The Amazon Kindle 2 (in Europe) review

| Posted on Thursday December, 10 2009 | 3 Comments

I'm sure book lovers will wonder if they would really use the Kindle. Nothing can replace the smell of a new book, the feeling of a beautiful Penguin paperback, the rustling of pages while you scream because you can't remember your page number and damn it, you were so close to finding out the plot. Right? Well yeah, paper books definitely win in the 'most romantic reading' category. But hey, you don't have to stop reading paper books when you have a Kindle! They can compliment each other. Personally, I dropped all my paperbacks for now and purchased some books on Amazon just so I could use my new gadget.

It's a beauty!

The device itself is beautiful. I don't know why, but in videos and on pictures it looks a lot less slick and sexy than it really is. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the recycled carton box and laid my eyes upon the Kindle 2 for the first time. It's very clean, thin, has a nice texture and feel to it and it seems so much smaller when you hold it in your hands! The Kindle 6" screen isn't as big as a typical paperback page, but you don't really notice that while reading.

Is that a screen?

The screen is amazing. It almost doesn't look like a screen, really. I spent my first hours with the Kindle looking at it from all angles trying to find some sort of pixel or anything else that would remind me of the screens that I am used to. My brother did exactly the same when looking at my Kindle. He said:" This is so weird!! It's almost like they write in sand or..I dunno..It's weird! There's no pixels or dots or anything!" There really aren't. The E-ink technology is really different from any screen you have ever seen. It's perfect for hours and hours of reading. It does mean that you need a reading light when reading in the dark. But you won't mind, I promise!

EDIT: One of the great advantages of reading on a Kindle is being able to make the font bigger or smaller! Throw away those glasses for a couple of hours and just set your Kindle to display the text a bit bigger! If you want to close your eyes, Kindle can read the book to you, but you'll have to get used to a bit of a robotic companion. It's not too bad when listening to a newspaper but for a novel it's not quite good enough, yet.

Controls

Controlling the Kindle is very simple. The controls remind me of an old cellphone where you use the 5 way controller to scroll down and click to select something. It doesn't give you that high tech rush of a touch screen, but it won't bother you that much either. It really doesn't bother me. The device has a full QWERTY keyboard which can be used to search your Kindle, the Kindle store or type notes while you're reading. I haven't tried making notes yet, I rarely scribble in paper books, but I'm sure that at some point I will want to and I'm happy to know it's possible.

EDIT: After writing this I went to bed and read a bit. I tried out the highlighting, bookmark and notes function. I find them to be very practical. You can look at your bookmarks and notes within a book, or in the 'My clippings' file the Kindle automatically generates. The file contains all your notes and highlights with the title of the book and the location of your note or highlight. Wonderful!

Kindle Store

The Kindle store gives you a lot of books to choose from. For now, most of them are English. Since I always read English books (unless they were written in Dutch) I am one happy camper with the Kindle store. I no longer have to call Fnac or some dusty English bookstore while searching for the latest Oprah Book Club title ;) I do have to warn you though: do not assume all titles available in the US are available in the European Kindle store. I was upset about this at first since I didn't notice this until after I had purchased the Kindle. I think about 40 or 50 percent of the latest US bestsellers are available in the store. The ones that aren't, are usually highly popular on torrent sites but you didn't get that from me and of course, I would never download those...But just that I can, makes me want to pressure Amazon to work on this issue. If I want to read a book and they won't let me pay to get it...Well...What can a bookworm do?

EDIT (january 2010): A lot of books that were previously not available in the Europe Kindle Store suddenly are now! Thanks Amazon!

Not a problem

Publishers will miss out on lots of sales when European Kindle users can't buy the latest Dan Brown or whatever bestseller to read on their Kindle device in Europe. But hey, Amazon only just launched the Kindle in Europe for the early adaptors, I'm sure they will try to add more content or even Dutch content in the future. Should you wait until then to purchase the Kindle? Nope, you have more than 300.000 books to read before it'll bother you. There's also a nice selection of US (and some European) newspapers and magazines that are automatically delivered to your Kindle before they hit the stands. It's great! (You need to subscribe and often pay for them, but new users are getting a 14 day free trial to check it out!)

Dutch books

Reading Dutch books ,bought at Bol.com for example, might get complicated since they often have the DRM curse upon them. Since I almost never read Dutch books, I didn't try to hack, break, transform, ...a DRM file to make it readable on the Kindle, but I'm sure you can if you're really persistent. I find Stanza to be a very handy tool to change the format of a non DRM ebook, which are often sold in smaller ebook stores. These books will mostly be geeky fan fiction or any other type of niche literature. It does make the Kindle very very very interesting for readers who love this type of books though. You don't have to read them on your PC anymore, they're finally readable like a real book.

USB

Transferring books to your Kindle couldn't be easier: you either download them wirelessly  (when you bought them at the Kindle store), or you just drop and drag while your Kindle is hooked up to your computer with a USB 2.0 cable. The cable is included in the package and can also be used to charge the device. I have no trouble charging the Kindle on my Mac, but I did hear some people complaining it wasn't doing that on a Windows computer. Well, what can I say....(*pets her Mac*). The Kindle is shipped with a US power adapter in which you stick the USB cable to get it charging. You'll need a travel adapter if you want to charge your Kindle the usual way and plug it into the wall.

Battery

I can't say much on the battery yet since I have barely noticed it. I've hooked up my Kindle to my Mac a couple of times to transfer files and that's about all the charging I did. I've read for many many many many hours the last days and my battery never got close to being half way. I did turn off the wireless functionality to spare the battery. I heard it lasts a couple of days longer when you do that, so I did. But so far, the battery of the Kindle is brilliant and probably good for days or weeks of reading without a charge. Yay!

How do you get it?

I could write about the Kindle a lot longer since I really, really love it. I haven't fallen in love with a device this much since my first iPod. I'm sure you will love it too, if you love reading that is! Amazon usually ships pretty fast and you can have your Kindle in a matter of days! All costs will be charged in advance so you'll have no surprises when the mail guy rings the door bell with a customs bill. I bought mine on eBay from someone who had already imported it so I can't tell you exactly how much it'll cost you. You'll know before you confirm your order though and the dollar is pretty low at the moment so I don't think it'll cost you more than 225-250 euro in total. Is the Kindle worth that money? If you love books, hell yes, it is!

No surprises

A couple of last things: a lot of people wonder how much it costs to download books on your Kindle while you're on the road using the 3G modem. Well, that's easy: nothing. You can download the first chapter of every book for free to see if you like it. If you do, you can buy it. Your credit card will be charged and you'll have your book on the Kindle within a minute. You are only paying the price of the book (which might have the wireless costs included of course) But no surprises! Two functions of the Kindle are turned off though in Europe to avoid high data costs for Amazon: reading blogs and browsing. You can only reach wikipedia.com in the browser and blogs just don't show up anywhere on your Kindle. So don't buy it to get rid of your Google Reader just yet...

Well, I'm going to publish this now because honestly, I'm starting to miss my Kindle! I want to go read! If you want to order a Kindle, spend the extra dollars and get a cover for it and if you're planning on late night readings at a bus stop or in bed, get the Great Point Light for Kindle. The light will make your Kindle experience even better and the cover will keep your best reading pal safe while traveling. If you have any questions left, drop me a comment (they should be working now!) If you get a Kindle and love it as much as I do, drop me a note so I can happily jump around with you ;)

PS: I'd like to thank my very generous sponsor, aka. my super sweetie, for buying me this wonderful book gadget! :D

Related posts: