Ken Nelson

Thumbs up!

My new Kindle 2 arrived yesterday. Setup was simple. Plug in. It did the rest. I was perusing things on it about 30 seconds after opening the box.

My biggest gripe about the Kindle 1 was that it was slow and that the next page / prev page keys were too easy to hit accidently.

The Kindle 2 still seems kind of slower than it needs to be, but it is certainly an improvement over the Kindle 1 and very usable.  Also, I read with it for about an hour last night and did not accidently flip a page once.

The interface works well and is obvious. My 10 year old daughter picked it up and started using it without instructions from me.

The web access, which is partly why I got it (for wikipedia when driving) is slow and crashed a couple times while I used it.   I was able to read my blog, Instapundit and also search the Wikipedia with it. So success. It was slow but usable – and FREE.

I’d give a more in depth review but Jenny absconded with it and is currently 1/2 way through the first book I downloaded to it.

Books cost less for the Kindle. I got Brian the latest Clive Cussler for $9.99, where as it is almost $20 at Costco.

The book search interface is a delight. Amazon’s “Recommendations” system has not let me down yet.

I didn’t try, and probably won’t try, the magazine, newspaper or blog services. I’m online enough to do that without resorting to actually (gasp!) paying for it.

All in all, I like it very much and I’m sure it will be in constant use.  I suspect Jenny will get my Kindle 1, Brian my Kindle 2 and I’ll get a Kindle DX when available in June.  Grandpa Wayne might even get one bundled with the entire Louis Lamour collection under the tree this Christmas.

The family that Kindle’s together… (-: