send a lot of personal documents to your Kindle but sick of mucking around with emails to get them there?  Amazon has just released the free Send to Kindle for PC  application. Using Windows Explorer, right click on any supported file format (.doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf,.jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .png, .gmp, .pdf) , and Send to Kindle will send your document to your Kindle Personal Documents ready to be downloaded to your Kindle device and supported Kindle reading application. You can also “Send to Kindle” from any Microsoft application that can Print and documents will be delivered in PDF format.

The application gives you the option to send to select Kindles if you’ve set your account up that way; however, it appears that there’s no convert option.  Be warned though, if you download this document to your Kindle using 3G (if you have the option), standard Whispernet charges will apply.

Available soon for Mac as well.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: ebook, Kindle

Send to Kindle for PC – Personal documents just got easier originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 13, 2012 at 12:00 pm.

If you like the look of leather and hair hides, Heidi Comfort makes covers and grips for eBook readers and some tablets that you might like.  The e-Accessories sets are sized to fit Kindles, nooks, Sony readers, iPads and other readers, or you can specify your device for a custom fit cover.  The envelope-style cases have Velcro closures and shearling inside to protect the screen.  You’ll also receive a hand grip, called the IT-Grip, that fits over your device to provide a secure grip while you’re reading.  The sets are available in a variety of leathers, and they cost $55-$65.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Cases and covers

Heidi Comfort Leather eBook Reader Covers and Straps originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 12, 2012 at 8:11 am.

Solarfocus will introduce the SolarKindle cover at the Consumer Electronics Show today. With a built in reserve battery (1500mah) that will charge via USB or via an optional built in solar panel the cover also includes a built in LED reading light (800 lux) that will last up to 50 hours without using the Kindle’s own battery. The company claims that one hour of direct sunlight will result in 3 days of reading.

Currently only available for the latest Kindle non-touch however other models are in the pipeline.

The SolarKindle Lighted cover will be available January 15th for $79.99 from Solarfocus website and selected retailers.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle case, Lighted cover

Solarfocus Solarkindle Cover- Solar Powered Kindle originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 9, 2012 at 7:30 am.

An e-reader should be pretty simple to review, one like the Kindle Touch that has only two buttons even more so. Amazon‘s ebook reader has one primary task: displaying the pages of the reader’s books.  Sure, there are other features of importance like availability of content, size and weight, and overall usability issues. But in a world where we expect our mobile phones to do everything from telling us where we are and how to get where we want to go, to capturing high-definition video, playing 3D games, maintaining contact with multiple remote servers, and even making the occasional phone call, an e-reader is downright simplistic.

For something so simple, this review has taken me well over a month to write and has been a bit of a struggle. Part of that time was spent reading a few books on the device. I’m sure Julie (Editor-in-Chief of The Gadgeteer) thinks I chose Moby Dick and War and Peace, but that was hardly the case.  (They were actually John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Stephen Hunter’s  Dead Zero and Stephen King’s 11/22/63).

When faced with a challenging writing assignment, I try to have some fun along the way. I’ve sprinkled in a few quotes from some authors and other well-known folks here and there to give a hint about the following section. And while I’m you sure you’ll agree that the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt was directly related to her frustration with the lack of a quality light for the Kindle Touch, I may have twisted the context of some of the other quotes just a wee bit.

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” – Dante Alighieri

So, fair warning to those of you looking for a concise, specification-filled review of the Kindle Touch; you’re probably going to be disappointed, if not disgusted. A quick search will find plenty of those types of articles available on the web, some quite good and probably more informative and worthy of your time than what you’ll read here. As I begin this review I’m not sure if I like or would recommend the Kindle Touch. This is going to be a case of I’ll know what I think about the Touch after I read what I’ve written (my apologies to William Faulkner).

Without hesitation though, I highly recommend to anyone that enjoys reading to give one of the popular e-readers a try. They’re all relatively inexpensive and will enhance your reading experience. So much so you might rediscover that reading a good story might just be better than Facebook updates about someone’s kid graduating from preschool, or almost any YouTube videos. Well, except for the videos of people trying to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon…

While reading those first three books on the Touch, I became frustrated enough to consider returning the Kindle to Amazon…once by using a brick as the delivery method. The great display, Whispersync, and my preference for doing business with Amazon kept me grasping for ways to get past some of its flaws. Mind you, there’s no killer problem with the Kindle Touch, but I have had to workaround, fix, and learn to live with some problems.

I have always enjoyed reading, but being naturally and profoundly lazy there was a period when I chose the ease of a remote control or the challenge of slaying dragons on a computer screen. Traditional books can be cumbersome. Even paperbacks can be hard to slip into a pocket, and carrying several on a trip can get heavy.  There’s also the issue of bookmarks, ripped pages, spills, pizza stains, and fighting with bindings while trying to read one-handed.

A couple of years back my wife gave me a Kindle 2 for my birthday. It was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received, and she enjoyed it too. The Kindle made it easy for me to get back into reading and gave her periods of much-needed relief from my constant babble. I have read over 120 books on that Kindle, mostly trash/bestseller type stuff (please don’t equate the number of books I’ve read with any form of higher intelligence on my part, as my wife and friends, and soon you readers, have more than enough evidence to the contrary).

I have carried my Kindle on several long trips and many short ones, everywhere from Moscow to the pickup line at my sons’ schools (and the bathroom too). The Kindle makes reading easy and portable. I prefer it by a wide margin to paper-bound books. The E Ink screen is easy on the eyes and works well with just about any light source from that of a tiny LED book-light to direct sunlight.

“Books are uniquely portable magic” – Stephen King

An e-reader should be the wand that triggers the magic – a tool that brings forth the pages of a book without getting in the way of the words. While smartphones, tablets, and computers can be used for reading, they tend to treat books like the written warning at the end of a prescription drug commercial. These devices generally have greater weight (or tiny displays in the case of smartphones), highly reflective backlit screens, cutesy page-turning animations, and cackling flocks of unfriendly fowl.  Reading on one of them is something you do as a last resort when you can’t connect to the internet, and you’ve slaughtered enough pigs to make even the most apoplectic bird content.

I didn’t upgrade to the Kindle 3 because I didn’t want to spend $200 on what I believed to be a minor upgrade. I was wrong. When it comes to e-readers it’s all about the screen, and the Kindle 3’s display was markedly better than mine. I figured I’d wait for the 4^th generation expecting the type of technological leap we’ve seen in computers.

The Kindle Touch currently has three siblings at Amazon. There’s the Kindle (starts at $79) a non-touch, non-keyboard e-reader that utilizes page-turning buttons and a “D-Pad”. The Kindle Keyboard 3G (starts at $139) which is really the Kindle 3 re-branded (it appears this model is only going to be offered until supplies run out). My test subject, the Kindle Touch, completes the non-tablet ebook reader family at Amazon, though they do offer the Kindle Fire, which is a 7” tablet with an full-color LED-display and ebook-reading capabilities.

Amazon is still fairly new to the consumer device design marketplace. The Kindle was their first branded device, and while the early Kindles were well-built, the physical controls and user-interface were a bit simplistic, and even rough, in parts. I was hoping that the Kindle 4 would bring an improved display, more comfortable form factor, refinement of the user-interface, better sharing and borrowing features, and a light that drew power from the device itself.

 “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be satisfied.” – Leo Tolstoy

Perhaps I was hoping for too much, and now I’m a bit disappointed in the Kindle Touch. I considered moving to the basic Kindle (non-touch-screen version), but the reports (Tom’s Hardware) of it having an inferior screen kept me with the Touch.

Author’s Note 1/4/2012: I recently purchased a Kindle (non-touch) and spent about an hour comparing text on the two with a magnifying glass. I don’t have a microscope at my disposal, but under a 10x magnifying glass I couldn’t see any difference whatsoever between the two devices on the same letters in the same words with the same font, and sizing chosen. The reviewers at Tom’s aren’t the type to sensationalize so I can only assume they got a bad device, or perhaps weren’t comparing pages that had both received a full refresh. At this time, I have to believe the screens are of the same quality and type.

“As soon go kindle fire with snow,
as seek to quench the fire of love with words.” – William Shakespeare

So, what’s to love about the Kindle Touch? Several things actually…but above all else it’s the fantastic E Ink screen. To differentiate the Kindle from the others, Amazon continues to provide and improve its best-of-breed “Whispersync” cloud service, and the new super-Index tool called X-Ray can be useful, or at least interesting, when reading non-fiction.

Nothing else would matter if the Kindle’s display wasn’t great. E Ink screens have really improved since the first two generations of the Kindle (which is substantially the same as the screen used in the previous model). The contrast, high reflectivity of the text, and slightly off-white background really cause the words to “pop” off the screen. It is the most comfortable, eye strain-free way of reading that I’ve experienced on an electronic device. Unlike its LED-screen based relatives the Kindle screen does not wash out even in the full-on Florida sun. It actually becomes a better reading medium than traditional books when you consider that readers can tailor just about every characteristic (typeface, font size, line, word and margin spacing) of how the words appear on the page.

The Kindle Touch and its major competitors from Sony, Barnes & Noble and Kobo all use screen technology developed by E Ink Corporation. For those of you unfamiliar with E Ink, it employs a magnetic-like process (particles attracted to either positive or negative electrodes) to draw the correct particles to an area of the screen, creating the desired characters/images. These highly-reflective particles make it possible to view the image in many types of lighting. The look is very similar to that of print on paper. The process requires only a small amount of power when first displaying the page, allowing E Ink devices to use smaller, lighter batteries that can go weeks or months without requiring a recharge.

