graffiti in experience

In part 1 of my review, I talked about some of the form factor of the Kindle 2. But all said and done, the proof is in the eating, or in this case reading – oodles and oodles of reading. To best illustrate how the most mission-critical part of the Kindle 2 stacks up, I thought it best to let the pictures do the talking.

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Mind you these are not screen grabs of any kind. They are are un-artificially lit (read – no flash) pictures, captured in natural light on a grayish day.

As you can see, it really is just like reading a book. None of the eye-strain traditionally associated with electronic device screens. The reason is that it is not backlit. Reading a backlit device is a lot like staring into a light bulb. This screen relies on the reflection of external light on the e-page.

This means there are 2 great benefits. First, the Kindle is remarkably comfortable on your eyes, even after hours and hours. Longest stretch I got was about 5 hours on a long-haul flight. The second, this thing works like a charm in bright light. That’s means you can read this in the park, on the beach or anyplace else you might typically take a book.

As you can also see from those screens, there are some experimental features on the Kindle 2. These include a plain vanilla mp3 player. I say mp3, because besides that and the aa or aax formats – other audio types are not supported. It has the basic functions (alt+space to start/stop, alt+f to go forward) – which work just fine if you want a little light background music when reading. Audio quality isn’t fantastic, and there is some noticeable static when refreshing a page.

There is a rudimentary browser, but because of the refresh rate of E-Ink, it is really not too useful for anything beyond looking something up on Wikipedia.

It’s relatively easy to search for and add books in the store via the device, but if speed is what you’re looking for, you will be better off shopping at your traditional desktop computer. Once you’ve added books, the Kindle will sync them wirelessly (within the US). If you are like me and want to extend battery life, then you have to turn wireless on via the menu.

The final challenge is what to contain the device in. I had very few requirements. It should look good, form-factor weighs heavily. It should offer some protection to the device (I’m not expecting an Otterbox, but it should cushion some impact) yet be very secure. Most of all – it really shouldn’t break my Kindle.

After lots and lots of hunting. I finally settled on this gem by Trendy Digital.

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Nice secure slide in instead of flimsy elastic straps, little padded for those slight bumps, doesn’t use the poorly design side hook/sockets which appear to cause the cracks, no annoying plastic sheet over the screen that makes it excessively glossy and best of all – it looks sharp.

Parting thoughts – you definitely do not have to spend lots of money on books to start. New releases, sure – but look out for deals. Amazon frequently has free book offers. There are also lots of public domain books available.

• Public domain books by Gutenberg.org – also available on Amazon
• An alternate to Project Gutenberg – freekindlebooks.org (may have better formatting for some titles)
• Amazon’s Kindle store – filters out public domain books, then price sorted,  so free is first (filter further by star rating to get the user-rated ‘better’ books
• Another source
• And another

There may be some duplication there, but there’s a good enough source of free books to get you started without spending a dime. And the beauty of being able to hold 1500 books at a time, is that you can just get it. Remove it from your Kindle if you run out of space – but it will stay on your Kindle account, so you can add it back in later.