I’ve had a Kindle for just over two weeks now. I was unsure whether I’d like it, but over the past two weeks I’ve decided that I like it a lot. I’ve gotten used to reading on it — although I keep going to Amazon.com’s “Look Inside” feature and doing a search so I can see how many pages I’ve “really” read. The Kindle’s progress bar isn’t really accurate with the book I’m reading, because it’s a history book, and all the footnotes, bibliography, etc. are at the end. The Kindle considers this end matter to be part of the book, so it includes it when calculating what percentage of the book I’ve read. It says I’ve read about 46 percent, but excluding the end matter, I’ve really read about 64 percent.
Last week we visited Matt’s parents, and it was great to have the Kindle with me. The only problem was that I couldn’t read it on the airplane during takeoff or landing. I’m not convinced that the Kindle can mess with a plane’s flying instruments, especially if you have the wireless turned off — the Kindle only draws power when you press a button to change what’s on the screen, so when you’re reading a page, it draws no power at all. But I didn’t want to disobey the flight attendants.
I should point out that I’m actually on my second Kindle. I returned the first one to Amazon because of a cosmetic issue — a slight dimple in one corner of the plastic casing that was noticeable in certain light and kept distracting me while I was reading. The return was pretty simple; I called Amazon and explained the problem, and a new Kindle arrived the very next day; all I had to do was put the old one in the box, print out and attach a shipping label, and take it to UPS.
My new Kindle has not been problem-free; a few times I haven’t been able to wake it up from sleep without rebooting the whole thing, and when I wake it up, the Kindle thinks the time is 4:00 and the list of recently-opened books is in the wrong order. It’s been a few days since this last happened, so maybe it was just a glitch and it won’t happen again.
Anyway — the Kindle’s great, and I’m glad I bought it.
It’s a similar problem if you’re reading a physical book too, though? You have to check where it really ends to know how far you have before you’re finished since the book’s total thickness includes the extra stuff in the front and back. I usually find the first item after the last chapter in the table of contents and jump to that and check where the end is to find out what percentage it ends on.
I’ve actually put a bookmark where the end notes begin, and since the bookmark shows up in the progress bar, I have a sense of where the book really ends. It’s not quite the same, but it works.
Cool, I’m currently reading The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 on my Nook. :)
Nice. I’ve occasionally been reading volumes from the series, out of order…
I had some serious software issues with my newest Kindle 3 for the first few weeks (major freezes, late read page not being remembered, going into a cycle of rebooting itself and then immediately rebooting itself over and over, significantly reduced battery life, etc.) that a significant fraction of owners were reporting, and that we hadn’t experienced with the Kindle 2. They released a software update that seems to have addressed all of my issues. Yours, however, should have the most recent software, so you shouldn’t be experiencing those kinds of problems too often; it’s not common but not unheard of to get a replacement that’s also got a problem, so you might want to keep an eye on it. I have a minor cosmetic issue with mine — the “C” key and left side of the space bar are depressed below the faceplate, though both work fine — and debated sending it back for a replacement, but never got around to it.