“Size matters not” – Yoda

I’ve got to disagree with the little green guy on this one at least when it comes to e-readers. Size does matter in a couple of ways. The actual screen size of the Kindle (6-inch diagonally) is comparable to the size of many paperback books. That’s fine for general reading, but for those of you who are more interested in magazines, newspapers, or textbooks (unless you’re willing to give up the graphical element of those publications), you may want to consider a larger-formatted reader like the Kindle DX (9.7-inch E Ink monochrome screen) or one of the full-size tablets that come with color LED displays.

But for pleasure reading, you really want as much screen and as little anything else as possible. Or so I thought. The Kindle Touch is three-quarters of an inch shorter (6.8-inches versus 7.5-inches), slightly narrower (4.7-inches versus 4.8-inches) and about an ounce lighter (7.5 ounces WiFi/7.8 ounces 3G/WiFi versus 8.5 ounces/8.7 ounces) than its predecessor. The reduction is primarily due to Amazon’s decision to do away with the physical keyboard, moving it on-screen. The Touch is slightly thicker (.4-inches versus .34-inches) than the Kindle 3 and its non-touch sister model, most likely to allow for the touch-screen paraphernalia.

“You’re holding it wrong.” – Steve Jobs

When I first saw how small my new Kindle Touch was I was delighted right up until I tried to hold it with one hand and read. There is barely an inch of bezel on the top and bottom and six-tenths of an inch on each side. I found it difficult to hold the Touch and not have my thumb or its shadow covering part of the screen. Because it’s a touch-screen with no physical buttons for page-changes, your thumb or one of your fingers has to be close enough to easily reach the screen.

This was never a problem with the older Kindles as they had physical keyboards and buttons on the side bezel. You naturally held them by the side of the keyboard and extended your thumb up to hit the change page button. With the newer non-keyboard models, the best one-handed grip comes from putting your hand along the bottom corner of the Kindle and then extending your thumb along the slim bezel.

Well, the Kindle’s bezel may be slim but my thumb is not. As I tried shifting my grip I was quickly and annoyingly reminded that the power button, which used to be a slide switch located at the top of the device in earlier models, was now positioned on the bottom edge and requires just a light touch to wake or sleep the device.

The proper Kindle Touch grip appears to be to a modified pinch on either of the bottom corners with your thumb laying on the bezel along the side of the screen. That wasn’t all that bad until I added my Belkin “eBook Light for Kindle” to the top of the device. The 2.75-ounce clip-on light at the top of the device made the whole thing feel off-balanced. Coupled with the device’s thinness it became uncomfortable to hold. Amazon did attempt to make the Kindle easier to grip by applying paint with a rubbery-like feel to the back, but for me it isn’t enough.

Fat thumb and thin bezels don't mix well.

I tried to correct the problem by wrapping a couple of wide rubber bands lengthwise around the Kindle to give it a bit more grip along the bezel. This didn’t really do much more than convince my wife that the decline in my cognitive skills was accelerating. I considered Velcro, and even constructing a prosthetic finger. Eventually, as with all DIY projects, I grabbed the duct tape…this time, though, it was to attach the Kindle to a brick and return it via “air mail” to Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos.

I then realized that it’s a great deal more pleasant reading in my den than a jail cell and decided to search the greatest catalog of “hazarai” (assorted junk for you non-Yiddish speakers) in history, eBay, for a solution. I found a very inexpensive leather case with a cover that wraps around the back. The case gives me something to hold on to, and has made holding the Kindle Touch with one hand much more pleasant.

While I was searching for a solution or at least examples of how others grasped their Touch, I noticed that almost every picture of someone holding a Kindle on the Amazon website featured a female model with slim fingers. Somehow, I don’t think that’s an accident. If you can completely cover a quarter with your thumb you may want to try holding a Touch with your favorite light attached before taking one home.

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Speaking of cases and lights, the Kindle 3 and now the Kindle Touch, both have contacts on the back for the purpose of powering a book light with the internal battery. Amazon has released a case with such a light but its $60 price tag is bordering on ridiculous when you consider that the Kindle Touch pricing starts at $100. Perhaps a third party will develop a clip-on light that utilizes those contacts, relieving us of the weight and replacement bother associated with batteries.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” – Edwin Rolfe

Despite the Kindle Touch being lightweight, thin, and constructed mainly of plastic, it has a very solid feel. There’s no discernible flex or creaks when you handle the device.  The Touch’s look is best described as minimalistic, featuring two dark shades of gray. This was a nice choice by Amazon as there’s nothing about the device to distract or reflect light back at the reader.

The screen is inset by about an eighth of an inch below the bezel. The riser up to the bezel can cast a small shadow and is black, making it a bit difficult to see the small font they used on the black status bar at the top of the screen. While you can adjust the size and many aspects of the fonts in the books themselves, the status bar has no such options.

Micro USB, headphone and power button are located on the Kindle's bottom edge.

The Kindle has two ports, a micro USB port for charging and file transfer, and a 3.5mm stereo audio jack grouped together with the power button on the bottom edge of the device. The back of the Kindle features grill holes for twin speakers, and between them sit the aforementioned power contacts. The only physical button other than the power switch is made up of four parallel horizontal lines and is centered just below the screen. Pressing this button returns the reader to the Kindle’s home screen.

What's in the box...

The Kindle Touch is shipped in a box designed to safely deliver the Kindle at a low cost. Inside you’ll find the device, a small instruction card, and a standard micro USB to USB charging cable, but no charger. I believe this was a bit too miserly on Amazon’s part and they make that worse by not mentioning the omission anywhere on their website.

The Kindle Touch is Amazon’s first attempt at applying a touch screen to the Kindle operating system, and it shows. There are several inconsistencies where the same gesture causes different results, and other instances where the reader needs to use a different gesture to accomplish the same task. I hope Amazon recognizes the importance of a consistent user interface and is working towards better incorporating touch into the Kindle operating system.

While touch screens are a necessity when you’re using a tablet and they’ve made smartphones far easier to use, there’s nothing about the touch interface on an e-reader that makes them significantly better than the alternative. Navigating the Kindle’s peripheral functions, like looking up the definition of a word, browsing in the Amazon store, and using the web browser is easier with the touch screen. Typing is certainly better than on the new Kindle (non-touch), but when it comes to that primary function of displaying pages of text, the touch screen is superfluous.

At some point in the future, I expect that to change as publishers begin to take advantage of the touch capabilities within the books themselves. I just can’t wait for the day when each page of my book contains a slew of contextual links granting me important options like the ability to purchase an “actual” replica of Harry Potter’s wand. Actually, I’m sure that incorporating links to peripheral information like diagrams, pictures, or even small apps will add to the value of some types of books, but isn’t that more in the realm of a tablet?

The Kindle uses IR (infrared) touch-screen technology which means there are a number of intersecting light beams over the display (this is probably the reason for the inset screen). This allows for touch (and sometimes near-touch) detection by anything, not just a bare finger like the capacitive touch screens found on most tablets. The downside to this is that almost anything can and will turn pages and sometimes flip through several of them. More than once I’ve had to back-track through several pages after something inadvertently contacted the screen. I don’t recall ever having that problem with physical page buttons. On the upside, it’s now possible to change pages easily with your nose, gloved hand, or the straw from your drink (take that tablets!).

 “A common mistake that people make when trying to design
something completely foolproof is to
underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” – Douglas Adams

The older Kindles and the Kindle (non-touch) model utilize page-turning buttons on the sides of the screen. Generally both sides had page forward buttons and there was a smaller page back button on the left-hand side of the device. This allowed the reader to hold the device with either hand and still turn pages. In order to accomplish the same functionality on a touch screen, Amazon developed their “EasyReach” interface.

As you can see from the picture above, the screen is divided into three segments: a large section for paging forward, a slim section along most of the left-hand side for paging back, and a section along the top for calling up the status bar and a contextual menu. Paging forward and back may also be accomplished with the now-familiar swipe in the appropriate direction. When holding the Kindle with my right hand, I touch to go forward, and use my thumb to do a short swipe to move back. On the left side, I just touch close to the margin to go back and reach with my thumb about an inch or so to page ahead.

The most serious interface flaw I encountered is the lack of visual feedback when you touch a screen element. Unlike computers and tablets where pressing a button with a mouse or a finger has the object change state in some way, there’s no similar indication on the Touch. Except on the home screen where touching an option causes the selection to highlight, and user interface consistency connoisseurs to cringe.

There are a few other incongruities throughout the interface and they can be a little bothersome, but the majority of the time Kindle Touch users will be reading books and the EasyReach system for changing pages works quite nicely.

“Much ado about nothing.” – William Shakespeare

Bill and I agree that way too much is made about page changing speed on E-Readers. This measurement is used both to show the improvement in e-readers from generation to generation and as a competitive claim among the various manufacturers. Even the most unhurried e-reader is much faster than physically turning the page of a book. So, while I guess the Kindle Touch is faster at changing pages than my old Kindle 2, I never felt like I was waiting on the older device.

While not as meaningless, Amazon has come up with a method of limiting the page refresh effect when a page change takes place. In prior versions each page change was met with the page quickly going completely black before displaying the new text. The latest generation allows readers to choose between that redraw occurring every page turn or every five page turns. I’ve never found the effect to be bothersome because it happens so fast, but for those that are, things are getting better.

“A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that
you can take it to bed with you.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

Dan, the wonderful thing about a Kindle Touch is that you can bring roughly 3,000 books to bed with you, or on an airplane, a bus, the beach, or the bathroom. When you finish those you can wirelessly connect to a bookstore and have access to millions more. You can also borrow them from libraries and share them for limited periods with your friends. Oh, and should you forget your Kindle Touch, you can access all of those books through any device with an internet connection including computers, cell phones, and tablets. Amazon is one of the largest providers of cloud services in the world and they provide Kindle owners with free storage and delivery of books purchased through Amazon. Once you have purchased a book it will stay in your online library for as long as you like. You can also store up to 5GB of your own personal documents on Amazon’s servers at no additional cost.

