What I hate about my Kindle:
What I find annoying about my Kindle:
Lack of documentation
Lack of support for large libraries (both chip size and folder structure) C'mon people, I can only carry around about six thousand books on my 2 gig chip and it slows the system to a crawl on boot-up. Need a more efficient means of storing books so that it doesn't have to scan the whole library on every boot up. But then I pause to reflect that I am not the target audience for the Kindle. There are only a few of us who wish to carry their entire libraries on the Kindle. I would gladly take and convert all of the Gutenberg, even if I don't read all of them within my lifetime.
Lack of proper support for PDF (possibly coming down the line--If so, the Kindle then also becomes a reasonable repository for sheet music and other delights available only through PDF.
What I Like About My Kindle:
Too long a list, but let's highlight a few. Yesterday I read over at TSO's that he doesn't care to make marginal notes or "dialogue" with a book. On the other hand, this is one of my favorite things in the world and the Kindle makes the transcription of passages and appending side notes remarkably easy. (It would be better if one could better edit the passages included on the Kindle itself--but really that's a trivial matter).
I love being able to open up to wherever I am in each of the twelve books I'm reading at the touch of a button. No retrieving book, hoping the bookmark is still in place, scrambling through pages, etc. Just now I'm reading Doyle-A Study in Scarlet, Dickens-Bleak House, Stout-Too Many Cooks, James-The Ambassadors, Jean Plaidy-The Reluctant Queen, (I do have to say that I'm seriously annoyed by Amazon and book publishers for not making Georgette Heyer more readily accessible via Kindle--so I'm stuck reading The Relucant Widow in paper), and several others.
I've converted about 1,000 books to Kindle format, though some not particularly elegantly.
And my chief annoyance is at Amazon for not pushing hard enough to expand the range of digital texts available. Really, there's absolutely no reason for ANY new release not to be available. Everything is printed via Electronic Files nowadays. (Well, perhaps not Everything--but the vast majority.)
This is the beginning of the Kindle rants. Perhaps more later.
Ahh...always love to read a Kindle post. So I take it the 8 gig chip didn't work?
it slows the system to a crawl on boot-up
Why boot-up? I've done that only once in 6 months, when there was a problem. (Unless you mean when you try to 'wake up' Kindle from sleep mode.)
My annoyance is that I don't like how cumbersome the delete is. It's almost worth connecting the USB to do it that way rather than using Content Manager.
One of the things I love and that is the Search feature. Just this morning I was reading a WSJ article on Chesterton and it referred to one of his quotes and I searched for the quote and was able to read it in context. This is obviously really cool when it's not already online, as Chesterton is, or when you want to search all your books for a term.
(I imagine it's deadly slow when you have thousands of books loaded though, so perhaps it's unusable if I get to that point!)
Dear TSO,
Two gig is so slow I'm a little concerned about anything larger--though I may use it to play MP3s and so get rid of at least one of my electronic companions.
I turn my Kindle off after every use. I don't trust the screen saver and I don't keep it continually connected to the power source, so if I don't do so it had run down (even with the radio off) after about three hours. I didn't think sitting on a page was supposed to require continued power input, but guess I'm wrong.
What is it that you do?
Also, I do handle all of my transactions via USB anyway given that I have so many of my books on my hard drive.
It would be really nice if the Kindle of the future could accommodate a jump drive to avoid that kind of thing.
I have a wish list, but relatively few complaints.
shalom,
Steven
Wow can't believe you re-boot it all the time. Sounds like a pain.
I trust the screensaver. I put the charger next to my bed and charge Kindle in the morning while taking a shower, probably twice a week at most.
What you did with respect to Billy Collins I did with electronic readers. I couldn't have imagined buying one - until I did. A total change of mind.
Dear TSO,
I've never been married to the substance that conveyed the words, merely the substance that the words conveyed however they got into my head. An electronic reader allows me the freedom to collect every book in the world (had I world enough and time) without trying to store them all in physical form. It is a miracle of technology and one most welcome--as welcome as the MP3s that have made both Albums and CDs obsolete for me. I still have a bunch of each, but I have need of neither, really. It's just a matter of conquering the old patterns that get me to hang on to things.
I don't know what this answer is relevant to--certainly not your comment, but it allows me to reflect more on things I really like about the Kindle. Thanks for providing that opportunity.
shalom,
Steven