Product Review: Kindle 3G/WiFi

My husband got me a Kindle 3G/WiFi for Mother's Day.  I wasn't sure I wanted one.  After all, I like holding the physical book in my hand and turning the pages as I read.  But I have to admit it, I am a book junkie.  My shelves are overflowing with reading material.

So far I have to say that I am hooked on my Kindle.  I had read some reviews where people just had repeated problems with their Kindle.  One man was on his fourth one in less than three weeks because they kept going into sleep mode and he could never wake them up again.  So I have not had high expectations of the Kindle and I still try to keep from getting attached, but it is difficult.  I love it.

As with any piece of electronics, there are positives and negatives.  I will list them both for you as far as my experience of owning one for four days.

First the negatives:
1. The internet option is a bit weak.  It is slow and is difficult to navigate around the pages without a mouse or touch pad.  If you are buying it to surf the internet, you'll be disappointed.  It is great for checking facebook once in a while, but not posting much.

2. This may or may not be a negative, but when you get a Kindle book, there may be passages already highlighted in it because Kindle sends all highlighted passages back to Amazon where they are counted and sent back to everyone with that Kindle book.  So you will see an underlined passage with a number under it telling you how many people highlighted that passage.  You can turn off the number, but I don't think there is a way to turn off the underlining. Some have complained that it's like getting a book you think is new only to discover someone else has already used it.

3. If someone in your family has a Kindle or is using Kindle for PC on the same account, if they load up their Kindle or Kindle for PC with books and games, you will also get them on your Kindle.  This is a little frustrating since I was trying to keep my Kindle home page neat and tidy only to turn it on and find a whole slew of downloads there that I did not put there. Someone else in my family downloaded them for their Kindle application on their computer.  I've had to remedy the mess by setting up Collections and putting all my books and their's into collections on my Kindle.  I have thought of maybe making a collection titled "Not My Downloads" so I won't need to see those in my stuff.

4. It takes about two or three days to wade through the Kindle User's Guide that comes already loaded on your Kindle.  You really need to read it, though, because there are so many things that are helpful and make using the Kindle easier.

5. There are buttons for turning pages forward and back on both edges of the Kindle.  I find that I keep accidentally pressing one or the other and then losing my place.  I'm having to learn to hold it differently than what I naturally want to do.

6. There is no back light, so a book light for dark rooms or night reading is a must.

7. The covers are very expensive!

8. The key pad buttons are very small & I read one complain where the letters start to wear off after a while making it difficult to know which is what.

Now on to the positives!

1. You can carry many books with you all in less space than a large paperback book.  It only weighs 8 oz and is extremely thin.

2. If you want to read the Classic Literature, you can get most if not all of them free for Kindle.

3. There are many free book available for Kindle as well as first chapter teasers for the pay books.

4. I had pdf books that I wanted to read but it was just too hard to read them on my computer.  They weren't portable.  Now I can load them on my Kindle, take them with me and not be tied to my computer.

5. When I am away from my computer, I can usually connect to internet and check in on Facebook or Twitter and leave a short post if I want.

6. When I am reading, if a passage strikes me as something others might be interested in, I can highlight it and send it to twitter and facebook with just few clicks.

7. I can bookmark all the passages that I might want to go back to later and review.

8. If I have my settings right, everything I bookmark, or highlight in a Kindle book gets stored at Amazon, so if my Kindle needs replacing at some point, I can just pick up where I left off.

9.  For those of you who have cell phones with a Kindle app., if you are away and choose to leave your Kindle home and decide to read a bit on your cell phone, when you get home  your place in the book on Kindle will be saved where you left off reading on your cell phone.

10. For me, being gluten free and not having wireless on my cell phone, I may use this at the grocery store to check on gluten free status of products I am interested in.  The G3 connects when WiFi won't and is available in almost all places.

11. Reading on a Kindle doesn't burn your eyes out.  It is like reading a regular page from a book.

12. I've not tried this but with your special Kindle email you can send personal documents to Amazon, they will convert them and send them to your Kindle for you.  Some fees might apply for this. But there are ways of getting around the fees and the Kindle User's Guide tells you how.

13. You can hook your Kindle up to your computer to transfer pdf documents to it without sending them to Amazon.  You can also transfer other documents via USB, but read the user guide to know which ones as I can't remember.

14. You can make the Kindle read to you with text to speech.  This is a good feature if you drive a lot and want to "read" as you drive.  Just have your Kindle read to you.  You don't have to use ear phones either.  I was impressed with the quality of the reading voice.  It doesn't sound robotic like Microsoft Sam. The only draw back is that if there are subheading or titles with no punctuation, then it reads it as one long sentence which might not make much sense.

I'm sure I can find other nice things about the Kindle, but my mind is starting to go blank on me.  I hope this review will help you make a decision of whether or not to buy a kindle.