The Kindle Kronicle, Ch. 1

I wasn't convinced to try out the original Kindle, but I've now had the Kindle 2 for about a month. On balance, it's a very good device -- not as life-changing as the Logitech Squeezebox, but certainly a keeper. As I live with it, I'll add chapters to my Kindle Kronicle.

The form factor is pretty good. You wouldn't want to hold the bare Kindle 2 tablet in your hands for several hours, but when you wrap one of the available leather covers around it, you can cradle it comfortably like a small hardcover book.

I'm not crazy about the screen size -- it's about 4 3/4" high by 3 1/2" wide, or smaller than the copy hole the a typical page of a mass-market paperback. You can adjust font sizes across six settings (and you can make it large enough not to need reading glasses, even if you're one of us "older/senior bloggers") -- but obviously, the larger the type, the less copy on the screen (at the second-largest font size, you get about 55 words on a page). The contrast of black type on light grey background is pretty good. The screen is not backlit, so you will need ambient light to read, just as you would with a book. Conveniently, Amazon will sell you a clip-on booklight that is adapted to the Kindle 2.

You turn the pages by clicking on a "next page" button that you can hit with your thumb. It appears on both the left and the right edges of the device. (There's also a single "previous page" button inconveniently located in the middle of the left side.) A small number of other buttons let you navigate through a book's contents, do searches, look up definitions, connect wirelessly with Amazon, and so on. I think it will take me a while to get over watching the page "turn negative" when you click "next page" -- the screen briefly flashes black with white type as it resets and calls up the next page -- but I suspect it just becomes part of the rhythm after a while.

I'll be curious to see how these buttons hold up to frequent use. Also, there's a keyboard to let you do searches, annotate your copy, and so on, but it may be the second-worst keyboard I've seen on a device after the iPhone/iPod touchscreen. (I haven't played with the Blackberry touchscreen, which I understand may fall even lower on my list).

Here's what's truly great about the Kindle 2:

* Instant wireless downloads -- you can sample the first chapter for free from just about anywhere, and if you're ready to buy, one click generates a wireless download that's complete in about 60 seconds.

* Huge storage capacity -- you can carry around 1500 books, periodicals, and other documents -- and if you run out of space, you can store the rest in your Kindle account online and swap them out at your convenience. (One long-term question I've got, to which I hope the answer is a simple "yes" -- will all future Kindles and Kindle reader software on other devices be backward-compatible?

* The Kindle online library -- they currently count around 240,000 volumes -- if you're looking for best-sellers, I'd say about 50-60 percent of them are available for Kindle. There are also a number of leading newspapers and a small number of top magazines, including The New Yorker.

* The voice-reader feature -- could be a breakthrough for people with disabilities... and I see a day when my favorite Wall Street Journal stories are read to me while I commute to the office. I read that, over objections from some publishers and authors, Amazon has decided to give them the ability to authorize or prohibit the use of the reader for the works they own. I hope they'll be inclined to opt-in -- after all, the reader is cool, but it's not going to replace John Lithgow or David Sedaris or Barack Obama's unique voices.

What needs improvement? In addition to some of the features mentioned above:

* A shortage of reference books -- the Kindle 2 will be a terrific way to bring cookbooks along when you're at the beach house, or travel guides when you're visiting a couple of countries and don't want to carry 10 pounds of bulky guides... right now, however, Kindle is short in both of these categories, and in others like music buyers' guides (though they do have "1001 Recordings to Hear Before You Die," which, unfortunately, I bought in paperback the day before my Kindle 2 arrived). Frommers, Time Out, Lonely Planet -- get with the program.

* Not enough public domain stuff -- when I tried out a Sony e-Reader last year, they offered me 100 free books from a large, predominantly public-domain library the moment I signed up. No such thing with Kindle 2 (unless I missed an e-mail somewhere)... searching the free public domain stuff on the Kindle site seems deliberately difficult. I did manage to find the Bible, the Koran, some Yeats poetry, Machiavelli, Mark Twain, Homer, Henry James and a few others... I'll let you know how the translations and chapterizing are. Where are the gazillions of public domain volumes that Google has put online?

* Newspapers and magazines -- I'd like to see the price of The Wall Street Journal bundled with my daily print paper and my wsj.com subscription... I'd like to see The Economist and The Atlantic and a few other quality "keeper" magazines.

An interesting development since my Kindle 2 arrived was Amazon's decision to release Kindle software for the iPhone (the device with my least-favorite keyboard). I may give that a try on my iPod Touch, but I can't see it as a replacement for serious reading.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be reading some books on the Kindle 2 for purposes of preparing a couple of speeches. I'll be interested to see how the features that let me pull quotes and insert my own comments work -- that may be key to our long-term relationship.