Kindle was introduced by Amazon at a time when a few e-books were out and about without creating much of a buzz. But once it was introduced, it joined the league with Sony ebook Readers making the equipment a whole lot more stylish and buzz-worthy. Developed by Amazon itself, the Kindle is set to change the way we read books, newspapers, weblogs and heaps more.

About Kindle: In a nutshell
To be short and sweet, Kindle is a compact electronic book reader that offers instant wireless access to millions of books sold by Amazon. But Kindle is not limited to the books that Amazon sells as it can also be used to read books in mobipocket or text formats and it can also read Audible.com’s protected audio books, HTML, word documents and even several image formats. Kindle also has very limited support for MP3 music. It is an audio book player as well as a web browser. Kindle makes use of a cellular network known as “Whispernet” in order to deliver books, newspapers, magazines and weblogs to you immediately. Whispernet does not cost you anything as Amazon offers data connectivity free of charge as a part of Kindle’s purchase.

Amazon Kindle cannot be compared with iPhone or the iPod Touch as it lacks any sort of colour or backlight. It sports a simplistic web browser with free wireless and a long battery life. For a very reasonable cost, you will get instant access to Amazon’s instant wireless book store! Is that not compelling enough? The Amazon Kindle was so successful that its initial manufacturing sold out in just about five hours and Amazon took six months to get back into stock. Almost all the books that are currently sold are also available in Kindle and in fact they are available in just half the prices of their hard cover versions. Not only are you paying less, you also get a free backup with Amazon, save trees and in addition, you also get access free content without paying anything which includes Wikipedia, free books that range from Baen Science Fiction Free Library to Project Gutenberg with unlimited internet access. Kindle has you covered for the occasional audio books that you purchase from Audible after a registration and the audible books play with on-screen controls.

There are just several aspects about Kindle that one must know in detail and we have done it in the following review.

Design:

Resemblances to the Sony Reader:
In many ways, the Amazon Kindle ebook reader is similar or Sony Reader. At about 10.3 ounces, the kindle weighs just about an ounce more and slightly bigger, with its dimensions measuring (H x W x D) 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.7”. The Kindle sure does have the unique and distinctive design that tends to give the users an initial reaction of “wow! That looks cool”. However, this initial wow factor wears off in about one or two weeks of its use. Its design will not keep you entertained and with its built-in keyboard just beneath the display, it is often compared to an over sized white Blackberry. The Kindle also feels cheap in hand when compared to Sony and this is partially because of the fact the casing of it basically plastic, while that of Sony is metal. Its shell is not just plastic, but an “impact-absorbing” plastic and we put its impact absorbing capability to test by dropping it for a few times and it came out with no damage to display, buttons or any functionality.

The device has odd angles, being thicker on the left than on the right. And it had a lot of other odd design factors, however after living with it for a while, we admit the fact that each of the deign choices, no matter how strange it just might be, has a very good reason for being built so. While the bevelled edges makes the device easy to be picked up off a table like the MacBook Air, the inward slanting corners help with the grip on hands.

A removable rubberised plate covers majority of Kindle’s back. It slides off with just a bit more force and reveals a battery, the SD memory card slot and a pinhole reset switch.

Display:
The differences in the dimensions does not mean that the Sony reader has a bigger display, as both have the same 4.9” x 3.6” (6” diagonal) display with a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels. The screen uses E-Ink technology that serves to make the letters and words on it looks much more print like in appearance and is actually very impressive- in case you have not seen the technology in action before. To be more technical, it is an electrophoretic display that forms visible images by rearranging charged pigment particles using an applied electric field. The Kindle has four grey scales and 167 pixels per inch which is a step backwards when compared to the eight grey scales and 170 pixels per inch of Sony; this means the Sony ebook reader offers a little more in the way of contrast and hence is less strain to your eyes.

Kindle has combined a paper like display with a custom, anti-aliased typeface in order to achieve remarkable amount of readability. It offers six text sizes from petite to grand and we are glad to inform you that all of them are crisp and clear. The home screen and menus use the now- classic Helvetica font in fixed size. We find it almost impossible to separate the discussion of Kindle’s software interface from that of its hardware. Like the iPhone, the distinction is almost nonsensical as the hardware and software are intimately entwined, far more than in a traditional Windows PC or Mac.

