On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:29:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> That took me about a day of normal usage to get past - I had kept
>> trying to turn pages using the eInk screen.  When something doesn't
>> work,  you learn fast. ;-)
> 
> Yeah. And the delays in the UI are at least consistent, so they're easy
> to get used to.

Yep.

>> I tried the iPad - found it too awkward to use for reading books - it's
>> physically too heavy for me to use in that way.
> 
> I just played with it for 10 minutes in an Apple store, noticing how
> nice the display was and all.

I had about 4 hours.  The screen is too glossy (makes a great mirror, but 
if you've got an overhead light, you have to position yourself so the 
light doesn't reflect directly off the screen).  It also attracts 
fingerprints like a magnet and I'm sure after some time dust can become 
an issue.  I'd be constantly wiping the screen off.

But the thing that I found most unusable was the weight.  My tendency 
when reading books was to try to hold it in one hand, but it's just too 
heavy to do that, so then I found myself adjusting how I was sitting in 
my chair to rest it on my stomach.  Or lay it flat on the desk, which 
didn't work really well because for me it's not a natural position to 
read in.

>> The thing I'm wondering is if the 3G option is just a special MicroSD
>> card, it might be possible to upgrade at some point.
> 
> I guess if you want to crack the case open or something... :-)

Well, the MicroSD slot for expansion is easily accessible - the back can 
be removed to replace the battery and to install the card (which is 
necessary for the 'easy' way to jailbreak the device).  The front bezel 
comes off (that's how the first ones were jailbroken - remove the system 
SD card and replace the code on it).

>> bother me, if I were going overseas, the 3G option is only supported in
>> the US anyways AFAIK (it's tied to AT&T)
> 
> The Kindle worked fine for me in Germany. Amazon charged a nominal fee
> for using it for magazines, but no additional for books or web browsing.

That's cool, what kind of fee and was it per magazine?  The one magazine 
I read anymore is Linux Format, and as a subscriber I can get the issues/
articles as PDF for free.

>> The Nook uses a micro USB adapter, but I found the extension works
>> well. 5' isn't a short cable, it's just not quite long enough for
>> charging while reading in bed.
> 
> Yeah. I don't know offhand how long the kindle one is, but the power
> adaptor has the female host connector onit, so you could put as long a
> cable on it as you wanted.

Well, until cable attenuation breaks it, but for power that's not a huge 
deal.  :-)

>> I generally don't either - I've been working out the battery usage, and
>> find that if I leave it in "Airplane mode", the battery usage is much
>> more predictable.  When turned off, it's actually just sleeping, so
>> there's some battery usage when it's not fully powered down, and they
>> don't recommend powering it down.
> 
> Yeah. I'm leaving mine on now just to see. The wireless definitely
> drains the battery faster.  The kindle has "sleep" mode and "off" mode,
> and it still runs the wireless (and probably other background tasks,
> like the search index builder and such) in sleep mode, but not in off
> mode.

That may be what happened the first couple of nights - I'd go to sleep 
and it'd be at 70% power, and wake up and the battery was drained.  That 
seemed odd to me, but last night it was fine - but I was in Airplane mode.

So now I just turn that on when I don't actually need the wireless.  I 
may look for a way to script it to disable when, for example, the web 
browser isn't actively running.

Jim

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