And purchased a Kindle 2.

195 digital books after that original Kindle post, the Kindle has succeeded where other electronic reading devices failed miserably. (I’m looking at you, Rocket eBook, and you Microsoft Reader on my laptop, and you too Fictionwise on my iPhone…and whatever those other two devices in a box in my studio are – I lost your cables years ago.) Over a year later I’m still on the Kindle platform though I’ve upgraded to the sleek sexiness of the Kindle 2. How sexy is it? Pretty damn sexy. I’ve had more people ask to hold my Kindle 2 than ever asked about my first generation iPhone, and carrying that iPhone used to be like dragging meat around at the zoo.

Kindle vs. Kindle 2

My biggest complaint with the original Kindle was the physical design. The pointy corners dug into my hands during long reading sessions and due to the position of the buttons it was too easy to turn pages accidentally. It was also butt ugly. These problems are gone with the 2nd generation Kindle. Corners are rounded and the outer edges of the buttons no longer activate a page turn so you can safely sneeze (gads, not on the screen!) while reading without winding up 5 pages deeper in the book than you were a second ago. It’s got a new brushed aluminum back and it no longer feels like a cheap plastic toy. (My husband says it’s “heavy”. I’ve got to get that boy into the gym.) The number of Kindle titles has increased too, now most of my fiction wishlist is available instead of the “about half” I could find a year ago.

Killer App

The real “killer app” though? Kindle for the iPhone. Sure, the Kindle is small enough to toss in your backpack, messenger bag or pretty much any handbag capable of holding a paperback, but after over a decade of lugging a backpack with a laptop and multiple fat technology related books around I go out without a bag a lot these days. (Note: Retirement + freelancing == kick ass.) Kindle books on the iPhone are very (surprisingly) readable and the app is a breeze to use. Few things frustrate me more than sitting and waiting wherever with nothing to do but now I’ve got a book wherever I go even if I forget to grab my Kindle.

So What’s Not to Love?

I had nothing but love for my Kindle 2 until @wrox came along and asked those of us who were programmers and also Kindle owners to give some feedback on code samples in Kindle books. I love a nicely formatted code sample and own a motherload of physical coding books, so I jumped at the chance.

Ouch.

There are at least a couple of ways to format a code sample for Kindle. One is to insert the code as an image, the sample I expected to like the best. This maintains line breaks but on the Kindle 2 the image is very small. A zoom feature is offered, but when zoomed the image is pale and fuzzy. The other way we looked at was a mono code font, this was easier to read but unlike a physical Wrox book where the code space is apparently 82 characters wide the Kindle only offers ~47 characters (and that is dependent upon the font size you select when reading) which causes line breaks and can make the code harder to read. This type of code sample is searchable though. Either way, I wasn’t exactly happy with the usability of a programming book on the Kindle. When it comes to programming and design books, I’m pinning my hopes on the “Optimized For Kindle DX” treatment, a Kindle format meant for “complex layouts” and graphics-heavy books aimed at the new larger screened Kindle DX with the auto-rotate feature.

The Kindle DX

Yup, I’m going to buy another Kindle, a DX. Annotating, bookmarking and searching my programming references? Irresistible. It’s a little big for carrying around on errand day but hey, I’ve got my iPhone for that. I’ll hand my Kindle 2 down to my husband, he could use the upper body workout.

The film was a blast pretty much throughout.  Lots of action, plenty of nods to the original and plot that didn’t make me want to bang my head on the seat in front of me.  One moment though surprised me, not for it’s content but for how it made me feel personally.  When the camera swept across the Enterprise for the first time, all I could think of was my grandfather – and what he would have thought of our old friend.

My grandpa was a true fan of the west.  He loved Louis L’Amour, whiskey, gunsmithing and The Sons of the Pioneers.  His boots were pointy, his shirts had snaps and his hat was cowboy – straw in the summer and felt in the winter.  His guitar was an acoustic Gibson.  He was an old-fashioned ”singing cowboy” in the grand tradition of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.  He was also a huge, huge Star Trek fan.  Unless you know your Star Trek backstory, that’s going to sound a little strange.  Here’s a guy who when it came to his leisure pursuits was completely happy to exist in another era.  But Gene Roddenberry hooked him with the show that he originally pitched as “Wagon Train to the stars”.  

These days the line would have been “It’s like The Mentalist but in space!” …and the suits would have insisted that Bones do a lot more autopsies to draw in the forensic procedural crowd.  Yeesh.  I have a lot of respect for Gene Roddenberry, but I always figured that Wagon Train was an enormous hit, and Roddenberry said what he had to in order to get the network to buy in.  Then the Enterprise nudged me, and I remembered sitting in the family room with my cowboy grandpa, the multi-generation gap between us completely bridged by a sci-fi show.  It didn’t matter that there were no horses, six-guns (the shootout at the OK Corral aside) or tumbling tumbleweeds.  Captain Kirk was adventurous, honorable, rough-and-ready - and effectively bellied up to the bar with a saloon hall girl in one hand and a shot of red eye in the other.  He didn’t need the hat and the spurs for grandpa to recognize him.  Thanks to grandpa and J.J. Abrams, I recognize him now too.

Whoa.  I have no room for new books.  This is scary. 

Wait a minute, I need new books!  Books are my insurance against Writers Guild of America strikes and power outages and my motivation to stationary bike, stepper and treadmill (when I’m not playing WoW, Hellgate:London or The Witcher while I bike, stepper and treadmill). 

Enter Amazon’s Kindle electronic reading device.  I’ll admit it, was dead-set against it at first.  I’ve had a couple of electronic readers before, and they started gathering dust after a month or so.  They were either clunky, or the book selection wasn’t good, or reading the screen was tiring or the battery life was lousy or synching them was a pain.  Not to mention the Kindle is expensive, about $400.  That’s a bit of an investment given how at any time, Amazon can abandon the device.    Then I looked at my 1000-plus books and wondered how many of them I really need to own in physical form.  Sure, I really like to own hard copies of some of the series that I’ve been reading for years or re-read every few years.  But lots of them are just entertaining reads, not “treasured” books.  These are candidates for the Kindle.  And hey, lots of the Kindle editions let you download a “sample” before you buy.  Good-bye some of the bad purchases I’ve made online because I couldn’t peek inside first.  Still, $400 is a lot.

Then my birthday rolled around.  Every year for my birthday my mom gives me a pile of cash.  This is because every year for my husband’s birthday my mom gives him a pile of cash and either she doesn’t want me to figure out that she likes him better than me, or she’s afraid of another my-brother-gets-a-minibike-and-a-professional-grade-drumset-while-I-get-a-corduroy-purse-and-a-flannel-nightgown-for-Christmas-and-I-never-let-her-forget-it incident.  This year, I dropped my birthday wad on a Kindle.

Turns out, lots of the things people complain about with the Kindle are true.  It’s ugly, I’m pretty sure the designers at Amazon haven’t pulled their heads out since Doc Brown made the DeLorean cool because this design is retro but in a bad, homely sort of way.  And sheesh, only about half of my fiction wish list is available in a Kindle edition.  Yes, it’s a pain to reach the power button when the book cover is on it, and if you take the book cover off there’s nowhere to hold the Kindle without hitting the Next Page-Prev Page buttons.  But wow, no synching!  New books arrive almost instantaneously via Whispernet!  I can read the newspaper without getting my fingers all grubby!  So far I haven’t let it out of my sight.  I’ll let you know if I do.