Boons and banes of the E-Ink technology:
Kindle uses Vizplex, the latest version of E-Ink. One of the main disadvantages of the E-Ink technology is that, the screen takes about a second to refresh; it goes black and blinks when a page is turned. This ghosting effect might be bothering for some, but Amazon designers have done a great job in limiting the delay and so, we must say that it is not extremely irritating and jarring. The trade seems to be much worth while taking into consideration the fact that you will be able to read the screen in direct sunlight. Most of you there might be thinking that the absence of backlight is a disadvantage, but that is not true. Both Amazon and Sony opted against using backlight as they strain the eyes and this means that you have to read the ebook on a well lit environment, just as you would have to do to read a magazine or novel.

Keypad:
We liked the keypad layout of Kindle and the impressive ones were the inclusion of a rubberised scroll wheel and placement of large buttons on both sides of the screen to page back and forth between screens or ‘pages’. The keys are very flat and require more effort to press than the big side buttons that make typing very slow. We found this to be irritating only until we found that this kind of arrangement allows you to hold the keyboard face to hold Kindle without pressing any keys that provides more ways to hold the device while reading. As we said earlier, the more we used kindle, the more we realised how much of thought had went to it. Even the strange change in orientation of keys towards the centre eventually revealed that it follows the curve of thumbs motion that ensures a wide target area for each and every key.

Here comes the annoying thing: the Next Page and Previous Page buttons are placed right at the edge of the device and seem to be overly sensitive and on numerous occasions, we found ourselves accidentally hitting the button and ending up in another page. Below these buttons is a small button labelled as Back, which we initially found to be very confusing as it had nothing to do with turning the page backwards. If you assume navigation in Kindle like navigating web pages, then you will quickly sort out the back button. After you follow hyperlinks and menus, the Back button allows you to go back to your last location in your document or even to the previous document. This button is immensely useful especially while reading newspapers, magazines and blogs.

Volume up and down buttons, a mini USB connector and a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack are on the bottom edge, while the power and wireless switches sit on the rear near the top. The power and wireless on / off oval chrome sliders are reminiscent of an iPod’s hold slider and are easily accessible, even when the Kindle is snapped into its book like leather cover. Amazon Kindle has an in-built speaker for the sake of audio books. Its audio quality leaves a lot to be desired for music and we reckon that it is heaps better to use headphones.

The small rubberised scroll wheel offered is the key to navigating menus and selecting on-screen text, but is prone to picking up of lint, fibres and other particles. How this would be affecting the operation of the device is hard to say as of now, but it is probably better to try and keep it clean. With just a click on the scroll wheel you will be able to sort the content by author, date or title and even just show the magazines and other books. Like that of the iPod’s scroll wheel, using the scroll wheel quickly ceases to become a conscious act. Amazon has to be appreciated for the inclusion of Home button and as in the case of any Home button on any of the devices, this one too takes you to the main list page of all your content.

With the help of the keypad, you can bookmark the key and highlight passages of what you are reading even make, edit and export notes. We also liked how when you are in a document, you can look up a word in the Oxford dictionary by selecting the line from the text using the scroll wheel and the dictionary looks up all the words in the line and so, you will not have to go through the trouble of selecting the exact word.

Sony ahead:
When compared one on one, Sony seems to be the clear winner as far as design is concerned. The protective leather cover offered by Sony is much better when compared to the one Kindle is provided with. Kindle’s cover is a bit on the bulky side and the device does not sit well on it. The clunky cover might be one of the reasons why Kindle is not as comfortable as the Sony model to be held hands. Most of you might prefer removing Kindles cover while using it, though having it un-protected might not be a wise idea.

Features:

Interface:
Amazon Kindle electronic book reader runs on a version of Linux which is based on 2.6.10 kernel on a Marvell PXA255 processor. This PXA255 processor is derived from Intel’s XScale architecture, which is considered to be the fifth generation ARM processor. The ARM architecture is especially designed for low power consumption with good performance and it currently leads the market in processing power per watt. There ARM derived chips are used is lot of the best selling smartphones like iPhone and Blackberry.

