I was in Mexico with the wife and kids and I wanted to test the Kindle out near the pool. As more and more publishers go ebook – and I think an iPhone Kindle reader will truly blow the last bottlenecks out – this excuse will become ineffective.Ħ. Except for a few esoteric reference books I’ve found just about everything I need on the Kindle store. This new version has excellent button placement and is thin enough to cut cheese. If every manufacturer took cues on build quality and product life cycles from Amazon, we’d all be better off.Ĥ. The Kindle 2 is an amazing improvement over the Kindle 1. You can easily email DOC, TXT, and PDF files to your own Kindle email address for conversion to the Kindle – but that costs 10 cents.ģ. With the Kindle you have a full complement of books available at any time.Ģ. I’m the kind of guy who stocks up books for even short trips, fully expecting to finish War and Peace, Notes from Underground, and four Clive Cussler novels on a plane trip from Pittsburgh to Columbus.

That said, should you buy a Kindle now? Why and why not?ġ. Expect ebooks to hit colleges in perhaps five years and high schools and grade schools in about 7. The dead tree book will never die – I think it will even have more longevity and popularity than the boutique appreciation of vinyl records – but our generation will be the last to use “books” as our primary reading systems. Having used both Kindles 1 and 2, I thought it would helpful to list where the new Kindle excels and where it falters.

Buy a kindle