With the Kindle there is no worry about batteries running out or needing a stronger reading prescription after using it for a week. The screen is a gem, a little too small for my preferences, but a gem. For my tastes, I'd like the screen to be the same 9 x 6 inches as a hard cover book but if you're used to paperbacks then jump right in the water is fine. The selection of books is large and growing every day. Being able to download from almost anywhere does really change the way you enjoy reading. You can be impulsive about which book to read next, you don't have to plan which books to throw into the bag for the next trip; maybe even surprise yourself and try a totally new author.

Field note: I have done a lot of travel with the Kindle and was out of Sprint network range only once. The network loss occurred at a 5-star resort nestled in Boynton Canyon in Sedona, Arizona. In fairness, my Verizon cell phone also lost signal. If you are going to remote locals without Sprint cell phone access, you may have to use a notebook computer to buy and download new books.

I strongly suspect the price will not go down on the Kindle any time soon (same as the early iPods). I suspect, the higher price is an integral part of Amazon's strategy. Here's what I think. At the time of writing this article in February 2008, the Kindle is still sold out, and units are on eBay selling at a 30% premium; so price does not seem to be factor in unit sales. Amazon wants the Kindle to be expensive enough so that you won't be inclined to loan your Kindle to friends. The ultimate strategy is to charge less for each book and in return make it unlikely for people to share their books. In this vision of the future, everybody buys their own copy of every book.

If the built-in experimental web browser worked better, the $400 price would be an even bigger bargain since you get free EVDO high speed wireless Internet access. Were you to purchase EVDO wireless from a telco, you'd pay $40 to $50 a month. So the price of a Kindle could be amortized over ten months if you were already planning on buying an EVDO wireless device for web browsing.

Some people bitch about DRMs and how DRMs are wrongheaded and unfair. How can all those paranoid writers fail to entrust their livelihood to the benevolence of all 6 billion people on Earth? Do these writers honestly think that anyone would pilfer their work, their livelihood that they have sweated blood over? Maybe I am prejudice since I'm one of those “paranoid writers” but I really don't mind the Kindle DRM; its presence is, well, invisible. Your purchases are safely backed up for you at Amazon and stored in your Kindle and optionally on your computer; so you will never lose them unless Amazon goes out of business and your Kindle breaks and a meteor strikes your notebook computer. So who cares… DRM… smeeRM? I want to support my favorite authors so they can afford to write more and better novels; and give up that second job at Burger King. I want a DRM that works and does not interfere with my reading. So the Amazon DRM is fine with me. It accomplishes those goals. In a perfect universe where billions of honest people are always honest, we would not need DRMs, bank account, or secret passwords but we do not live in that universe, and so, we are sentenced to DRMs for life. They keep honest people honest. For those who are worried by DRMs, stop worrying about it; I promise it's nothing, it doesn't hurt, has no calories, and the Amazon DRM is invisible… and I hear rumors that it will soon come in designer flavors like strawberry-mist and coconut-dream. If you really need to worry about something, how about global warming? Enjoy reading a good eBook on melting polar icecaps and save a tree in the process.

Will the Kindle and its yet to be born serious competition revolutionize the publishing industry? I actually think so but it will probably do it in ways no one has quite dreamt about yet. Who would have thought in the early days of the Internet that this geeky network would be used to buy and sell stuff? Only a madman would have thought such a thing when the Internet was newborn and email was this new fangled thingamajig that would never go commercial or be used by granny.

Do not be duped and then disappointed with wild ideas that eBooks will make the publishing business so profitable that books will sell for less than a buck. Remember there are still a lot of starving authors out there and Kindle eBooks are not more profitable for publishers than print; at least not right now. Given the royalty and cost structures involved, most large and small publishers will make a smaller profit per unit with eBooks on Kindle than printed books. The same is then true for authors; since we receive a percentage of what the publishers receive. Now, this could very well change in the near future if more people start reading and their medium of choice is eBooks on Kindle like gadgets.

So with a tear in my eyes, I look over my library of hard cover books…. Let the revolution begin. Viva la Kindle! Buy an eBook and put a dent in global warming to boot.

This first generation Kindle is not perfect. For one thing I would like to see real web browsing to augment the subscriptions to blogs. There is a baby web browser that comes with the Kindle but it doesn't work well on many websites. Even if the baby browser worked well, the bigger obstacle is the Kindle does not have a mouse-like pointing device. Kindle's screen selection device is clever but only one dimensional. The type of pointer used on the Kindle is a reflection of the limitation of the refresh rate of their liquid paper screen. This energy efficient screen design cannot update fast enough to show any kind of animation such as a mouse pointer.

Long battery life is critical for an eBook reader. I have been using the Kindle for months. As a novelist, I read a lot, about 4 to 5 hours a day of novels and about an hour of downloaded newspapers and blogs. I have yet to see the battery indicator display less than a full charge under my normal heavy use regime which includes plugging the Kindle in at night when I go to bed.

After months of never seeing a low battery reading, I began to grow curious about the true battery life of a Kindle. Was the indicator broken or had Amazon built a form of perpetual motion into the Kindle? I decided to do a real world test to see how long I could without charging. I started on a Friday morning and went through to the following Wednesday morning before the indicator dropped to one bar above empty. That's five days of use with some battery power to spare; more than enough juice for my everyday reading habits.

Okay, so what else is not to like? The Amazon bookstore inside the Kindle is well… How can I say this kindly?... It's a difficult to use, anemic stepchild of the Amazon website everyone knows. There are over a 100,000 Kindle eBooks, more eBooks than anywhere else, and increasing daily. The built-in bookstore desperately needs to mature and grow into its own. For now, you are much better off on a laptop browsing the Amazon website when buying Kindle eBooks THAN using the bookstore inside a Kindle. It is this Amazon website which will save Amazon's bacon and keep the Kindle cooking until they can upgrade its built-in store into something useful. Right now the built-in store is for emergency use only when you do not have access to a laptop and the regular Amazon website.

In contrast to the built-in bookstore, the Amazon website for buying Kindle eBooks is very easy to use. You buy the book with one-click and it is automatically wirelessly sent to your kindle. It's hard to imagine it getting any easier!

What else is there not to like? I am going to get picky here, but the screen does not justify text the same as a typeset page. You will find some justified lines with distractingly wide gaps between words. These wide gaps can break the reading spell; the mechanics of reading loses its invisibility for a paragraph or more. Books are artwork painted with typeface. To not be able to correctly typeset a page of text lessens the art and the reading experience.

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