As soon as we said Linux, you might have got the command line night mares, nothing to worry of such things, thanks to enterprising Kindle-hacker Igor Skochinsky, we are aware of the fact that Kindle’s graphical user interface runs in Java and so does much of its core software. Kindle’s software is upgradable and earlier in the year 2008, Amazon released its version 1.0.4 to fix minor updates to fix the bugs.

Memory:
The Amazon Kindle wireless reading device has 256MB of internal flash memory out of which 185MB is user accessible and can sport 250 to 300 books. If you find this memory in-sufficient, you can always fill in the memory card slot with a SD memory card and store thousands of more books, MP3 players, audible books and other files. However, the limitation is that, only capacities of up to 4GB are supported as the slot does not accept the SDHC cards. We also felt that it would have been better if this memory card slot was not hidden behind the rear cover of the Kindle. On a better note, the battery is user replaceable, which both the iPod and iPhone have not yet seemed to master.

My Clippings:
The highlights, bookmarks and annotations you made using the scroll wheel and keypad can be accessed from the home screen in a book known as “My Clippings”. All of its contents are fully searchable and Kindle allows you to back it up to Amazon over Whispernet. Since My Clippings is also stored as a text file, it can even be copied to PC and Mac and hence printed too.  There are just two exceptions for this feature: the first being the fact the any content that you did not purchase from Kindle store is not backed up in this manner and second is that Amazon only stores a week’s worth of periodicals on its servers, so you will be able to retrieve the past few days worth, but the older copies reside solely on your Kindle.

Let us browse with Kindle:
The built-in browser of Kindle works in “Basic” mode by default which is a mode that ignores style sheets and most of the table layouts, which leaves you with just simple texts, links and images. You will also find an “Advanced” mode that attempts to do justice to the CSS and tables as much as it could. However, we do not recommend this mode at all; it is almost unusable as most websites are designed twice as wide as Kindle’s, with smaller type.
The browser is quite slow. The Whispernet uses a high speed data modem, but its low powered processor of Kindle is saddled with Java-based system which is slow to retrieve the pages. Wikipedia is usable in the Kindle, but we found that the browsing experience in iPhone was much better; thanks to its faster processor. When it comes to comfortable reading of long articles, Kindle scores the goal.

Kindle Now Now:
Yet another experimental feature of Kindle is its “Kindle Now Now” functionality. Just enter a question and it will be sent to Amazon’ s mechanical Turk system and they will send you up to three answers back to kindle and once you get the answer, you can rate how useful they actually were. People on the backend of this system perform web searches to look for answers and their Now Now responses will include a link to the source where the answer was found. We tested this feature with a few questions and the usefulness of the responses varied. Though Now Now is a very interesting idea, it does not seem significantly better than just typing the question into Google.

Audio Books:
Audible’s Windows-only software is required for authorising Kindle for Audible and installation of this software takes a few minutes and throws in a lot of “new hardware found” messages. Finally when you get to run the Audible software, you will find it extremely confusing and not to mention, it is unsightly. We found that Audible’s online instructions for activating Kindle did not match the software’s actual interface. Once you activate the Kindle, trust us, you will shut down the Audible Manager with a sigh of relief. This is almost a onetime process as once this is done, the Kindle had no issues in playing audiobooks and did not demand any further interaction with Audible’s software.

Note that, if you do not have access to any Windows PC, you will not able to play Audible audio books on your Kindle.

Kindle Shopping:
One of the amazing facts of Kindle is that, you will never need a PC or Mac to start using it. The Kindle arrives from Amazon being already registered to your account; unless it is a gift, in which case you will have to login with your Amazon account. Just visit the Kindle store directly via whispernet and browse and search books, newspapers, magazines and blogs and finally, buy them. Amazon has also extended its recommendations system into the kindle store. The site also has the equivalent of browsing book in a bookstore, that is, you can read a sample of any kindle book for free and if you like it, buy the book. The periodicals and blogs can be got for a two week trial subscription; drop it before the end of two weeks and you will be billed nothing.
When you browse amazon for any book, it will say you if the Kindle version of the same is available. We assure you that the savings will be substantial, especially with the new books.

