Kindle Update and Review

Well, I know this is a little late, but if you would have read my Facebook status you would have been informed that I successfully received my Kindle 3 - WiFi (Graphite) yesterday. The Blue Dart guys, who deliver for DHL here in India delivered it yesterday evening. 

Firstly, I do not think there was any customs paid on it as there was no sticker on it from the customs guys. However, I did have to pay INR 474 as octroi on it (they did give me a receipt for this). I should have thought of this earlier and got it shipped to a Mumbai address itself. Stupid mistake! 

Moving on, the packing was quite satisfactory, though I kinda expected a little more fanfare than a just a DHL cardboard box protecting my dear Eleanor inside it. But, I guess it works. This also negated the sense of occasion for me. So as I was trying to rip out the outer package expecting to find a box with 'Kindle 3 - Your smartest choice' or something to that effect written on it, I just stumbled onto the device itself. Took me off-guard for a moment. But there it was!

It looked quite meek actually. With what looked like a sticker on it telling me to plug it in for charging. I realised that it was not really a sticker but the e-ink display playing tricks on my eyes. It vanished once I plugged it to my laptop and gave way to another sticker like display telling me that it was charging and I can also transfer books if I would like to so much. I cannot possibly exaggerate on how small this thing actually is! It is superbly handy. In fact, even though it is the lightest Kindle ever, it actually feels heavy for something that size in your hand. I say hand and not hands because you will feel weird holding it in BOTH hands at the same time. It is THAT small!

I had been working on my resident ebook collection with Calibre and had meticulously tagged them and sorted out the Author's names in correct order and all that so that I am good to go ASAP. So I selected all the books I wanted and clicked on 'Send to device'. Another mistake. Kindle 2 and 3 give you the advantage of sorting your books in what are called 'Collections'. Collections are to Kindle what Labels are to Gmail. So you can have all your books in multiple Collections and it makes it easier for you to get to them. Ideally you should create the Collections first and then add books to each of them. I ended up adding some 200 books first and then sorting them in Collections on my Kindle. Not very convenient. Once the books were loaded, it was pretty simple to open them and extremely pleasurable to read them. Mission accomplished!

I also tested the browser with my home WiFi connection and it worked quite well. It is weird to see Gmail and Facebook on a 6" black and white screen, but it works. I would not however for a moment suggest that one can this for idle browsing (if anyone is thinking of Kindle 3G). It is quite a strain. Wikipedia is however quite nice!

All in all, I am totally happy about my purchase and would not flinch before recommending this to others who love to read. It is a brilliant invention! 

Posted via email from Aditya's Blog