Gadgetory

hey guys jon rettinger here with the review for you of the amazon kindle so during my software overview amazon kindle two I walk you through the software even showed you some tips and tricks this review is mostly going to be me talking about the device and the features that I like and don't like about it to help augment that'll be putting as a picture behind me to help show you guys what I'm talking about so first let's get to reading this is an e-book reader eating it's meant to be able to read off of screen is actually quite nice and very easy to read from I tried reading side by side to this to a standard hardcover book and we noticed little to no difference so reading is very easy on the eyes the non reflective screen but it's also not backlit so I don't think you're going to be able to read this at night best use of a light think of it as just an electronic book anything you can do with a book you can do with this you can't do with the book most likely you're not gonna be able to do with this device I'm going to keep in mind the backlight would also be a drain on battering since we're on the topic of battery power let me tell you how I did on battery with a full charge and with sprint's 3g whispernet on all the time I got 10 days of battery life on of it out of it that's a pretty heavy reading and I was actually very impressed i still had more battery life when i started charging it but I was going on a trip I wanted to go with a full charge battery life is stupendous on this device and hats off have to go to Amazon and the engineers put this together because it's absolutely fantastic navigation some of the issues that people had it the first name was on kindle was that the next page but was too large so he picked up the book and try to hold it you definitely hit the next page that has been fixed with this version so when you hold the book you actually hands rest very nicely on it you don't accidentally push the page one thing of note they really like when Amazon did well you can't click the next page button by hitting the outside of it actually have to push the inside in order click weird actually very nice you can rest your hand here without worries of pushing the next page sound of something that was very happy to see so one kind of quark that have the devices issue of navigation it realized primarily on this five-way d-pad you can scroll up down left right and push it for that fifth direction I think the kindle would have really benefited from a scroll ball similar to what's found in most blackberries they used a wheel in the previous version I think a ball would have made it for much more fluid navigation pushing up and down on this little joystick need cumbersome sometimes and the eating does have a relatively slow refresh rate so you push it out sometimes left waiting for notification to show that you actually have made a change and what you're looking to do I think go ball we've made it much more fluid if you scroll down to where you want to be and then wait for it to refresh something definitely to keep in mind so next thing that I want to talk about is the screen size if you look at the kindle to you notice there's a lot of real estate on here a lot of it's taken up by the keyboard if I've ever seen a device crying out for touchscreen it's the kindle to this well over a quarter probably a thunder device take out with a full qwerty keyboard which is very nice to have way you're searching but ninety ninety-five percent of the time you're not searching you're spending your time just reading so really is a poor use of space i think i like to see the next version the kindle three make use of some touchscreen key technologies that be seen from companies like Sony hopefully utilizing some sort of on-screen keyboard clearly make it the whole front of this device appear in ink and that would make a reading a lot easier and also less next page buttons so it may be something I would look forward to something that I would certainly recommend amazon do so one of the big questions that i got about the kindle is why isn't it color is hard to read not in color and actually I prefer it in black and white and I think that's one of the reasons amazon designed it most people I think are on the same mindset as me and let me explain why first of all you're reading a book and reading a book it's black and white print color is nice for pictures this is not meant to show pictures while it certainly does show illustrations in the book it does show it in just black and white in 16 shades of grey color also takes more batteries you're going to sacrifice a lot of battery life to have color really when you're just reading black and white text there's not much of reason for it so I'm okay with not having a color but again a touchscreen really would augment this device I think quite perfectly it's also a very cool looking device and so this is only released in the US a lot of people haven't seen anything like this I was just recently Canada for a friend's wedding and I brought this on an airplane with me and about four or five people as I'm saying they're reading this thing what is that that's some sort I didn't didn't know what it was I'd never seen an e-book reader before I know there have been previous generations released by sony to other companies they've never been that popular that people have seen them some people we're very curious about what it was and what it did and that was actually very kind of cool to be able to show it off and say here's what an e-reader does here's what it looks like you know check it out you tried for yourself people came away very impressed these the Canadians did they were looking for something like this that would work on one of their cell networks so that was something that I was I was shocked at I figured what people knew what an e-reader was evidently I was mistaken so the next thing I want to talk about is the kindle store and i gotta say the kindle store is what makes this device it's what makes it worth in my mind a 359 dollars which is a very steep asking price i was traveling and while I was traveling I was sitting there and thinking I was little bit board my flight was delayed an hour I kind of been reading a book ahead on the Kindle but I want to read something different so I went on the kindle store I downloaded the newest issue of Newsweek and the newest issue of the LA Times I was able to read them right on the device and almost instantaneously and things are so much cheaper so you can get a newspaper issue for 25 cents or you can subscribe to a full month of it for just a dollar forty nine to two dollars which is actually really nice the same price scheme actually translates over to magazines as well since the magazine's aren't paying for the paper and the shipping and packaging these magazines you don't be paying for the content actually get it for a much cheaper price and that same thing also should books all new releases that usually might cost you twenty-five to thirty dollars in a regular bookstore generally run 999 here which is actually quite nice so if you are a heavy reader you can offset the really big asking prices device across the books something to keep in mind does have a rudimentary web browser that I showed you guys there the software overview but it's nothing fantastic it's just something that's there for a cool experimental feature they call it so you think of experimental features the text to speech function is a novelty at best it's nice to have I suppose I would never use it certainly never going to replace an audio book for me it's that mechanical voice that keeps talking and that's something I would think I would ever use but if you do use it you can take advantage of the 3.5 millimeter headset jack on the top of the device so one of the things I'm talking about as I'm showing you this you'll notice that I'm showing you with the kindle cover the kindle to no longer ships with a cutter and since the screen has no protection this is actually the eating itself the cover something it's a must haves I'm sure you factory next for thirty bucks for your purchase if we're looking at the kindle to size wise it's absolutely fantastic i so let's write in a backpack i was able to have six books two magazines and a newspaper all on it right inside and it was really nice and very thin to have and I actually really enjoy reading from it as they can have enjoying reading from it it also kind of makes reading fun you know you realize that you're still so reading but also doing it on a device kind of this cool and high-tech definitely adds a new dimension to it so if it is possible to make reading fun or more enjoyable for you i think the kindle definitely accomplishes that so definitely something else to keep in mind so overall i've been very happy with the device though quality is strong it does exactly what i expected it to do i wasn't disappointed in any area I did my research beforehand I knew what it did and what it didn't do definitely if you're looking to buy the kindle make sure you do your homework and you know what it does so you're not disappointed that makes that out of 5 stars i really give the kindle a solid four and a quarter stars a touch screen really would have put it over 25 and i think it would have been the perfect device it makes use of its two gigabytes of memory very nicely and easily you can store i think they claimed over 1,500 books you can view pdfs on it actually has an mp3 player as well and also actually can be bored document so you can send them to a kindle email address that will convert it and i'll put it right on a document for a charge of 10 sense or put it right on the device rather so I'm very happy with it I'm enjoying it I'm going to keep enjoying it and it makes a very nice way to read hope you guys enjoy this is jon rettinger be sure to follow me on twitter twitter.com / John for lakers for inclusive contents and i will see you guys in the next video bye bye