Weblogs:
You might be wondering why would you want to subscribe to any of the blogs when you can get them for free on the web? Well, the answer is convenience. While they cost just less than a pound, getting the latest weblog posts delivered to Kindle wirelessly throughout the day is very pleasant and you will be able to read them without a system. Having said that, not all blogs suite the style and those weblogs that are heavy on visuals or photography are totally pointless on the kindle for the same reasons that we had said in the browser section. For the text blogs that are updated frequently, Kindle is a blast.

Share your Kindle:
Amazon Kindle supports some sharing. A kindle can be downloaded into about six kindles that are associated with one Amazon account that allows the families to share. In case each of the household member already possesses an Amazon account of their own, then there is no way by which you can retain those distinct accounts and still share books with each other. While the Apple’s iTunes store allows each household member authorise other computers to playback the purchased content and any number of iPods can play it. But in the case of Kindle, sharing with household work only if all the family members share one account, which creates some issues such as mixing the recommendations for multiple members.

Though this might not seem to be a big issue for most of the users, given Apple’s example, we will be happy to see Amazon offering more flexibility in sharing. The periodical subscriptions are not shareable at all. The most disappointing fact is that, newspapers, magazines and weblogs are delivered directly to specific Kindles and even if you copy the files to another Kindle that is associated with your account, they cannot be viewed. It can get frustrating when you cannot share the daily newspaper with your spouse.

Publish your own Kindle eBook:
Amazon has to be appreciated for the fact that it works directly with authors to publish e-Books, while most of the other eBook vendors like eBooks.com do not. Along with Kindle, Amazon has also introduced the Digital Text Platform that enables anybody to publish their e-books in the Kindle store. Publishing a kindle book in Amazon is extremely easy: just upload a word, text or HTML document and pick a category or two to list your work, add title and metadata such as author, editor, and contributors; view a preview to check formatting; set a price; and click Publish. The whole process takes not more than 10 minutes. You are given the freedom to set the price and offers them 35% of that. However, it reserves right to offer a book for less than what the author specifies, but guarantees 35% of retail price to the author. This system allows Amazon to offer sales promotions without reducing author’s royalty, while allowing the author to set the price that they think are most profitable.

There is simply no advantage for publishers in the used market as a purchased kindle book is yours and only yours. It cannot be transferred to anyone else and this means none of the used Kindle books will eat into the sales of the new kindle books.

Performance:

Reading with Kindle:
The sole purpose of the device is to read stuff and let us see how Kindle performed. Our first reaction: “This thing is remarkably comfortable”. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos had stated that the primary goal of the Kindle team was to emulate a Book’s most crucial feature , that it disappears into the story as you read. There is no doubt in the fact that this digital device works very different than our usual tree books and you would find these differences to be stark in the first couple of days of using it. As we had mentioned earlier, it blinks as it loads a new page but this is a minor distraction. You will be able to experiment with different font sizes until you find the one that you feel is comfortable and a normal book would offer you nothing like this. This is very handy for the older eyes and the tired ones.

Kindle Digital Book Reader is also designed in such a way that it allows you to read several books at a time. In the home screen, you will find the most recently read items at the top of the list which can be sorted. A feature that everybody loves is that, Kindle remembers the place that you leave in any book so that, you can jump back in, wherever you left earlier.

We assure you that you too will find reading newspapers with kindle is a very interesting experience and would prefer it with a few exceptions. The Kindle newspapers are hyperlinked, just like the web pages. When a paper is opened for the first time, you will find its logo and front page with headlines and short summaries which is followed by the complete list of article, which is basically a table of contents. To read a particular article, just click on it, press back button to return to the list of articles and just keep paging forward for the next article. Interesting is it not?

However, here come the disadvantages: with the limited greyscale display, the photographs are almost a complete loss. Though this might have suited the newspapers dated 20 years back, Kindle will not be able to do justice for the latest colour info graphics and high resolutions. The newspaper publishers omit the sidebar content from the e-book reader editions. Usually you will not know what you are missing unless the article says “See Sidebar”. Despite these small glitches, we have come to love the Kindle editions of some of the major news papers. And on a very positive note, there is no pile of recycling to deal with at end of each week, we will always be able to find the article when you go back for it, there are no ads, the paper shows up before we are out of the bed and will never be soggy from being out in the rain.