Amazon also offers a variety of newspapers, magazines, and blogs via subscription that are delivered to your device on a regular basis..

Delivery is either through WiFi, which is built into all Kindles, or 3G service if you purchase the 3G model. The 3G service is included and unlimited for book transfers and browsing the Amazon store, but no longer allows for unlimited web browsing with the Kindle’s built-in browser. The browser handles mobile sites reasonably well, draws real usability benefits from the touch screen, and deserves to be removed from the “experimental” section it has been buried in since debuting on the Kindle 2.

While there are two versions of the Kindle Touch WiFi and 3G/WiFi, there are four prices. If you’re willing to let Amazon send you advertisements and special offers, the price of the Kindle Touch WiFi is $99. If you’d prefer not to get the ads it will cost you $139. The 3G/WiFi model costs $149 or $189.

I’d recommend purchasing the version with the ads. They do not intrude on reading in any way since they appear as a screensaver or as a small banner at the very bottom of the home screen.. Some of the offers are quite good and if you tire of them you can pay the difference and remove the ads permanently. While you can subscribe to the special offers if you have paid for an ad-free version, it doesn’t appear that Amazon will provide you with a $40 refund.

“Mozart’s music is like an X-ray of your soul -
it shows what is there, and what isn’t.” – Isaac Stern

Amazon’s new X-Ray feature enables the reader to quickly see every reference to a character (historical or fictional), phrase or idea within the book, how often and where those elements exist in the book, and then pull information from Wikipedia or Amazon’s Shelfari service. While I didn’t find a lot of use for this feature with the fiction I read, I can see where it could serve as a valuable aid in reading non-fiction and in fact-checking some of the more “inventive” biographies and books on history.

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.
Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway

The Kindle Touch features a couple of audio services. You can use the device as a music player, although the limited memory (4GB) isn’t going to convince anyone to give up their iPod anytime soon. However, for those who like to read with their ears, Amazon owns audiobook retailer, audible.com. You can purchase and have your audiobooks delivered to your Kindle via Whispersync, but only when connected via WiFi. The audio player isn’t bad and the internal speakers are more than passable, although I’m sure most will want to listen with headphones.

The Kindle Touch also comes with a text-to-speech program. When the publisher approves it, you can have the Kindle Touch read the book to you. This isn’t an audiobook; it’s a computerized voice that mispronounces and generally stumbles through the text in your choice of a male or female monotone. Why the publishers ever thought this would hurt their audiobook sales is a mystery to me. You can get a few chuckles out of the capability by having it try to read some science fiction. A Kindle trying to interpret Klingon can either be hilarious or make you want to fall on your D’k tahg (dagger).

“All sorts of computer errors are now turning up.
You’d be surprised to know the number of doctors
who claim they are treating pregnant men.” – Isaac Asimov

My early experience with the Touch was soured by what appears to have been a corrupted system file. I initially loaded three or four books on to the device using a nice e-book management packaged called Calibre to transfer one while retrieving two others from my archive on Amazon. Everything became sluggish, page turns were irregular, and the device ignored some commands. Finally, while trying to open a book, I got an error message stating that the “app could not load”. The Touch then crashed and rebooted, and not long after did the same thing again.

I called Amazon and as has been my experience with them for the past 15 years, the customer service was very good. After a brief attempt at troubleshooting the problem, the rep offered me a full refund or an exchange. I chose the exchange and a new device was shipped for next-day delivery.

Since the device was broken I figured I might as well spend some time trying to figure out and fix the issue. This comes under the age-old male theory of, “If something won’t work, force it; if it breaks it needed fixing anyway.” I connected the Kindle to my PC and began rooting around in the various directories (kids, don’t try this at home especially with your parent’s Kindle unless you intend on getting a place of your own in the very near future). Being far too lazy to actually go through each file and figure out what it does, I decided to delete all the content I had installed.

When that didn’t correct the issue I made the determination that everything had to go (kids, see above warning). I then watched as the device did a complete restart. I have a feeling the Kindle then realized what might come next and formatted its memory and re-created its system files. Whatever the reason, the device has worked extremely well since. I returned the replacement unopened and have been using my Kindle Touch without a recurrence or any other issues.

The Kindle Touch is also capable of loading some game apps distributed through the Amazon store. I’ve never tried them and if that’s important to you I’d suggest looking at the Kindle Fire or another tablet.

“A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.” – Martin Henry Fischer

After several rough weeks I’ve grown to like (not love) my Kindle Touch. I like the quality of the display over the older Kindle, I like and dislike the new smaller size, I’m ambivalent about the touch functionality, and I’m happy that Amazon continues to provide a vast selection of e-books and the Whispersync service. Being able to borrow e-books from many libraries and share books (at Publisher discretion) with others is also a nice feature.

There are some interface issues that I hope Amazon will iron out. I am also looking forward to the next generation of Kindles in hopes that they’ll incorporate some form of lighting, perhaps the illuminated optical film recently announced by FLEx Lighting II, LLC. At this time I would recommend the Kindle Touch with special offers for anyone who wants to try out an e-reader, or who has been using the Kindle 1^st or 2^nd generation devices. If you already have a Kindle 3 and can live with the slightly larger size, there’s really not an overwhelming reason to upgrade.

“The end of labor is to gain leisure.” – Aristotle

I’m done for now…gonna go put my feet up and read for a bit.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Featured Items, Reviews

Tagged: Amazon, Kindle

Amazon Kindle Touch Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 2, 2012 at 11:54 am.

Sakroots is the name for a line of accessories from The Sak handbag company.  Shown here is the Artist Circle E-Reader Case for Kindle, Kindle Touch, and the Nook Simple Touch.  These fabric cases are made of coated canvas, trimmed with polyurethane, and lined with polyester.  The case closes with a zipper, and all hardware is goldtone.  You’ll find organization pockets inside for cards or folded papers.  It’s available in the four prints shown above, and it sells for $34 in stores.  You can also purchase it online at a special web pricing of only $24.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Cases and covers, Kindle, nook

Sakroots Artist Circle E-Reader Case originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

Here’s another Kickstarter project.  The FLOTE Stand is a floor stand that works with most tablets and eBook readers, with or without a cover.  The all-metal stand is machined by US craftsmen, and it’s available in aluminum, black, or white finishes.  It easily adjusts without having to loosen or tighten anything, and it has a small base that will slide easily over hard-surface floors or carpets.  Be prepared to pledge at least $245 to receive a FLOTE stand if the product is funded.  Smaller pledges will receive FLOTE-branded screen cloths, hoodies, or commemorative steel plaques, depending on the level of support.  Estimated shipping is March 2012, should they meet their funding goals.  They have just under 50% of the required funding, and you have until January 13th, 2012 to help them meet their goal.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Universal Tablet Stand

The FLOTE Stand for Tablets and eBook Readers originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 27, 2011 at 12:45 pm.

FLEx Lighting has created an illuminated optical film that may eliminate the need for reading lights with e-ink readers (amongst other applications).  The 50 micron film is flexible, edgeless, and invisible when turned off and produces a soft, low uniform light when on using a single low power consuming LED .  It can be implemented either as a back-light or a front-light and integrates with touchscreens.

No more heavy lighted covers or external lights in the future?

Check it out at FLEx Lighting

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: ebook, eBook reader, LED Light

FLEx Lighting Illuminated Optical Film – A Bright e-Reader Addition originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 15, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

Photo by Janet Cloninger

Those of you considering upgrading their E-Readers (or those that bought new and have relegated your old E-Reader to the closet) may want to check out Sony’s highly-regarded PRS-T1 “Reader WiFi”. Sony just reduced the price to $129 (from $149) and is also running a trade-in program that could get you a $50 Sony Gift Card. My Amazon Kindle 2 qualified for the trade-in even without including the charger which I kept for use with my new Kindle Touch.

While the Sony won’t display Amazon’s proprietary E-Books they have their own book store and it appears that an Open Source package called Calibre will allow many other formats to be imported (I read conflicting reports of success/failure converting Barnes & Noble’s to the Sony device). Of course, with Sony’s own bookstore holding over two-million books that might not be necessary. The Sony Reader is also compatible with most major library lending services.

At $79 ($129 – $50) the Sony Reader PRS-T1 appears to be an excellent value.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Sony Ebook Readers

Sony Drops Price on PRS-T1 Reader to $129 – Offers $50 Trade-In for Old E-Readers, originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 5, 2011 at 9:00 am.

How would you like to give a gift this holiday season that’s actually multiple gifts in one?  You can, with the India Cloud Book Pillow from Levenger.  The recipient will get a great book pillow that works with paper books, eBook readers, and tablets.  Other people will receive the gift of a living wage and the gift of literacy, and you’ll receive the gift of knowing you helped so many people.  Read on to learn how one small pillow can do so much.

Most of the images in this review can be clicked for an enlarged view.

Anyone who reads a lot knows that books – even small eBook readers – can be tiring to hold for long periods.  There are a variety of pillows and supports on the market that will give your hands a rest.  Levenger sells several types themselves, including a leather version and a denim version of the Cloud Pillow.  No other book pillow I’ve seen benefits as many people as the India Cloud, though.  First of all, the India Cloud was designed in partnership with a manufacturer who is a member of the Fair Trade Federation.  The fabrics used in the India Cloud are produced by artisan families in rural India.  They hand-carve woodblocks, and then use them to print cotton fabrics.  This benefits the families financially and helps keep their native craft alive.  Secondly, “Levenger is also making a contribution to literacy efforts in India through Room to Read, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing literacy and gender-equal education to children in developing nations.”  (This information is found on the paper bookmark that Levenger includes with the India Cloud pillow.)

Each pillow uses blue, green, gold, and brown fabrics, and each pillow will be unique because of the hand-made nature of the fabrics.  You can see the pillow I received also has a bit of red fabric.

