Amazon's Kindle, a device I wanted to love

Amazon’s Kindle is an innovative book reading device. It displays highly readable text on a trade paperback-sized form. It stores and quickly recalls several books and/or periodicals. It weighs a little over 10 oz. It comes with a built-in wireless device that connects to the Sprint cellular network. This allows a Kindle user to buy and download content from Amazon without needing a computer. It costs $399, if you can get one. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos published a letter last week on Amazon’s front page apologizing for the long waits to buy it.

It took 5 weeks to get mine. It came with a charger and a USB connection cable to attach the Kindle to a computer. It also came with a case that makes it look like a diary. There was also a short paper manual. The complete user guide is pre-loaded on the Kindle as an electronic document.

The Kindle has five main navigation buttons—two “Next Page” buttons, a “Previous Page” and a “Back” button placed on the sides and extending about 2/3rds of the Kindle’s length. To the left of the back button is a scroll wheel that is used to select menu items. The Kindle also has a small 46 key QWERTY keyboard for typing text when searching for material on the Amazon Kindle web site.

Kindle’s overall size, weight, screen size, and readability are good, as is the battery life, especially when the wireless is turned off. Text size can be manipulated from tiny to large. You can highlight text and create a bookmark. The Kindle can hold quite a few books and it has a slot for adding additional memory if you want.

Browsing the Amazon Kindle store is clunky. Titles can be sorted in a variety ways, like popularity, author, or topic. If you are looking for specific things the process is hit or miss. I wanted to buy a title about computer networking. I found hundred of titles that had to do with networking (some human networks, most computer networks) but no easy way to drill down to the few titles that might interest me.

Popular fictional works tend to be about $10. Non-fiction, non-best sellers were far more expensive. Most of the history and technical titles that interested me were priced at $35 and up. I had already paid $399 to get the reader. Amazon should have given me 5 free titles as part of the original transaction. They did not.

Periodicals are a better deal. Single issues or subscription prices were lower than what it cost for a physical version of the periodical. I bought a copy of The Atlantic Monthly for $1.49. However, much of the newspaper and magazine content is available free on the internet. It feels wasteful to pay for content that I can get for free by using a computer.

The Kindle is not a book. The designers did away with document page numbers. They tried to adjust navigation to some measurement of how far along in the document you are. I found this form of navigation unusable. I want to know what page I am on and how many more are left. There is no way to know this on the Kindle.

I could adjust to the high price for content, the clunky interface for finding material, and the lack of page numbers. What killed the Kindle for me was the poor placement of the large navigation buttons on the sides of the device, just where I wanted to hold it. Every time I tried to hold the Kindle like a book I found myself inadvertently changing pages. If I wanted to read without changing the page I had to hold it unnaturally from the top, the bottom or by the keyboard. This was uncomfortable.

I returned my Kindle. Until it is redesigned to be held like a book, I do not want one.