azeem.azhar

The Kindle finally arrived. Message: a great first try but needs rapid iteration.

Unboxing

• I am used to Apple products. Found the Kindle’s box cheap and the unboxing process far from that of any Apple product. However, far better than the typical piece of consumer electronics (e.g. Blackberry)

Physical feel

• Feels futuristic. It is really light. But is feels solid. Very clever
• However, key pushes feel really tacky. I have to push harder than I would like. I don’t get the solid feedback of a genuine keyboard, nor the instance, velvet response of a touchscreen.
• The keys (especially next page, previous page) need quite a push and are joined by a horrid cheap clicking sound.
• The ‘full keyboard’ on the Amazon Kindle is fiddly.

Reading

• The device is light so holding it is a easy.
• However, the contrast ratio on the E-ink screen is really really poor. It is like reading an old, old book with battered pages.
• To move to a new page, you need to click (quite hard), get that tacky clicking sound, and then the screen flashes (I assume to reset the eink). That hold process is f-ugly. Distracting and unpleasurable.
• The screen options available do not suit my style of electronic reading. I am a very fast reader and when I read only I like to have well-spaced lines with a few words on each line and scan extremely quickly. (Sort of modified rapid serial visual presentation). I also don’t like the limited choice of fonts, vastly preferring modern sans serif.

Access to the store

• Having my 1-click settings on the Kindle is fantastic. The one chapter previews are also awesome but….
• Navigating the store is really difficult–in particular as search is not very effective.
• The Kindle also shows how broken Amazon’s recommendations seem to be. The recommendations I received were, honestly, pap.
• WhisperNet (the automatic download system) is pretty cool. A little bit like magic. Actually, it is magic.

Other things

• Kindle’s powersaving mode (which places a static image on the screen) is really cute.

Conclusions

• The user experience of the Kindle is overall a disappointment. The thing I want to do–read stuff in a beautiful environment–is beyond the Kinde’s reach. The stiff button. That plastic clicking sounds. The blanking of the screen before a page loads. The slow page load. Poor font choice. Bad typography.
• Reading books via Stanza on the iPhone works far better for me. Stanza is fast. The iPhone is fast. Fonts are beautiful, screen is bright. There are problems: diagrams, pictures and flowcharts don’t render well in Stanza. But I’ll put up with that in order to have access to the books.
• Kindle is a good first attempt but I believe that the technology isn’t quite yet mature enough. I need to see:
  • Much brighter, higher contrast screen
  • Better keyboard and build quality around buttons to eliminate horrible haptics and nasty audio feedback
  • Faster page turning to support my reading style
  • Better selection of fonts (for the above)

If you are a Kindle user (or not), what are your thoughts?

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