The pillow is about 17.5″ long X 8.5″ tall.  It has a wedge-shaped profile that’s about 7.5″ wide at the base and about 3.5″ wide at the top.  The pillow is very lightweight and soft because of its polyfill stuffing.  My pillow was a bit misshapen because of shipping, so it took a little “fluffing” to shape the pillow and get it to stand up on its base like it does in the pictures at Levenger’s website.  The only branding is a ribbon tag with the Levenger name sewn into a back seam.

Each end of the pillow has a pocket that’s the perfect size to store your reading glasses, pens and note cards, Post-it flags, and most anything else you like to have on hand while you read.

There’s a long, shallow pocket along the front that you set your book in.  It will prevent accidental page turns with paper books, and it keeps the book, eBook reader, or tablet from slipping out of position while you read.

The India Cloud Book Pillow is very lightweight, and the cotton fabrics are breathable.  It’s comfortable to hold on your lap.  You can also set it on a table or on the bed.  It’s works well as a book holder for reading, but it will also work as a tablet stand while you surf or watch videos.  The only negative I see with this pillow is that it’s dry-clean only.  The India Cloud Book Pillow will make a great gift for yourself or others, and the purchase of this pillow benefits many others.  What could be more appropriate for the holiday season?

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: book stand, Universal Tablet Stand

Levenger India Cloud Book Pillow Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 28, 2011 at 9:00 am.

Kyobo Book Centre, Korea’s largest seller of books, has announced the retail availability of the world’s first e-reader to include mirasol® display technology.

The touch enabled Kyobo e-Reader features a 5.7″ XGA format (1024 x 768 pixels) mirasol display (screen resolution of 223 ppi) and Qualcomm’s 1.0 GHz Snapdragon™ S2 class processor and runs a custom interface on top of Android 2.3 .

mirasol  uses the ambient light in the environment to generate color as compared to the  films, polarizers and many layers of materials used in standard display technologies on the market today. A mirasol display uses near-zero battery power to maintain a static image and needs no backlighting resulting in much longer battery life with low power consumption. Using reflective mirrored surfaces, they’re easier to see in bright/outdoor conditions because they reflect light out and are useable in direct sunlight without glare or washout like “traditional” colour LCD screens.

Currently only available in bookshops in South Korea for KRW349,000 (approx US$310).

Anyone know of a good South Korean forward-shipping service ??

Filed in categories: Android related, eBook Readers and Gear, News, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: eBook reader

Kyobo Colour eReader – Move over Kindle, Nook and Kobo! originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm.

When Julie and I recently reviewed the newest, cheapest Amazon Kindle e-Reader, I mentioned that I had ordered the lighted cover for it. The Kindle readers use eInk screens, which don’t have any backlighting.  A lot of people say the more paper-like nature of eInk screens is easier on the eyes, but apparently their eyes aren’t like mine.  Since my Sony PRS-500, I’ve had the lighted cases for all my eInk readers, and I sometimes use the lights even in the daytime because I need the extra light with those screens.  I ordered the Kindle Lighted Leather Case at the same time I ordered my Kindle from Amazon.  The lighted covers apparently were plagued with production problems, because the availability date has been delayed a couple of times since I ordered it on September 28.  I was surprised to find the box on my porch recently, because I had just been notified that the availability had been delayed until mid-December.  Let’s find out if it was worth the wait.

Some pictures can be clicked for a larger view.

Amazon seems to have made a mission of easy-to-open packaging.  They certainly achieved that with the Kindle lighted cover.  It arrived in a plastic bag.  The top was folded over and partially sealed with a sticker printed with product information.  The manual was a piece of paper with three illustrations showing you how to insert the Kindle into the case and how to deploy the light.

Amazon says this Kindle cover is made from premium leather.  I would not call this a premium leather at all.  It has a faint leather smell, but it looks more like a bonded leather or even a good vinyl to me.  The front cover is stiffened with a cardboard or plastic core.  It has stitching around the edges to bind it to the fabric lining and to the spine.  The Kindle name is embossed at the mid-point of the right side of the front.

The cover measures 6-7/8″ long X 4-5/8″ wide X 1/2″ thick.  It weighs 5 oz empty and 10.8 oz with the Kindle inside.  It was available in black, brown, (lime) green, and purple.  I purchased the purple, but I would actually describe this color as more of a deep, bluish-red berry color.  The color is actually a bit darker than the photos show, but I brightened them a bit so you could see construction details.

The back of the case is a molded plastic shell wrapped in leather on the outside.  Some of the leather extends past the shell to form the spine of the case.  You can wrap the front cover completely to the back so you can hold the cased Kindle in one hand.  I like holding it like a book.  This feels more natural to me, and I find this grip more comfortable than the “pincher” grip I use to hold the naked Kindle.

Inside, the front cover and spine are lined with a heather gray fabric that feels like suede.  The Kindle name is embossed into the fabric.  The plastic shell that holds the Kindle has no lining, but it’s smooth and shouldn’t scratch the device.  The hard shell has a rubbery lip around the rim to help hold the Kindle in place.  The Kindle snaps in securely; I have no fears it will accidentally fall out of the case.  There are two metal contacts at the middle bottom of the plastic shell.  These contacts mate with the metal contacts on the back of the Kindle.  This is the source of the power for the light.  I like that I don’t need to keep a supply of batteries on hand for the case.  Using the light may drain the Kindle’s battery more quickly – so I’ll charge it every 3 weeks instead of every 5 weeks.

The light is hidden into the top of the shell.  The light bar is attached to the plastic shell with a pivot joint on the spine side.  Put your finger on the “arrowhead” end and pull toward you to deploy the light.

There’s a frosted lens covering the LED light source.  I can’t actually see an LED in there, but it seems to be over at the side, under the gray plastic.  It shines across a white surface behind the lens.  The indirect lighting seems to prevent hotspots on the screen.  Something I really like about the light is that it will not illuminate unless the reader is turned on.  You don’t have to worry that you’ll set your reader down without turning it off and find a dead battery when you pick it up later.  To test it, I left the reader and the light on without turning pages until the Kindle timed out.  The light went out immediately when the screen turned off.

There are long notches cut into the left and right sides of the shell to make the page-turning buttons on the Kindle accessible.  I don’t have any trouble using these buttons while the Kindle is in the case.

There’s also a notch in the bottom of the shell to make the power button and microUSB port accessible.  I had no trouble using the power button nor charging the Kindle while it is in the lighted case.

This picture shows how evenly the Kindle screen is lighted by this case.  There’s no hot spot on the screen.  Although the light is dimmer at the bottom of the screen, it’s still well-lighted and easy to read.  Click to enlarge this picture, and you’ll see the screen is lighted well enough that you can see dust at the bottom of the screen.  I took this photo in a dark room with no flash; I didn’t edit the picture in any way other than to crop it.

I really love the Kindle Lighted Leather Case with my Kindle reader.  It adds a bit of weight to the Kindle, but it’s no heavier than a standard paperback.  I find ebook readers easier to hold when they are in a book-style cover because I like holding a book with two hands.  I think the light arm works better than any of the gooseneck lights used in cases for other readers, and I don’t find myself always fiddling with it trying to get the light head adjusted to just the right spot like I do with those goosenecks.  It’s always in the right spot, and it produces a nice, even light over the Kindle’s screen.  I like that I don’t have to keep a supply of batteries on hand, too.  I think it’s a bit expensive – only $20 less than the ad-support Kindle – but a lighted case is not optional for me.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Kindle lighted case

Kindle Lighted Leather Cover Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 20, 2011 at 8:00 am.

The Kindle Fire just started shipping, and Amazon is of course ready with some cases for you.  It seems that Amazon is seeing the Fire as a reader instead of a tablet, at least based on the selection of covers.  It seems most of them are sleeves or book-style covers and not stands.  The Verso Artist Series cases are light-weight book-style cases with covers designed by various artists.  Shown is the Cities case in red by Sharyn Sowell.  The covers have a microfiber interior and patent-pending elastic corner straps to hold the Fire in place.  (I’m not sure what’s patentable about a corner strap, since covers have been using them for years…)  The Cities case is $39.99.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Kindle case

Kindle Fire Cases to Protect Your New Tablet originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 15, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

Not long ago, Amazon made it possible for you to borrow books from participating libraries, and now they’ve introduced the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.  To participate, you must be an Amazon Prime member, and it appears you must own an actual Kindle.  There are 5000 titles available now, including 100 current and former New York Times best sellers.  You can borrow up to 1 book a month and keep it as long as you’d like.  The lending library link, above, has details for borrowing books.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: borrowing books, eBook reader, Kindle

Amazon Introduces the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 3, 2011 at 7:23 am.

I just posted a review of the new PRS-T1 Reader Wi-Fi ebook reader from Sony, and I mentioned that you have to have a light to read in dim or dark rooms.  That’s the nature of eInk screens – they have no backlighting, so you’ll need an external light of some sort.  I’ve had lighted cases for all my Sony readers starting with the PRS-505.  I knew I’d want one for the PRS-T1, so I ordered a Sony Reader Wi-Fi Cover with Light (model PRSA-CL10) at the same time as the reader.  Let’s give it a look.

Some of the pictures in this review can be clicked for a larger view.

The Reader Wi-Fi Cover with Light comes in black, red, and white to match the colors of the PRS-T1 readers.  I toyed with the idea of a contrasting color, but I finally decided to go with white to match my reader.  I was a bit afraid that the white would show dirt easily, but it’s stayed clean for a week now.

The cover is actually two-toned.  The front of the case has a pearlescent panel that’s shiny and smooth with a slight lined-pattern.  The Reader logo is embossed into the bottom right of this pearlescent panel.  The left quarter of the front is covered with a matte vinyl with a rubbery feel and a velvety texture.  This matte vinyl continues around the spine and covers the entire back.  It’s also found on the inside of the case.  There is no closure mechanism on this case.