Audio:
Though Kindle supports playing MP3, just like the device’s browser, it can only be considered as experimental. The audio books have a proper controller interface, but the MP3s are just played in background while you read. The tracks are played at random with no ways to specify a playlist, pause or skip a track. All that you can do is either adjust the volume or just stop playing music entirely. We understand that Amazon has designed Kindle for just occasional background listening and not as a multimedia device. However, the fact that the support is experimental implies that the future versions of Kindle software might add the playlist features and even the basic traditional controls.

Battery:

The Kindle  is equipped with a 1530mAh lithium polymer type battery which is similar to the ones employed in iPod and iPhone. However, unlike these Apple products, Kindle’s battery is user replaceable. It is a bit challenging to remove though, as you may have to carefully unplug a connector from Kindle’s internal circuit boards. Taking into consideration the long battery life of Kindle, this facilitates end of life replacement of a worn out battery, rather than the kind of regular swap that travelling laptop users often do. And when it is time to replace the battery, there will not be any gouging as the Amazon chargers are extremely cheap and are available at quarter of iPhone’s battery cost.

Amazon claims that Kindle will last for 2 days with the wireless turned on or about a week without wireless on a single battery charge and our tests proved the same. The device gets charged in two hours, using the included AC adaptor.

Warranty:

Amazon offers one year limited warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The above review must have made a point very clear: Kindle is not just an ebook reader. Thanks to its wireless connection, it is an extremely convenient reader for most types of content like books, newspapers, magazines and blogs. Its main focus of reading books is superb and within a few minutes, you will almost forget the fact that it is an electronic device. We wish if only there was more type and layout options for the authors to create more attractive ebooks. Just a higher resolution display and that too, a colour one will serve that purpose. However, kindle does things that no nomal book can ever think of doing, with its fully searchable content including your annotations, hundreds of books in your pocket and continuous updates of weblogs. Kindle does not need any computer to work and almost everything is backed up to the servers of Amazon with no configuration required.

Kindle is mainly aimed at readers who save their books to read again, search or just use for reference. But those who read a book and pass it on to their friend might not find the Kindle concept attractive. The main advantages of kindle include huge library at good price, wireless shopping with instant delivery, online backup for purchased books, free wireless web access, support for heaps of non-Amazon content and long battery life. No review is complete without mentioning its cons too and the Kindle has a few of those too: the newspapers and magazines lack sidebars and infographics, web browser is basic and limited and a Windows-only software is required for Audible set-up.

Kindle’s success is partly because of the fact Amazon has designed the complete user experience, just like Apple did for its iPod and iPhone. The other reasons are Amazon’s partnership with its content publishers and connectivity; but one major reason being the fact that it makes you forget the fact that you are using an electronic device.

Amazon Kindle - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Amazon
Model Name	Amazon Kindle
Colour	White
Dimensions (H x W x D)	7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7"
Weight	292 grams
Display technology	E Ink® “Electronic Paper”
Screen size	6 inch
Display resolution	800 x 600 pixels 167 pixels per inch
Grey scale	Four level grey scale
Built in memory	185MB (Approx. 200 eBooks)
Operating System	Linux 2.6.10
Processor	Marvell PXA255 processor
RAM	64MB RAM 256MB of internal flash
Memory slots	SD Card Slot
Modem	Wireless cellular modem
Cellular Enhancement Protocol	CDMA 2000 1X EV-DO
Connectivity	Amazon Whispernet usingEVDO/CDMA AnyDATA wireless modem
Compatible unsecured audio files	MP3
Compatible image files	JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Audio output	Speakers
Compatible Operating systems	Windows® XP (Home Edition / Professional, Media Center Edition, Media Center Edition 2004, Media Center Edition 2005) & Windows Vista® (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate), Mac
Ports	1 x USB 1 x 3.5mm headphone jack
Power	3.7 V
Battery type	Rechargeable 1530 mAh   lithium polymer, BA1001 model
Battery life	2 days with wireless on and a week with wireless switched off
Recharging time	Four hours with USB, Two hours with optional AC charger
Warranty	Limited one year warranty