Birthday Gift: Kindle 3 with 3G/Wi-Fi - A review

Norm got me a Kindle 3 for my birthday. I'd been looking at book readers for about 2 years now, but the price and features always had me on the fence.

What I really wanted was something to read books on, and maybe surf to read some blogs. I have an iPad and a Motorola Xoom that I use at work. They're great if you want to open a document on Google Docs, surf some web pages, and watch videos. But not so hot for reading books because they are too big to hold easily and too heavy.

I thought about getting a Galaxy Tab until I tried one out at the Verizon store. It was slow and clunky. And really, I don't like to spend hours staring at an LED screen because it hurts my eyes after a while.

So, armed with that information, I made a decision to take a chance on a Kindle and had Norm order one from Amazon. After all, if it was really a bad choice, I'd just send it back.

It's not going back. I love it.

It's light. I can hold it in one hand. And the 3G network on board has me surfing web pages though I don't do as much of that as reading with it. It opens up the ability to use the Kindle as a poor man's tablet, though.

Here's a list of what I've managed to do with my Kindle:

1. Read email. I can log in, view the message list, and read entire messages. I can't send a reply back from it, though.

2. Log into some work sites with it and actually do some work. This is limited, but if I was on a trip this could be a handy thing. I can't view Google Docs with it --the browser is not that sophisticated. I can see the doc title there, but I can't open it.

3. Take meeting notes. I create a .txt file with the meeting name and agenda if I have an agenda. Then I just use the annotation feature to write notes in the file. When I'm done with the meeting, I connect the Kindle to my laptop and download the notes from My Clippings and clear the My Clippings file.

4. Listen to some songs. It plays songs in the order added (though sometimes it will just insert one in the list randomly), so it's a bit like loading an audio CD into your car CD player, but I've found that it's decent enough when I wear headphones. I haven't found a volume control and the volume setting is what I'd set for my 8-year-old. But I can read and listen to music at the same time. Nice. (Oops, just found this as I was writing. It's on the bottom of the player. I was expecting the forward and back buttons to work as volume controls.)

5. Read. I've found that since it's so light, I toss it in my purse. And that means that I read at odd moments while waiting for other things. So I'm reading more.

6. Rediscover. I subscribed to a couple of Sci-Fi magazines that I used to read all the time but didn't once I became a working adult. I fell in love with Sci-Fi all over again and started downloading and reading more.

7. Look it up. Sometimes while reading Sci-Fi, I find that I need to look up a word. Rare, but sometimes I find one. There's a built-in dictionary that's decent. I can look it up and get back to reading without losing my spot.

Would it replace my print books? Not entirely. I still like holding a book. But it just might further on in the future. I like the ability to shift the type to a larger size on whim. It doesn't tire my eyes like an LED.

I'll often read until I get sleepy at night, then put it down and turn out the lights. Evidently reading an LCD screen can interfere with sleep. I know that I've had a difficult time winding down after working on an iPad and watching a video. It may just be that watching a video jazzes me up more than reading, but I do like reading until I'm tired.

And with an 8-year-old, not having explicit romance covers laying around the house is quite necessary. So my romance/paranormal reading is moving to Kindle, and I'm ditching print books.

Reading on it with an 8-year-old is also good. I downloaded a few titles for Amelia to entertain her when we're somewhere and she's bored. (A "Thank You" to Susie for the idea of using this in Church when we can't possibly expect her to understand the sermon for the adults. I found some decent kid's Bible stories.) I monitor what she's opening so she doesn't stumble into my labeled collections.

Things I'd like? A shuffle mode for the mp3 player. A password protect mode for some collections --with an ability to set that on only some collections. The ability to reply to email, but I can see how that might cause my data usage to go up.

But I'm happy with this little device. I've read more than I have in years. It's discrete. And no one can tell whether I'm reading Like Water for Chocolate, War and Peace, or a trashy-covered romance novel. I'm just reading the device.