I bumped into a gadget loving friend on the weekend and he produced a Kindle from his bag. Lovingly encased in a small padder bag he was really happy with it declaring it had fired him to read much more than he had previously.
I was glad to have a chance to have a play without needing to buy one.
It was pleasant enough to hold feeling solid enough but light. The screen worked well with good contrast despite being in the park. I didn’t like the way the pages transitioned but I can see why you would need a clear indication of transition. Access to his collection of books was straightforward. I had a bit of a play with the Internet access (he had the 3G version). The picture for this was pretty good (all be it Black and White) and I expect that the navigation would get easier with practice. It displayed my library catalogue fine and the small cover images were clear enough.
Generally I found the physical arrangement / labelling of buttons and options for moving around the device to be rather confusing. I managed to end up in the wrong screen several times and almost succeeded in deleting a book!
So – am I more tempted to buy one? Not really.
And the big reason would have to be the pricing for the ebooks themselves. I have taken to looking on Amazon for the Kindle price. For anything fairly current this seems to be no more than a pound less than for the physical object. Generally it is about 40p cheaper. I have found a few where the Kindle prices is higher. OK – so there is VAT to pay but…
Maybe I am the wrong person for this product – I buy very few books at present – most of my reading is borrowed or the odd charity shop purchase here and there. You also cannot lend a Kindle eBook (apart from if you hand over the physical device!) which is pretty limiting. Amazon seem to take a dim view of lending Kindles.
I can see how it will work for people though and I will be looking for how my service might support people using the Kindle through our collections.
The fact that you can get out of copyright books for free is tempting, but I also wouldn’t be keen to spend almost the full price of a new book on an “e” rather than a “non-e” version.