Umm, so, first impressions? This thing is pretty amazing. >_>;
I’ve never used any eInk devices previous to this, so the biggest thing that is weirding me out IS the eInk itself. There’s a slightly frightening flashing that happens whenever it loads or refreshes which I usually associate with “uh-oh, graphics card is crapping out”… but is totally normal, I guess, on an eInk device. Sometimes there are also trails or residue left from a previous screen, like a recently erased etch-a-sketch which makes me uneasy. And when the device is in sleep mode, it doesn’t clear the screen at all but instead prints a stock photo (which you can’t change; WTH, Amazon? personalization much?) onto the screen and LEAVES IT THERE with a friendly reminder of how to get it out of sleep mode.
Yeah, this thing is really throwing me for a loop as far as screen expectations are concerned. >_>;
I’m kind of getting used to it, though, this sort-of monochrome demo iPad unit with a sticker over its face. It’s incredibly lightweight, but doesn’t feel overly fragile (though I certainly won’t be dropping or ‘tossing’ it into my bags). I admit that the large screen makes my fingers itch to interact with it, but the cursor buttons are serviceable and I do like the tactile feedback of using a physical keyboard, tiny as it is.
I picked up the mid price-point model, which has the wi-fi and 3G. And this was something I grappled with for a short while, partially because I certainly had not been aware… Amazon is providing free 3G access to all Kindle owners? And the Kindle 3 has a new WebKit based browser on it? What? Are you %#$&ing kidding me?
Apparently text and images are cheap, because it’s freaking true. So I obviously spent maybe the first couple of hours futzing with, of course, the experimental web browser and seeing how far I could push it. It definitely doesn’t like Facebook much and crashed a ton, despite my ability to update my status with it. But I did a little looking around and figured out the address for the mobile version of FB, which works very well. I can also access the mobile Gmail client and send e-mail and read it. And it loaded Tumblr all right, though Tumblr does NOT have a mobile web version of the Dashboard available to post from (though apparently every Tumblr log has a mobile version to view).
So now I basically have free e-mail and Facebook and Wikipedia, worldwide, without a laptop. What the hell. >_>;;
I did buy a book (see above!) and all the book reading stuff is pretty self-explanatory. I also checked out the mp3 player and was totally shocked by the quality of the speakers on this thing, though it’s unlikely that I will use it much for this, since it probably kills the battery life.
Anyway. First impressions are fairly good! … though we have yet to see how it performs in the long run. I kind of need more books for that. ;_;
