• Whispernet has spotty coverage in Southern Maryland. Why hasn’t SPRINT found new tower space YET to improve coverage? This has always been a VerizonWireless county but come on folks. In Calvert County we have huge dead spots for SPRINT service where Verizon Wireless picks up the slack. It has been that way for years. SPRINT does its best to cover the highways but leaves the neighborhoods along the bay wanting. I hope the Kindle is impetus for SPRINT to FIX coverage. I might even be tempted finally to switch allegiance.
• The experimental browser is still experimental. It’s not Firefox or IE7. It is years behind anything you have ever used. It is text based. It is very primitive. It is pig-dead slow and the displayed results of a URL will test your ability to read gobbledygook.
• As a book reader the DX is wonderful. I ENJOY reading books with it.
• As you may have already read I also bought the Kindle to read PDF files. I’m satisfied for the most part. As long as I have m,y reading glasses PDF works for me.
• MP3 works. You cannot use the Kindle like an iPod apparently. I still have some experimenting to do but I don ‘t think the unit will play a playlist of music files. The functionality appears to be for audio books and podcasts. Bummer! All of your indexed audio files are mixed in with your books. Dumb idea Amazon. I sure would like to group PDF files, books, and audio in different directories. I cannot even imagine having to wade through page after page of book titles, MP3 titles, and PDF file titles to find what I want. The organizational philosophy of the device needs to be reexamined. It too is primitive.
• Menus are simple and easy to find. Bookmarking is cool.
• I like the size of the DX. Anything smaller and I would not enjoy reading as much as I do.
• Battery life is nothing short of amazing.
• Turning the unit off requires you to wait four or five seconds. I’m used to it now but sheesh!
• I have had the unit freeze in one more or another for no apparent reason. Holding the off button over for longer than for seconds seems to help.
• Really pleased with no contract or commitment. Had Amazon made a a cellular specific offering millions would have eventually opted out. 
• Typing using the chicklet keyboard is difficult and non-standard.

I keep evaluating and writing as I learn more. Mostly I am very pleased and am not bothered by the price I paid for Kindle DX.

©2012 Faster, better.... All Rights Reserved.

Since Amazon first introduced the Kindle I have watched and waited. Watched because the Kindle was due. It was time for a personal reader. Technology had gone beyond paper years ago and it was time for a device to carry the written the word. Waited because I didn’t want to be first. Sometimes first is disappointed and that wasn’t going to be me.

This terrific reader has so much inside that I want to write separate articles as I master the options in the DX. First I want to share what I know about reading PDF’s.

My needs in a personal reader included PDF capability. Having joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary in 2008 I was regularly printing large, multi-page PDF files used for personal study. My home library already had at least two wheel barrels full of training materials. There just had to be a better way.

When the Kindle DX was introduced in June 2009, I figured I was ready to make the purchase. The DX was a larger size and to me size mattered. The closer the Kindle was to 8 1/2 x 11 inches (actually 9.7) the fonder I would be. Larger is readable when your eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be. I’m one of those that carries reading glasses to read the fine print. The Kindle DX was bigger and therefore better.

The price was a tough one at first but what finally sold me was that no subscription was required. Subscriptions ruin my appreciation for a service when the subscription prices begin to climb. I like the idea of being able to read my own PDF files, and purchasing Kindle books when I wanted to. What a great surprise to also find that Amazon.com has some free titles that include genres of interest to me! When you compare what you get with some of the other high tech devices out there today and you don’t want a cellular telephone contract to enjoy book reading the Kindle looked great at $489.

The Day Came

The Kindle was delivered to my mailbox. Strange that $500 worth of technology is delivered by the post office to a rural mailbox but that’s how it came. It even sat in the mailbox overnight because we didn’t check the box on a Saturday afternoon. Thank goodness it wasn’t stolen or that the Summer heat didn’t bake it. The box it was delivered in was obviously from Amazon but to the casual observer it probably looked like a book. Save the box and packing kit when you get yours. It was substantial and may come in handy someday.

When I opened the box there was the Kindle DX , an AC charger/adaptor and a tiny getting-started pamphlet. The Kindle had a half charged battery so I was able to try it right away. The actual manual was inside the Kindle as a readable book file. It’s been a week and I have yet to read the entire manual. Basic operation for the computer geek and former software professional was intuitive. My guess is the average reader will also find it as easy to use.

First on My List was the PDF

First on my list to try was reading Pmy DF files. I connected the supplied USB cable to my computer and the Kindle and then copied several PDF files to the Kindle. I was pleased but on a scale of one to ten I give the Kindle DX only a seven with the current implementation. Here’s what I discovered when reading PDF files:

There is no control over character size in a PDF. Zooming in to make the page bigger isn’t possible. Small text is very small requiring reading glasses and occasionally a little eye strain.

