2day review

[ralphwallace1935]

Here is my 2 day review of the kindle.
Pro   It is very light,  nice and easy to carry with its leather case the folder.
   It looks very good.
   The display is very readable in light, sharp fonts, good contrast.
   The PDF display is good, will trim off the borders of non images.
   Pages turn as fast as I can adjust my eyes to the top.
   Amazon does have some free books. I ordered an 0.80 complete works of Jane Austin for Eva, and some Scots history for free.
   The internet does have PDF books and articles(preprints).
   The mini usb be charger is very nice.
   It has a QWERT keyboard.
   The navigator joystick is easy to use.
   I could get my Gmail.
   Has a good built-in dictionary.
   Will go the Wikipedia for words.
   The auto rotate works and is nice. Can be turned off.
   Fast connection to the internet
Cons   The file system is a disaster!! It is flat. I tried to put a subdirectory into it, and it flattened to out. You will not be able to store more that a few documents. I will not be able to carry my non-Amazon articles and books. This is a big disappointment.
   Surfing the internet will be VERY difficult. I was unable to follow links in my email.
   I keep hitting the buttons on the side while reading.
   Two column articles in image format are two small to easily read.
   Internet connection only with Sprint
   Amazon is books and subscriptions are very expensive. Most of the interesting technical books are more than $30.
   No color, but I can live with that.

It will be difficult without subdirectories if you want carry more than 4-8 articles with you. Maybe a net book with good battery life would be adequate. I’ve thought about it. Net books are not as easy to carry as a folder, but have color screens and a big directory based file systems. If it is used for leisure reading, the kindle is fine.
I am going to keep it for reading while waiting for doctors and Chris.
Ralph

[Kind]

Thanks for the review. And yeah, only the novels are on the lower price range. Any other books seem relatively pricey.

[kevindorsey]

I like how you bulleted your review.  Good job.

[artsandhistoryfan]

Ralph, I liked the organized summary, but I'm curious about:

You will not be able to store more that a few documents. I will not be able to carry my non-Amazon articles and books. This is a big disappointment.

  ?  I have put 50 private docs on my DX, some of them very large PDFs, a couple of them are 28 megs or more each.   I also have periodicals and subscriptions and over 50 books on it, some from Amazon, and some from the other sites.

    And I still have over 3 gigs left from the 3.3 gigs available to us when new.

  Could you say what you mean by not being able to store more than a few documents?

Thanks.

 - Andrys

[Ann in Arlington]

My impression was that the lack of an organization system beyond a "personal documents" folder makes him feel like he can't carry more than a few.  I have a lot on mine as well. . .though perhaps not as many as you, Andrys! . . . I've found the key is making sure the PDF has a very useful name so I can find it when I want.  The PDF retains that name when you put it on the Kindle.  So, for example, one of my doc's is called "Care and Feeding". . .well, it has to do with guitar care.  I'll most likely re-name it to something a little more descriptive -- at least putting the word 'guitar' in the title -- so that it's more obvious on the list what it is.

As a corollary, one could use a rudimentary 'tagging' system by making the first word of each title an appropriate category.  So the guitar documents would be called "guitar -- care and feeding" and "guitar - Open My Eyes", etc. and the keyboard arrangements could say 'keyboard' as the first word and so on.  I also have some that are metro maps and users guides.  By using clever naming, the similar documents will all come up near each other when sorted by title.

Wow.  That's a really good idea that I just came up with just now while typing and looking at my DX home screen (if I do say so myself) . . . .off to re-title and re-transfer some documents.  

[artsandhistoryfan]

My impression was that the lack of an organization system beyond a "personal documents" folder makes him feel like he can't carry more than a few.  I have a lot on mine as well. . .though perhaps not as many as you, Andrys! . . .

   Mine is almost empty compared to what a few of the denizens of these boards have on theirs!  :-)

I've found the key is making sure the PDF has a very useful name so I can find it when I want.  The PDF retains that name when you put it on the Kindle.  So, for example, one of my doc's is called "Care and Feeding". . .well, it has to do with guitar care.  I'll most likely re-name it to something a little more descriptive -- at least putting the word 'guitar' in the title -- so that it's more obvious on the list what it is.

As a corollary, one could use a rudimentary 'tagging' system by making the first word of each title an appropriate category.  So the guitar documents would be called "guitar -- care and feeding" and "guitar - Open My Eyes", etc. and the keyboard arrangements could say 'keyboard' as the first word and so on.  I also have some that are metro maps and users guides.  By using clever naming, the similar documents will all come up near each other when sorted by title.

   All my sheet music pdf's are prefaced by 'sm' so I can see them all together... great minds...!

   That makes for less typing but you do have to remember what the prefix means  :-)
but kb is probably memorable.

   Which reminds me, I finally took some images of some DX screens
including two for sheet music, portrait and landscape.

   That blog entry is at the top of the blog as of yesterday.

   I didn't do good pics of the DX doing generic text when showing it with a K2 or K1 because I forgot I had put it into Font #2 mode, which is small and crowded!   I'll have to add some more.
Will probably add later a couple I took with the Mighty Bright on it too last night.

[Lynn]

I used a program from Nuance and merged  multiple PDFs into one document. Most of mine are medical journal articles so I grouped like articles together( ie. all the infectious diseases together, the kidney stuff together). I liked this one over Adobes product because it let me create a table of contents, so each article is listed with its page number. It took a little time because I had to mark the beginning of each article, but it was worth it to have only 20 documents listed instead of the 400+ it would have been. The table of contents is not linked but at least I can use the go to page feature, plus now I can search through all the merged documents because the DX sees them as one document. Maybe someone else will find this useful.

Lynn L

[artsandhistoryfan]

I used a program from Nuance and merged  multiple PDFs into one document. Most of mine are medical journal articles so I grouped like articles together( ie. all the infectious diseases together, the kidney stuff together). I liked this one over Adobes product because it let me create a table of contents, so each article is listed with its page number. It took a little time because I had to mark the beginning of each article, but it was worth it to have only 20 documents listed instead of the 400+ it would have been. The table of contents is not linked but at least I can use the go to page feature, plus now I can search through all the merged documents because the DX sees them as one document. Maybe someone else will find this useful.

Lynn L

Lynn, that is a GREAT idea.  Thanks for this.

[Lynn]

Andrys

You can download a 30 day trial of their PDF converter 6 at nuance.com. It is a fully functional version which is nice.

Lynn L

[artsandhistoryfan]

Andrys

You can download a 30 day trial of their PDF converter 6 at nuance.com. It is a fully functional version which is nice.

Lynn L

 That IS nice.  I have the full Adobe Acrobat (CS3) but I most liked the way you put all the PDFs together within categories.

  Thanks for the info and link. 

[ralphwallace1935]

This is just to complete my saga. Very sadly I sent my Kindle back. It was so nice to read, easy to carry. great battery life, and connected to the internet. My plan had been to load 800 to a 1000 articles and papers onto the machine to read and cross reference while moving about. The lack of folders and subfolders made it impossible to carry out my plan. I could even live we the worst keyboard I have every seen in 45 years of computing. I really hope Amazon fixes this mistake. I'll reorder in a flash. My daughter really liked the Kindle. I may get her a Kindle 2 for a present.