The cover is about 6.75″ tall X 5.2″ wide X 0.5″ thick.  The empty cover weighs about 4.75 ounces on my digital kitchen scale.

Try as I might, I couldn’t adjust the color with my Photoshop Elements 9 program to render the colors perfectly.  The color of the rubbery vinyl is actually a cream color.  The pearlescent panel can look darker or lighter, depending on the angle of the light.

The back of the case is plain, except for the embossed Sony name.

The inside of the front flap is covered with the same matte vinyl used on the exterior.  The PRS-T1 is held in a molded plastic form that’s attached to the back cover.  This form is a light tan-colored plastic with a piece of plush fabric lining to protect the back of the PRS-T1.  The reader snaps into place and is held very securely.  To the left of the reader is an LED light on a gooseneck.  Below the light is the battery compartment.  You receive your first AAA battery with the purchase of the reader.

The reader is completely covered on the left and right sides.  The top and bottom has openings molded into the plastic form.  The bottom one allows access to all the bottom connectors and controls on the PRS-T1.

The physical buttons are easily accessible when the reader is in the case.  I find the tri-tone look of the case a bit displeasing.  I might have been happier if I had gotten a black or red case, so I wouldn’t have been expecting a better color match with the reader’s plastic chassis.

A closer look at the light shows three LEDs.  The lens has some patterning, and the LEDs seem to be inserted at different angles.  I assume this is designed to better spread the light over the surface of the reader’s screen.  Sony doesn’t give details about the LEDs, but they say you’ll get 19 hours of reading time from a single AAA battery.  Lifting the light out of the storage silo automatically turns on the light.  You use the gooseneck to position the light head over the center top of the reader.

I took this picture in a dark room using only the light from the case – no flash.  You can see that the reader’s screen is pretty evenly lighted. It’s easy to see to read the PRS-T1 for hours without eyestrain using the lighted cover.  You can adjust the position of the lighted head to put the “hot spot” up on the reader’s bezel instead of on the screen.

The front cover is just the right thickness to clip the reader’s stylus on.  The stylus is held into place well enough that it’s not going to drop off, but it can get pushed off.

I love the lighted case for my PRS-T1.  I wouldn’t be able to use the reader in a lot of places without the extra light.  I like holding the case open like a book, but you can fold the front all the way to the back if you prefer to hold the reader in one hand.  It adds weight to the reader, but it’s still light enough to hold comfortably.  I like that I can leave the case on my reader all the time, so I don’t have to dig out a clip-on light and attach it to the reader when I need some extra illumination.  I do wish the case drew its power from the reader’s battery so I wouldn’t have to carry some spare batteries around with me.

Unless you read exclusively in the direct sunlight or in extremely well-lighted places, I think you’ll want to add the Sony Reader Wi-Fi Cover with Light to your PRS-T1.  You’ll find it’s a nice cover all the time and a good source of light when you need it.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Lighted cover, Sony Reader

Sony PRS-T1 Reader Wi-Fi Cover with Light Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 29, 2011 at 8:00 am.

Every year I’ve been writing for The Gadgeteer, I’ve reviewed the newest Sony ebook reader.  I admit I have moved on to reading mostly on my iPad 2, and I did just buy a Kindle, but I couldn’t let the new Sony reader pass without giving it a look.  For many years, starting with the PRS-500, my Sony readers were my most beloved gadgets.  I loved the sleek, strong metal chassis.  I loved being able to store dozens of books in memory, and I didn’t mind at all that I had to connect my Sony to my computer to get new books.  I felt the design of the readers was perfect; after all, Sony was a hardware company invested in producing good hardware.  (Amazon was a bookseller invested in selling books…)  When I heard that Sony had switched to a plastic chassis and had added Wi-Fi access, I knew I had to give the new reader a look.  I ordered my Sony Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1) and hoped that I wouldn’t be disappointed in what I’d receive.

Specifications

• Reader Wi-Fi
• Stylus pen
• USB cable
• Quick start guide, Warranty, Audio safety tips, Important product information

Please excuse my tilted pictures.  As you can see, the Sony reader has a rounded bottom.  I haven’t found any workable method to keep the reader straight while I photograph it.

The Sony Reader Wi-Fi (I’m going to follow my tradition of the ages and call it the PRS-T1) now has a plastic body, but it looks similar to the previous PRS-650 model.  It measures about 6.76″ long X 4.25″ wide X 3/8″ thick.  It weighs 5.7 ounces on my digital kitchen scale.  The reader is sturdy, and it passed Julie’s patented Creak Test with flying colors.

The PRS-T1 is available in red, black, or white.  Normally I’m all about the red gadgets, but I found that I wanted the white for a change. The plastic is shiny and slick.

The screen is the same 6″ eInk Pearl screen used in the PRS-650 (and the Kindle that Julie and I recently reviewed).  Images on the screen are sharp and clear.  You can see an amazing amount of detail in the photos that display as screensavers.  Text is very clear, too.  The PRS-T1 has a touchscreen, but it uses an IR grid overlay on the Pearl screen.  Since IR energy is invisible to the human eye, you don’t see any glare or other degradation of screen clarity because of the touch layer.

This IR grid is neither resistive nor capacitive, but it is as responsive as the iPad 2′s capacitive screen.  The lightest touch is sufficient to turn a page or enter data on the keyboard.  Although your finger works perfectly well with the screen, Sony included a stylus for more precise control when you are entering handwritten notes or drawing.  This is a big stylus; it’s about 4.75″ long with a circumference of about 5/8″ inches.  There’s no silo on the reader to store this stylus, but it does have a clip that can hook over a cover, if you use one.  This stylus is much easier to hold than the tiny little things that came with the previous versions of the Sony reader.  I didn’t get cramps in my hands because it’s big enough that I don’t feel I’m pinching a toothpick between my fingers.

Unlike the Kindle, you have complete control over the screensaver, by the way.  You can load up any images you like onto the PRS-T1, or you can turn off screensavers completely.  I used the PRS-T1′s handwritten note feature  to write my name and phone number, saved it as an image within the note function, and used that image as a screen saver.  If I lose my reader, the (hopefully honest) person who finds it can call me.

Even though the PRS-T1 has a touchscreen, there are a few physical buttons on the front of the reader.  From the left, they are: page back, page forward, Home, back to previous location, and the options menu.  The panel above the buttons is metal and seems to be brushed aluminum.  The buttons are made of a silver-colored plastic.  They operate well.

The back of the white PRS-T1 is covered in a putty-colored rubber.  This covering improves your grip and makes the reader a little less likely to slide off a tabletop.  Click the above image, and you’ll be able to see the microSD card slot.  This is the first Sony reader I’ve used that uses the microSD card.  You can use up to a 32GB microSD card to hold extra books or music files.  Sony warns that performance speed and battery life may be degraded when a microSD card is in use.

The only other controls for the PRS-T1 are on the bottom.  From the left is the reset button (I was able to use a ballpoint pen tip to reset my reader!), the microUSB connector (used for charging and for syncing the reader with your computer), the headphone jack, and the power switch and status light.

I did try the headphone jack with the sample music that came with the reader.  The sound was good, but the audio player isn’t something I’ve ever been interested in.  At least they moved the volume controls to the touchscreen and removed them from the bottom of the reader.  I always found a way to bump the old volume rocker, and I swear that seemed to shorten my battery life.

Speaking of battery life, Sony still describes life as page turns.  They say you’ll get 14,000 continuous page turns when reading only.  They also now describe the battery life in time.  The battery charge lasts over a month reading for 30 minutes a day with wireless off or 3-4 weeks if the wireless is on.  I’ve had my reader for a while now, and I still have about 3/4 of the charge left, as shown on the battery indicator.  I leave WiFi on, by the way.

Sony doesn’t mention the type, but the battery is a rechargeable 3.7V DC battery.  It charges in about 2.5 hours from your computer’s USB port.  With the optional AC adapter, the reader charges in about 2 hours.

After you’ve opened up your reader and charged it, you’re ready to connect it to WiFi.  I had no trouble getting connected to my home network.  I selected my network from the list, entered the password and was connected in a few seconds.  After I was on the network, I was asked to log in to my Sony Reader Store (bookstore) account or create a new one.  I’ve had an account for many years, and I was able to log in without a hitch.  You can see the on-screen keyboard that’s used for all input with this reader.  It’s touch-responsive, so no scrolling around and selecting keys like on the Kindle.  The keyboard is very responsive, and it worked well with my finger or the stylus.

Once I logged in, I connected to the Sony bookstore.  Navigating the store from the reader is much like using the store through the computer-based application.  I can browse, search by various criteria, read book info and reviews, and purchase and download books.  I was able to see the several hundred books I’ve bought at Sony’s bookstore over the years.  I was able to quickly download a previously-purchased book to my reader, but I decided I’d connect to my computer to transfer most of them over in one easy step.  I could also purchase and download a book directly to my reader.  Sony has always had the policy that you can redownload books you’ve purchased, so I could either download the book to my computer application or have it synced over to the computer when I next connect my reader.

Reading was easy with the PRS-T1.  You can change the font size or the font type, but Sony warns that page turns and performance may be adversely affected by these changes.  Pages turn easily with a finger swipe on the screen.  Of course, the eInk screen is great in well-lighted areas and even outdoors in direct sunlight.  It doesn’t work so well in a dark room without a good source of light.

After it was pointed out to me, I finally noticed that the Kindle I recently reviewed with Julie doesn’t do the flash-to-black page change after every page.  You’ll get 4 or 5 pages where just the text changes, then you’ll get a black page change with the Kindle.  The Sony PRS-T1 doesn’t do that.  It goes to black for every single page change I’ve noticed.

