Last weekend I spent in Best Buy, waiting for the world’s slowest customer associate to bring me Kindle Wi-Fi. During the [insert a large number here] minutes of me standing near the Kindle display, and the associate going back and forth: writing down, re-writing and double checking the code in order to check if they have any Kindle Wi-Fi’s in stock, I pondered about the world’s slowest turtles and the meaning of life. After the eternity, I learned that they do not have any Kindle Wi-Fi’s left in stock. A logical person would leave the store and perhaps, order the damn thing online. An irritated person, however, grabs the available box with Kindle 3G with one hand, and holding a sweaty (by this time) Best Buy’s get 10% off coupon (the original reason, why I ended up in Best Buy) with another hand and heads over to the cashier. Well, the coupon does not apply to Kindle, which says so (the cashier points into the tiny card) in very fine print. Perhaps, a logical person gets pissed and walks away. But not me, I like sticking to my plans and that is how I ended up getting Kindle 3G.
So here are my first impressions.
Impression #1: (as I unwrapped my purchase immediately in the car) OMG, it fits in my purse!!!
Impression #2: (as I got extremely hungry, while waiting for the world’s slowest customer associate, I went straight to the restaurant. I started playing with my new Kindle and accidentally pressed the text to speech button) OMG, how do I turn off this Robocop’s voice reading Jane Austen?
And now, to the serious business.
Pages. The page-turning buttons are extremely comfortably located. Flip. Flip. Flip. Ah, it feels nice.
Keyboard. The arrow keys are hit and miss. Sometimes, I click and nothing happens. Sometimes, I do not click and the unwanted things occur.
Also, there is plenty of unused space between the keyboard and the screen: why not have a full keyboard (i.e. include the number keys)?
Normal headphone jack instead of those annoying custom ones – awesome!
Text to speech feature: nice to have it, but I don’t think I will be using it at all.
Integrated dictionary: priceless!
The text to speech is actually nice at times. I use it when I want to keep reading but I need to, say, clean the kitchen. Or if I forget my iPod and am without an audiobook.
I tend to rest my thumbs in that open spot above the keyboard. I think that may be why they didn’t include an extra row of buttons.
Alt+top keys gives numbers
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