Definition of Kindle
For years, pundits have used the rise of portable computing to predict the death of the written book. However, the high price of these so-called readers coupled with a lack of compatible reading material have proved these predictions wrong. The newly-developed Kindle overcomes these disadvantages and may finally signal the beginning of the end for the printed page.
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Description
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The Kindle is a slim, portable reading device that is slightly smaller than a magazine page. It downloads books wirelessly from the thousands available at Amazon, the world's largest bookseller. It also features a built-in keyboard for making text entries and a gray-scale display whose text and images closely resemble that of a real book. As of September, 2009, two versions exist.
Kindle
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The original Kindle is 8 by 5 inches, weighs 10.2 oz, stores 1,500 books and costs $299. In about a minute, it can deliver over 350,000 books, periodicals and blogs. A text-to-speech features can read its text out loud unless prohibited by the book's licensing rights. It also contains a larger keyboard and requires no computer to use, though a USB connection allows communication with your PC.
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Kindle DX
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At 10.4 by 7.2 inches, the newer Kindle DX weighs 18.9 ounces and builds on the features of the earlier version by storing 3,500 books, reading PDF format and being able to rotate pages automatically if you orient the device horizontally. As with the original, its rechargeable battery lasts up to 4 days with wireless turned on or up to 2 weeks when wireless is turned off.
Advantages
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Both models let you read the screen in direct sunlight with no glare. You can zoom into the text and images to ease reading, and can easily flip between or clip articles using a 5-way controller. Using the unique, customizable e-mail address you can mail documents and pictures to the device for a small fee. Finally, the device remembers where you left off in your book and always opens to that page when you return.
Disadvantages
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The Kindle screen does not display color, so many pictures that appear in print versions of magazines are removed. Because the text has no pages or page numbers, indexes and cross references prove useless. The lack of a backlight, which you would normally expect for electronic screens, makes the device unreadable in the dark.
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