The PRS-T1 remembers where you left off reading, but you can make other bookmarks by touching the upper right corner to “dogear” the page.  You can even leave a note with the bookmark to remind you why you marked the page.  You can highlight text, and you can leave handwritten or typed notes with the highlights.  You can even handwrite a note directly over the page.  You’ll be able to search for your notes within a book.  You can also search for a keyword or phrase within a book.

There are eleven dictionaries stored in the PRS-T1, and you choose one to be the default dictionary used when you look up a word by tapping it while reading a book.  The dictionaries include the New Oxford American Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of English, and 9 bilingual dictionaries.  You cannot add additional dictionaries to the reader.  You can also access the selected dictionary directly from the home page and enter words for lookup or browse, just as you can with a paper dictionary.

There are actually two pages of options in Home.  Before we discuss them, I’ll mention my biggest quibble with the reader.  You always swipe the screen to turn pages – everywhere but in the menus.  There are buttons at the bottom of the home and some menu pages that you have to tap to change pages.  I don’t know why these pages can’t follow the normal protocols.

The first home page shows the last book you were reading at the top.  Touch the book’s cover to open up the book and return to the place where you left off reading.  The next row shows the three books most recently added to your reader; the New badge indicates that you haven’t opened these books yet.  Other buttons let you see a complete listing of all the books you have on the reader, the periodicals (magazines and newspapers which are purchased from the Reader Store) on your reader, and the collections (book categories which can be created and populated either in the reader or on your computer using the Reader application).  You can also open up the Reader Store for shopping or downloading.

The second page is where you’ll be able to access your music files or your pictures.  This is where you find the setup options for the reader.  You can also connect to the public library through the Overdrive Media console to checkout and download books, get Google books, or go straight to a list of all your purchased content at the Reader Store.

There’s also an internet browser;  it’s slightly better than the one on the Kindle, but it won’t win any speed prizes.  The images are clear enough, and you can use the pinch gestures to zoom in or out for a better view.  You actually use this (indirectly) when you checkout library books, so it’s not completely useless.  I’ll have to be desperate before I’ll just surf the internet with this browser, though.

Checking out books is easy, albeit a bit slow.  You’ll go to your library through the Overdrive Media Console and log in with your library card number.  You’ll be able to search for books and check them out easily enough, then you’ll have to download them with the Overdrive download option.  Once they’re downloaded (directly) onto your reader, they’ll appear and act just as any other book – you can search, take notes, highlight, bookmark, etc.  They’ll have a little time-left counter beside them in the book list so you’ll know how long you have left before the book automatically checks itself in.  You can also turn it in manually if you finish it before your time period is up.  As a note, you can search for a book within the complete book list, and you can sort books by title, author, date, etc.

List of notes I've made inside my books.

A list of all the handwritten notes (outside of books)

A handwritten note saved as an image and used as my ID page. (Phone number is scribbled out in this picture.)

I’ve already mentioned the notes – both typed and handwritten – you can add within books.  You can use the All Notes option on the 2nd Home page to see all the notes you’ve created within the books on your reader.  You can search within this list to find the note of interest, then tap it and jump directly to it within its book.  You can also leave notes to yourself outside of your books.  They can be handwritten (or drawn) or typed.

The question that everybody wants answered is “how does it handle PDFs?”  The PRS-T1 does work with PDF files.  The first picture shows how it looks with standard settings.  If you use the pinch gestures to zoom in on the PDF, you won’t be able to read it because it will be grainy and choppy.  If you use the font size adjustment, you can resize the font and the text will be very legible.  Reflow will cause a page numbering artifact – multiple pages will show the same number until you have paged through all the information on that original page.  Reflow doesn’t always handle the images properly, though.  The third image is all I could see of the original illustration.  I did find that I could pinch-zoom in on the image in the original format to see more details, but the images did get fuzzier as I zoomed in.  Also, I noticed that page turns were slower with this PDF file that with the ePub files.

To indicate how much internal storage the PRS-T1 has, I have 494 books, 4 images, and 2 audio files, and various notes on my reader and I still have more than 65% of the 1.4GB internal storage free.  I won’t have to worry about putting books on a microSD card, so I won’t have to worry about the card usage reducing the reader’s performance and battery life.

Apparently Sony has replaced their three previous models with the Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1), because it’s the only reader I see on their site.  I think this is a really good reader and combines portability of the previous PRS-350 and PRS-650 models with the Wi-Fi connectivity of the PRS-950.  I think the reader is a good size, but it would be a little easier to hold in a case.  It also needs a light source for reading in a dark room.  (Read my review of Sony’s lighted case for the PRS-T1.)   Sony has made changes – plastic chassis instead of metal – to help bring the price in line with other eBook readers, but I don’t think they’ve compromised the quality of the reader.

I like the Sony PRS-T1 Reader Wi-Fi and I find myself reading on it a lot lately.  (I passed the Kindle along to my husband.)  It’s much easier to hold for long periods than my iPad 2 is, and it doesn’t have other apps that lure me away from my book.  If you’re looking for a good eBook reader with a clear screen, the ability to check out and read library books, and a screen you can read in bright sunlight, you can’t go wrong with the Sony PRS-T1 Reader Wi-Fi.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: eBook reader

Sony Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1) eBook Reader Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 28, 2011 at 7:00 am.

(S)mythology is the story of Sophie, a little girl with magical super powers, told as a whimsical, young-adult tale of true love that mixes pop culture with Greek mythology.  This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Jeremy Tarr (the author) and the Keep a Breast Foundation have joined forces to raise money for breast cancer awareness.  For every (S)mythology book sold, one dollar will be donated to benefit this cause.  There’s also a contest with prizes including a Kindle Fire that runs through November 30.  Read the rules to learn how you can enter.  The rules also say that the donations to breast cancer awareness will continue through the contest period.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Miscellaneous

Tagged: Breast Cancer Awareness, ebooks

Purchase (S)mythology in eBook or Hardcover and Donate to Breast Cancer Awareness originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 25, 2011 at 12:00 pm.

Love the new Amazon Kindle lines but just can’t justify upgrading to the latest version because your old version still does the job perfectly well?  Now you can trade your old Kindle (or other e-reader that that matter) using the Amazon trade-in program.  Just enter the model and condition of your old faithful friend and receive a gift card ranging from $17.75 to $135 to put towards a new best friend .

Personally there’s no way I’m trading any of my Kindle 3s (especially my 3g given the ( supposed) lack of 3g web browsing on the new Touch), and if I did want to upgrade one of my family members would be the recipient of a “new” e-reader.

What do you think of the trade-in values ? Is this enough to make you upgrade ???

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Bring out your dead – Amazon Kindle Trade-in originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 21, 2011 at 10:00 am.

While the Amazon Kindle family is still growing with new models, it looks like Amazon hasn’t forgotten or stopped developing for those who have or prefer the Kindle 3 ( Keyboard ). Firmware 3.3 updates the K3 to match some of the features of the newly (to be) released siblings.

Primarily :

• Download your archived Personal Documents
• Whispersync for Personal Documents
• AmazonLocal deals on Kindles with Special Offers
• Voice Guide Shortcut.

While none of these functions are something that I’d use, nice to see updates still coming out for this “older” unit.

It should come down over the air, or you can go to the Software Page and manually update.

More information at Amazon’s Kindle Keyboard Software Update Page

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Kindle 3 (Keyboard) not gone or forgotten – Firmware Update originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 17, 2011 at 8:00 am.

I’ve already told you about the Levenger Pocquettes case for your iPhone, iPod, or other similarly-sized devices.  Now Levenger has two new cases for folks who like to use their other devices caseless but want a protective carrying case with room for accessories.  Both of the new cases in the Pocquettes line have pebbled full-grain leather exteriors (in black, plum, or red) with beige suede lining.  Both have large pockets to hold the device and smaller front pockets to hold power supplies, cables, earbuds, and other accessories.  The Pocquettes E-Reader Case can carry a Kindle Keyboard or similarly-sized reader in the main pocket.  The Pocquettes iPad Case fits an iPad, iPad 2, or other similarly-sized tablet in the main pocket.  Both these cases come with a free cleaning cloth to keep the screen clean and a free Pocquettes earbud wrap to keep their cables tangle-free.  The Pocquettes iPad Case is $99; the E-Reader Case is $69.  You can add initials for $6 more or a full name for $12.  Click the picture for a larger view.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News, Tablet Computers and Gear

Tagged: Cases and covers, eBook Reader accessories, tablets accessories

Pocquettes Protective Cases for Tablets and eBook Readers from Levenger originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 9, 2011 at 9:00 am.

An Amazon Special Offer to convert your new Kindle ” with Special Offers” to “without Special Offers” has just been released. Whether there’s been too much confusion among new buyers of Amazon’s new budget ereader about what they were actually purchasing or for some other reason there’s now a way to remove those “annoying” ads without having to resort to hacks.

To deactivate:
Login to Your Account/Manage Your Kindle / Manage Your Devices In the Subscribe column, click Edit next to your K4  then follow the instructions on the screen.

The charge to do this is $30, the “discount” receive for initially purchasing  a unit with advertising. There doesn’t seem to be a way however to turn the Special Offers back on or to change a “without Special Offer” Kindle to enable the advertisements ( and get a $30 credit ) .

This is only supported on the new Kindle (K4)  and not on the Kindle Keyboards (K3)

I received a Special Offer K3 as a warranty replacement even though they’re not supposed to be supplied outside of the US.  Though it’s my son’s and not mine I actually don’t find the ads that intrusive and it looks like there are some good offers available.  I’m yet to see if the offers will work outside the US however.

Did you save money and purchase a Kindle with Special Offers  (either K3 or K4 ) ?  Have you saved money using the Special Offers ? Do the ads  bother you ? Will you be deactivating ?

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, News

Tagged: Kindle

Amazon Special Offer – Kindle 4 with Special Offer without Special Offer ?!? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 7, 2011 at 10:00 am.

Last week Amazon went a little crazy and announced 4 new devices all on the same day. The Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G and the Kindle Fire. The first 3 devices are e-book readers and the Fire is a tablet. That is a lot of devices and of course we plan to review all of them because that’s just what we do We have to wait a little while for the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire devices to become available, but we’re happy to give you the scoop on the $79 Kindle today. For this review, I’m enlisting the help of our own e-book reader expert Janet. She’s been fan of Sony eReaders for a long time until she dumped them for the iPad. She’s never used a Kindle before, so it will be interesting to see what she thinks of the most popular e-book reading device on the market. For me, I’ve purchased all the Kindle devices in the past (except for the DX), but didn’t continue to use them once I reviewed them. I find that I use my phone as an e-book reader most often. This new smaller Kindle might make me change that… Let’s find out.

My comments are in Black and Janet’s are in Blue italics.

I’m very excited to do my first co-review.  Thanks for letting me help, Julie!

Note: Click the images in this review to see a larger view.

Package Contents

Kindle wireless e-reader
USB 2.0 cable
Quick Start Guide

Hardware Specs

Display: 6″ diagonal E Ink display 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 16-level gray scale
On-device Storage: Up to 1,400 books or 2GB internal (approximately 1.25GB available for user content)
Cloud Storage: Free cloud storage for all Amazon content
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion
Wi-Fi Connectivity: 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication or Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS); does not connect to WPA and WPA2 secured networks using 802.1X authentication methods; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks
USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector)
Battery Life: A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off based upon a half-hour of daily reading time. Keep wireless always on and it lasts for up to 3 weeks
Charge Time: Fully charges in approximately 3 hours via the included USB 2.0 cable connected to a computer
Size (in inches): 6.5″ x 4.5″ x 0.34″ (166 mm x 114 mm x 8.7 mm)
Weight: 5.98 ounces (170 grams)

Here’s a family photo of the original Kindle, Kindle 2, Kindle 3G (which Amazon now calls the Kindle Keyboard) and the latest Kindle that we’re looking at today. It’s fun to see the evolution of these devices. The original was really ugly wasn’t it? One thing to note is that since the Kindle was introduced back in 2007, the display has stayed at 6 inches diagonal (not counting the DX of course) through all the new versions.

That first one was a bit wedge-shaped, wasn’t it?  I like the 6″ screen.  It makes the reader about the size of a paperback book and keeps it light.

Here we see the latest Kindle next to the previous Kindle Keyboard. All of Amazon’s new Kindles lack a physical keyboard now. That might be a deal breaker for some of you… I rarely use one as I don’t tend to add annotations or do a lot of searching in the Amazon store on the device itself. But more about the keyboard in a bit. First let’s take a tour of the whole device.

When I first took the Kindle out of the box I was really surprised at how much smaller and lighter it was over the previous model. It’s almost pocketable if you happen to have big pockets

And it fits nicely in a purse!  It’s so small, it’s a bit hard to hold.  I can’t decide where to put my hands.  I ordered the lighted case for it, which I think will make it easier to get a grip on.

It’s only available in one color, which is grey. The bezel looks like it is made of aluminum, but this hasn’t been confirmed.

This latest Kindle uses the same e-ink screen technology as the previous Kindle, so there’s nothing new there. I find it to be very crisp and clear and it’s easy to read in most lighting conditions. It’s great for very bright environments like outdoors on a sunny day, as well as slightly dim light indoors. Basically, wherever you can comfortably read a regular physical book, you’ll be able to read on the Kindle. How do you think the Kindle’s e-ink screen compares to Sony eReaders?

Amazon’s specs for this reader says it has the Pearl screen.  That’s the same screen that was used in the last Sony Reader I reviewed, the PRS-650.  I love this screen, because it is so sharp and easy on the eyes.  The page refreshes very quickly, and I haven’t seen the slightest hint of shadowing on this screen.

The back is the same color as the front bezel, but it’s made of plastic with a thin rubberized coating that helps you grip the device. You’ll notice two metal contacts along the bottom edge that appear to be used for some sort of charging dock that we’ve yet to see.

I’m thinking those contacts are for the lighted Kindle case, but I can’t be sure until my case gets here in mid-November.  The new lighted case requires no batteries; it pulls power for the light from the Kindle itself.

Oh, I bet you’re right!

There are several buttons below the e-ink display that help you navigate through the on-screen menus. From left to right, there’s a back button, on-screen keyboard button, 5-way navigation button, menu button and home button. All the buttons are raised and have very good tactile feedback.

On the Left side (and right side) of the reader, you’ll find two narrow buttons that allow you to page forwards and backwards through books. For me, these buttons feel almost too small. I find it a little awkward to hold the device in one hand and press the paging buttons with my thumb on that same hand. I usually just rest the Kindle in my lap as I read and hold it by one of the upper corners with one hand and use the other hand to press the page buttons.

They feel a little awkward to me, too.  I always want to push in on them, but you have to push them to the back to make them work.  The thing I find confusing about them is their size.  Both sides have one big button on the bottom and one smaller button at the top.  I think the big button on the right side should advance you one page and the big button on the left should take you back one page.  Amazon thinks differently, because both big buttons advance a page and both small go back one page.  

It would be nice if there was a way to remap two of the buttons below the display to page forwards and back. Then you could more easily hold the Kindle in one hand and use your thumb to press the buttons.

One thing I noticed is that the Kindle doesn’t have the little slots on the Left side for special cases that don’t require elastic bands. I’m slightly disappointed in that fact, but I guess it’s not a big deal.

Kindle is changing the style of their cases.  You can imagine I spent a long time pouring over their official cases before I decided on the lighted case.  I noticed that both styles – lighted and unlighted – now hold the Kindle in a “shell”.  You snap the Kindle into the shell, and it covers the back and wraps up around the Kindle’s sides.  Closer inspection of the lighted case does show two metal contacts that should connect with the contacts on the back of the Kindle.

Of course we’ll start seeing a bunch of cases that use elastic bands too…

I don’t like the elastic band cases.  I like to see my gadget’s face.

On the bottom edge you’ll find the micro USB port for charging / copying content from a computer, the charging status LED and the power button.

Speaking of USB charging, I wish Amazon had included the AC power adapter, but I guess you can’t have everything at these prices…

The Kindle is comfortable to hold and carry because it’s so lightweight. It’s made well and feels solid, but since it’s so light, at first I felt like I could snap it in half just by looking at it cross eyed.  After using it for a few days though, I’m sure that it can withstand everyday abuse without any problems. It passed the good old Gadgeteer squeeze and flex test with no problems.

The Sony readers didn’t seem heavy to me at the time I was using them, but they did all have metal bodies.  The Kindle feels so light I thought I’d throw it over my head when I picked it up!  Even though it’s mostly plastic, it is very sturdy.

You probably have noticed that our Kindles are showing ads in some pictures, but not in others.  The shots without ads are Julie’s Kindle.  She opted for the slightly more expensive version ($109) without “Special Offers”.  After four generations of Sony readers costing $250-$350, I was ready for a discount.  I bought the discounted version($79) with “Special Offers.”  The “Special Offers” are simply ads; agreeing to them earns you a a 27% discount off the Kindle’s purchase price.  The ads replace the screensavers that are normally artist pictures or book covers, or the like.  They also display in a banner at the bottom of the home screen, as shown in the picture above.  You click on them and they take you to learn more about the offer.  They never show up within the books.

I find the ads very easy to ignore.  For the review, I have made an effort to notice the ads.  So far I’ve seen mostly ads for Amazon products and services – 50% off the power adapter and extra charging cable, an Amazon credit card with rewards and a $50 gift card, books for $1.  I also have seen an ad for pet supplies, so I assume they check my Amazon purchasing records to gauge my interests.  They also have an app called Amazon AdMash you can download to the Kindle if you’d like to vote on the appearance of possible future ads.

My question to you is – are ALL the screensavers ads? Do you never see a non-ad? If that’s the case, I’m glad I opted to pay a bit more. I have come to enjoy the screensaver images and often wonder what the next one will be when I put my Kindle in idle mode. I also noticed that you can login to your Amazon account and adjust the types of pictures you want to see more or less of – Nature, Architecture, etc. Too bad you can’t add your own images though…

Yes, all the screensavers I’ve seen are ads; the same ad shows up in the banner when you turn the Kindle on, too.  I just went to see if I could adjust the type of ads I see, but my only option is to turn off the special offers.  If I do that, I’ll be charged $30 plus tax.  I guess my Kindle would have screensavers like yours if I decide to do that.

That’s nice that you have the option to switch to no ads if you desire and don’t mind paying for that option.

This Kindle doesn’t include the free 3G access to the Kindle store, but you can still shop and purchase books anywhere you can connect to WiFi.  Connecting to my home network was easy; I simply selected my network from the list it found and entered my password. I was a bit worried about how it would connect to networks in public places.  My experience with those networks on other devices is that I choose the network, then I have to go to the browser and accept their terms of service.  This Kindle does have an “experimental” browser, but I was still afraid it would be difficult to connect.  It turns out to be a snap.  I took it along on a family visit and was able to connect to their network as easily as my own.  I took it to Starbucks Sunday morning, and found that I only had to select the network and I was connected.  I didn’t even have to use the browser to accept terms.  The Kindle even remembered my home network and reconnected me when I got home from Starbucks.  I was just looking at the info on Amazon, and it may be that you only connect to AT&T public hotspots so effortlessly, though.

That’s great. So far I’ve not tried any of my Kindles on another wifi network other than the one I have at home.

It looks different than the online version, but you’ll have full access to the content in the Kindle store.

Most of the time I look for new books via my laptop or desktop. It’s amazing how fast the Kindle downloads new content. As soon as I click the buy or download sample link, it’s on the device within a few seconds.

I find the on-screen keyboard a pain to use.  You use the 5-way navigation buttons and the page forward and back buttons to move around on the keyboard.  You have to select each letter then close the keyboard before you can navigate down and select the button to search the store. 

