I’m sure most of you heard of the Kindle either before or (definitely) after it was mentioned on the Oprah Show this month. If you were like me you have big plans to get it for yourself as well as for your friends or family members as a great Christmas Gift this year, but there may be a few things you want to know before rushing in and spending $359.00 ($300 with Oprah discount til Friday Oct. 31) on the new “it” item.

First for those that are not familiar with the Kindle it is an electronic book reader that wirelessly and without a computer downloads books, magazines, newspapers, Blogs and RSS for your reading pleasure. It does not take a computer and it does not take a pre-existing Internet connection; it runs off of Sprints very reliable EVDO Internet. You can browse nearly 200k titles on Amazon’s site from the reader and download them within minutes to your reader. It is in my opinion one of the best ideas in consumer electronics in the last 10 years. It seems to be a must have for anyone that reads frequently.

So I in preparation for buying many before this Friday, I had my husband research it a little more to make sure it was worth getting (he doesn’t take everything Oprah says as doctrine) and he found some interesting things.

Now even though many of us are just hearing about the Kindle it officially launched in late 2007 and there has been a lot of mixed messages from early users, as well as a lot of speculation as to a new and improved 2.0 version. If you remember all the hype behind the $500 plus iPhone only to find that the 3G was soon to be released making the old version obsolete within a year of production, you could see why I got worried when my husband started to tell me the same thing about the Kindle. So I did some digging and here is what I found.

Complaints about Kindle 1.0

There are multiple complaints about Amazon’s first attempt to change reading, however there are two that seem to come up on every blog and review I read.

The Back (page back) button is too large: If you look at the picture to the left from Amazon’s site you will see a button on the upper left side of the Kindle that almost takes up the entire left column that is the page back button. Whats wrong with that? When you read a book don’t you page forward 99.9% of the time? The page forward is just below that long beast as well as along the right side. So even though it still seems easy to page forward, a lot of the complaints were people accidentally hitting the monstrous Page Back button and going back a page or 2.

The Page load can be slow:

If Amazon intends to replace reading as we know it with a dog eared paperback in our hands, they better make sure that the Electronic reading process is better than the old fashioned way. The complaints I am seeing are stating otherwise that a page load can take up to 2-5 seconds and even though you may think that is a very short amount of time, compared to reading a real book and flipping the page instantly, it may seem like an eternity. I know if my email inbox takes 5 seconds to load I am frustrated and I could imagine how annoying that might be every time you turn a page on a very long book. Now the good thing is not all people are complaining about this, so that means there are either some glitchy Kindles, or some books may load slower than others or it isn’t annoying as some are making it out to be. However, again this complaint came up everywhere including multiple users on Amazon’s site.

Kindle 2.0?

Is there going to be a second generation Kindle? As far as I can tell from sources like Tech Crunch and Engadget, there will be a Kindle 2.0 and from what it looks like everyone hates it more than the first. The design looks like a wannabe iPod, not that the first design is good, but I am sure the first one was made to fit in your hands and the new version doesn’t look like it would do that as well.

Somethings that look disappointing about version 2.0

They took out the removable SD card slot - there is a Gig and a half on the device and after you read you can delete a book and always get it again later at no cost from Amazon, but the first one does that too and it also has an SD slot meaning much more memory, especially if you plan on listening to music or audio books.

No grip on back - looks like they are trying to copy Apple or maybe Sony’s Book Reader, but in the new design they took off a rubber back/grip that 1st generation Kindle owners are raving about for comfort and not losing grip while reading for long periods of time.

A joystick instead of Scroll Ball - everyone that has a first gen Kindle says the scroll ball for scrolling pages works perfect and is one of the best and most functional features, yet they decided to get rid of it and replace with a joystick. Seems odd.

Positives of Kindle 2.0

They fixed the Page Back Button - The page forward is now bigger than the page back button. I still don’t know how that passed so many pre-production people in the first version, it seems like such an oversight.

Rounded Edges and Sleeker Design - Yeah it definitely looks like something that was desiged post 2,000 instead of something from the the early 80’s like 1.0, but a lot of people are standing by version 1’s ugly appearance as they say it fits well in their hands.

Maybe WiFi as a back up to EVDO - this is smart especially for those reading in their houses that have a high speed WIFi connection available, but the EVDO network is renowned for its speed and reliability. Also I can imagine having multiple ways to connect to the Internet will make it that much less user friendly and more of a pain for someone like my mother to use.

Soon to Have Multiple Colors and Sizes - It is rumored the the next version(s) will have different colors and sizes think iPod and iPod Mini’s.

Overall the general consensus is the version 1.0 is better then what might come out in 2009, so you early adopters and holiday buyers don’t need to be worried about being outdated until 2010 or 2011, and there is a lot of books you can read before then. So I think I will be buying mine as well as some for gifts this winter and at least I can rest knowing that what I have is actually pretty good and should change my reading experience for the better.

If you read this and decide to buy before Friday Oct. 31st use the code OPRAHWINFREY at Amazon and save $50.

You can read here for more info from Amazon

Images from Amazon and Engadget

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