"A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." Samuel Johnson
After my first Kindle got damaged, I retreated to the world of real books and bought a paperback version of the e-book I had been reading; 'Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln' by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
I did however continue exploring, the new world of e-books using the Kindle Cloud Reader app for Google Chrome. I bought buy one more e-book, got a free one, 'Read This Before Our Next Meeting' by Al Pittampalli and could read them on my desktop computer. Setting up the Cloud Reader app was easy; all that is required is the Amazon account. I could sync between the Kindle and the Cloud Reader. An offline feature has since been added. The only disappointment was that I could not read book samples on the Cloud Reader. That said this experience rejuvenated by hope in e-books.
Three weeks ago I purchased another Kindle. The major motivation was to buy books I could not find in Kenyan bookshops, read my Kindle e-books when I was not in the office or at home, and to access and read samples, which is the next best thing to flipping through books in a bookshop.
The Kindle; Wi-Fi, 6" E Ink Display is smaller and lighter than the Kindle Keyboard. The major difference is that it does not have a 'real' keyboard. Rather it has a virtual keyboard which you navigate using a 4-way cursor; up, down, left and right. This feels very old school in the era of touch screens and the mouse. But it is not that often that one needs to key in commands or information on the Kindle so a virtual keyboard is an acceptable compromise for a smaller device.
The 'vanilla' Kindle costs $115.98 ($109.00 plus shipping and handling within the USA $6.98). The cheaper version that costs $79.00 with special offers and sponsored screen-savers, is only available in the USA. I purchased my Kindle in the USA and had someone carry it back to Nairobi. Amazon have announced they are now shipping to Kenya.
The 1-Click ordering process is incredibly efficient. Just one click and several seconds later an entire book is available to read. I am use the WiFi hot spot from my Android IDEOS phone as a hot spot so I can go online with the Kindle anywhere there is a 3G Internet network
In the past week, Amazon have released the Kindle Android App to the Kenyan market. I installed it on my Android IDEOS phone. Setting up my Amazon account was easy. There are four menu items; Home, On Device, Archive, and Store. At the bottom of the page there is a 'Recommended for You' section. To read a book you can either purchase one or go to the Archive which lists all the books in your Kindle account and then select the book(s) you want to read on the phone and they will be downloaded into the 'On Device' section.You can sync between the android phone, Cloud Reader and Kindle. I especially like the dictionary feature; click on a word and after one-time download of the dictionary the definition of the word is listed.
Amazon also have free Kindle reading apps for iPhone, Windows PC, Mac, BlackBerry (US customers only), iPad, and Windows Phone 7. Mobile phones with large enough screens for comfortable reading, tablets and laptop and desktop computers can be used in the place of a Kindle to read the Kindle e-books.
This suggests a change in strategy by Amazon to increase the sale of books without having to increase the sale or manufacture of Kindles. That said the soon to be released Kindle Touch and color touch screen Kindle Fire demonstrate that Amazon continue to be innovative.
For lovers of books this is a great epoch!
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