You can actually press the on-screen return button to search the text you’ve entered instead of closing the keyboard and selecting the search store button. I’m not a big fan of on-screen keyboards either, but this one isn’t too terrible for occasional short searches. I’m pretty fast at entering text with it due to years of using similar on-screen keyboards for other devices.

The search is “intelligent” and starts showing you a list of possibilities based on the text you’ve entered. You can close the keyboard as soon as you see what you’re looking for and move up to select it from the list.  There was a bit of a delay, but it populated this list without me having to hit the return key.  The keyboard is pretty quick and responsive, but it’s a pain for me because I just can’t keep myself from tapping on the screen to select a letter.  The last two Sony readers I owned had touch screens, as does my iPad.

Just like the online store, you can read about the book or even download a sample chapter to read before buying.  Purchasing is easy.  Press the Buy button and your book starts downloading.  You can also download previously purchased books to the Kindle.  Every book I’ve downloaded has taken far less than a minute.

My favorite feature is the ability to download a sample chapter. I always do that before I buy anything because I’m pretty picky when it comes to books. It takes a great author to grab my attention.

The books look great on the Pearl screen.  Letters are sharp and easy to read.  A status bar at the bottom shows you how far you’ve progressed in the book.  At any point, you can press the Menu button to read a book description, search the book, add a bookmark, or view your notes and highlights.

Also, when you press the Menu button while reading a book, you’ll see the time of day and the page number at the bottom of the display.

I love this feature!  I tend to lose track of time when I read, and I can’t risk forgetting to pick up Rachel from school!

If you don’t like the font face or size, you can change it.  You can choose from three typefaces and eight font sizes.  You can adjust the amount of white space on the page using the line spacing and words per line options.  You can also read in vertical or horizontal orientation, and choose the position of the control buttons for each.

You can jump to the book information page from the home screen, too.  Move the cursor to the book, then press the right arrow on the 5-way navigation button.

This is also the screen that allows you to move your books to Collections (aka folders).

The Kindle has a multitude of dictionaries available to you.  Mine defaulted to using The New Oxford American Dictionary.  Look up a word by moving to the beginning of it with the navigation buttons.  If the dictionary has a definition, it pops up a small window displaying the information.  You can click to see the full definition.  I’ve found the dictionary sometimes shows you strange definitions.  For example, I stopped on the word “speed” and I was shown the definition for Alfven wave.  It often showed me definitions as I navigated down the linked table of contents, too, but it would jump me to the desired location when I clicked the linked entries.  

You can also choose to add a note or a highlight by navigating to the word in the above manner. 

You can download multiple dictionaries from your Kindle account, open one like a normal book, and search through it.  My Kindle arrived with two dictionaries on it, and there were 5-6 other dictionaries available for download in my archived items.  I had not purchased these dictionaries separately, so I assume they come with the Kindle.

They did come with the Kindle… I had them too. Several alternate languages, right? I ended up deleting them since I’ll never need them…

I plan to delete those other dictionaries, too.  I can’t even tell what language some of them are for!  I held on to them just in case I needed them for the review.

Settings lets you do a variety of things, from connecting to a network, to finding the email needed to send your own materials to your Kindle, to backing up your annotations.  You can even turn on “Popular Highlights” and “Public Notes”, if you want to see what other people had to say about the book you’re reading.  You can even share notes about books using your social network accounts.  Here’s where you can change the default dictionary the Kindle uses to look up words as you read, too.

I’m not sharing what I’m reading because people would make fun of me One of my friends at work still thinks I’m looney for saying that the Harry Potter series is my favorite book(s) ever. Come on J.K. Rowling, pleaseeeeeeee write something else soon.

I don’t care what other people have to say about books.  If I like them or if I hate them, that’s what matters!  (Although I think everyone should love Dean Koontz as much as I do!)  

As mentioned above, the Kindle does have an “experimental” browser.  It’s a pain to enter long URLs, and I haven’t found a way to store favorites.  It’s slow, but it does work if you need to look up something and you have no other way to connect to the internet.  You launch the browser from the book list menu (press the menu button to see it).

I think I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than use the Kindle’s browser. It’s way too painful. But speaking of experimental features… It’s important to note that this Kindle can not read books to you. It’s not only that the feature isn’t in the experimental menu, but this Kindle doesn’t have a headphone jack. That’s a bummer for those of you that like to use the text to speech feature or even play background MP3s while you read.

I was actually glad that there were no audio functions.  I’ve never used the text-to-speech feature, and I never wanted music on my readers.  I never liked paying even a few cents for the audio functions.  The volume buttons on the Sony readers were always some place easily bumped, and I swear that somehow drained the battery faster.

I never use them either but I’m guessing some people thinking about upgrading from a previous Kindle model might miss that feature if they were used to it.

The browser doesn’t always display the pages perfectly, though.  I couldn’t make this dark box go away, and I couldn’t read through it.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to search for a book in the book list.  You can sort the books by title or author.  You can also sort them by collections, which you can create and populate on the reader.  Yes, creating collections requires a lot of clicking on that on-screen keyboard.

Searching for a book on your Kindle is easy. Just click the Menu button on the home screen and then select Search. You’ll have to use the horrible keyboard to type in the name of the book though It will also show other books that have the same words located somewhere in them. So if you’re just looking for a particular title, you need to be specific.

Hmm, I just searched for Dance With Dragons as you described.  The only search result was the book “A Dance With Dragons”, but clicking on it opens up a list of locations within the book where it found that phrase, or dance, or dragons.  It didn’t just open up the book for me to read, although I guess I could open one of the search results and navigate to the beginning.

Ok, I’m sorry, you’re right. It works but not as expected…

You can search all your books to find every instance of a word, and the same option allows you to launch a search in the dictionary, the Kindle store, or online.  Too bad it doesn’t let you find a book this way.

The Kindle really shines when it comes to battery life. Unlike reading on a tablet or a smartphone, it seems like the Kindle’s battery takes ages and ages to drain. Actually Amazon says it will run for 1 month on a charge. That’s with wireless turned off and 30 minutes of reading per day. It also never gets hot while you’re using it.

I decided to test out the battery.  I received the book on September 29th, charged it up, and started using it about 7:00 pm that night.  I’ve left the WiFi on continually.  I leave the Kindle in standby when I’m not using it, and I’ve read and played around with it to learn the features for at least an hour a day.  My battery icon shows about a 2/3′s charge still remaining.  That’s not bad!

When will smartphone batteries last this long?

Amazon recently announced that you can now check out library books and read them on your Kindle.  I tested that out and found it works great.  You go to your library’s website (on your computer), search for the Kindle books, and go through the Overdrive checkout procedure.  You then click on the “Get for Kindle” button; you’ll go to Amazon where you’ll choose which Kindle device you want the book downloaded to.  The book was automatically downloaded to my Kindle.  It looks like any other book on my device; it’s not marked as a library book in any way, and I can make highlights and notes in the book.  (I can back up my notes using an option in the Menu.)  The book will be automatically returned on its due date, or I can go to Amazon’s online “manage my Kindle” option to return it early.

One other feature worth mentioning is how the Kindle handles embedded images.  You use the navigation button to move the cursor to the image, then click to select.  The image will enlarge to fill the screen.  Click again to return to the book page.

Speaking of embedded images, the Kindle can view PDF files. Using the special email address that each Kindle receives, I sent a PDF to my reader and a few minutes later, I was able to view the PDF by zooming in and out. Viewing PDFs on a 6″ screen isn’t that fun, but it’s doable.

This is my first experience with any Kindle reader, and I find that I enjoy reading on the e-Ink screen again.  Reading on a backlit screen, like my iPad, doesn’t bother my eyes at all.  I can and do read for hours on that bright screen.  However, I find that I don’t read as many books when I use my iPad exclusively.  I guess there’s just too many other things I can do on the iPad.  Trust me, I won’t find myself tempted to go surfing on the experimental browser, so I’m sure I’ll be reading more books with my Kindle. I just hope my lighted cover gets here sooner than the expected date.

I think this new Kindle is a great little e-book reader. The $79 price tag makes it a no-brainer for anyone wanting to try one. If you already have Kindle Keyboard though, I wouldn’t be overly gungho to upgrade if it were me as they both have the same display and features. This is especially true if you happen to do a lot of searches and annotations and prefer the physical keyboard.

Will I continue to use this Kindle to read e-books or will I go back to my normal habit of using my smartphone? I actually think I might start using both. I’ll use my smartphone and the Kindle app when I’m not home and the Kindle when I am home. We’ll see if that works for me…

One down, 2 more Amazon devices to go

Update:  Because I’m such a dedicated reviewer, I decided I’d “upgrade” my Kindle to the non-ad version.  It was very easy to do.  I went to Amazon’s Manage my Devices function and agreed to the $30 charge, to be paid with 1-Click, just like purchasing a book.  I then had to turn on my Kindle, waited a couple of seconds then got a message that my Kindle had been converted to the non-ad version.  I now have no ad banner at the bottom of my library pages, and I have non-ad screensavers.  Quick and easy!

I also tried returning my library book early.  I just went to the Amazon Manage my Kindle function again, and used the option to return the book early.  I got an email at the account I use for Amazon telling me the book had been returned, and it no longer showed up in my book list on the Kindle.  

Update on 10/19/11:  Because I truly had learned to tune out the black flashes, I didn’t notice until today that the Kindle doesn’t do the flash-to-black for every page turn.  As Erin asked in comment 18 and Bryan explained in comment 21, the Kindle is like the Nook.  It simply changes the text for 5 page changes, then it flashes to black for one page change.

Filed in categories: eBook Readers and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: Amazon, ebook, ereader, Kindle

Amazon Kindle e-Reader Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 6, 2011 at 11:00 am.