While in PDF mode you can’t highlight text and save it to the clippings file. When I read my paper files I mark text with yellow highlighter regularly. Adobe and Amazon need to get together on this with a version of PDF for the Kindle!

Large PDF files take a little longer to load than smaller PDF files.

When you use the “Go to Page” menu function you get to the right place but you cannot use the back button to return from whence you came. You must go back to the page number you left. Going to page 608 takes you to page 608 but pushing back takes you to page 607. Perhaps the button could work two ways or it would wait until you push page forward and a new return default of “the page you actually left” could be bypassed. That’s an enhancement request from me to Amazon.

PDF document search works very well. I searched for a combination of two words in a 618 page document. The Kindle found all of the occurrences I expected it would find. You can also bookmark a page. A very tiny, and I mean very tiny folded page corner appears on the upper right corner. You have access to your bookmarks from the menu button. This is an appropriate way to save an important page. The keyboard on the DX reminds me of the keyboard on a cellular telephone. In order to access numbers you first press the ALT key, find the number and press that key. Numbers are shared with the first row of letters. Using the chicklet style buttons requires my reading glasses.

So far images in PDF files are reproducing just fine. When I run into one that doesn’t appear correctly I note it under this article.

Anytime I’m going somewhere where I expect to have to wait I take my Kindle. Hey if the other geeks are all wearing their Bluetooth© headsets I can carry my Kindle. It goes to work so I can read on my lunch hour and with me to the doctor’s office.

So far I am very pleased with my Kindle DX. I hope to write as many more articles on using it as I find interesting topics to warrant the time.

[errata:  071109 DougWeb - It is possible to return to the page you came from after a jump to a page in a PDF file by pressing the "back button underneath the five-way control. The Prev Page button does exactly what it is supposed to do.]

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©2012 Faster, better.... All Rights Reserved.

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Well I jumped in and purchased a Kindle DX. It isn’t here yet but I am reading the reviews at Amazon.com of the Kindle 2 and the tweets from Kindle owners on Twitter. What I have read before making my purchase decision leaves me thinking that the public has given it mixed reviews. People love it or are disappointed in it or are somewhere in between.

All I can do at this point is save in my own memory the comments folks are making and make my own decisions later. Granted it was an expensive plunge but this reader and others like it are in my view the shape of things to come. We have to run out of paper eventually

I’m going to watch and see what troubles I have with the service and keep in mind the opinions of others:

@DonMcNay says, If anyone has had a problem with Amazon charging unwanted books to their Kindle and difficult getting refund, email me. May write about.”  (That has me concerned. Over the years I have purchased many things from Amazon and they have never sent me anything I didn’t order. Don is a syndicated columnist so he may know something I don’t.”

What prompted me to make the jump to the Kindle was the PDF file. The DX has support for native PDF. I had been printing mountains of paper. Coast Guard Auxiliary training manuals now come in PDF format. The Boat Crew program literally has a wheel barrel full of heavy books once printed. Even at eighteen ounces the DX would be an improvement and I can take my books with me now.

@tamoor, Examiner.com’s Jay Siegel, Consumer Electronics Examiner wrote about his first experience with the Kindle DX on June 16, 2009. Jay’s article had some concern about the weight and the conversion of some graphics in PDF files. Most of my PDF’s are older text based files with few fancy graphics so I am hopeful I won’t run into that problem. We will see. It would be a significant disatisfier if the simple trusty PDF didn’t display properly most of the time.

@Patti_Oshea wrote, “A Couple Months With My Kindle: I’ve had my Kindle now for about 2 1/2 months now and I love it–a lot. I like b.. (from her blog)

Patti really likes the Kindle and has many reasons that I will share. Setting aside time to read is a problem. Having my books and manuals on the Kindle will make it easier to read. Her concern is one I have read about the earlier Kindles that there is no support for a filing system. I suppose people cope but a device like this should have a way to categorize books so they are easy to find. Patti notes that her reading is often interrupted by persons curious about the Kindle. That I hadn’t thought about   I’m going to look at the storage system after I get mine and offer my own two cents.

There are lots of Kindle users on Twitter. My first TweetDeck Twitter search filled the buffer with on-hundred results. Many were quite informative and several lead to great reads like Don, Jay, and Patti’s.  Well I’m back to reading the Twitter feed and anxiously awaiting a new way to read books. Can’t wait to get my Kindle DX.

©2012 Faster, better.... All Rights Reserved.