Adventures with Kindle

As a book-worm college student, I love towering piles of books. I love the smell of old pages and ink. And I hate reading off a computer screen. I spend hundreds of dollars on ink each school year to print my PDF readings just so I can hold the material in my hands.

So when Amazon released the first Kindle in 2007, I didn’t pay much attention. Why would I want to pay several hundred dollars to read my books electronically? Even as the reviews came in — The pages look just like paper! The screen doesn’t strain your eyes! — I still didn’t buy the hype.

But then over the summer, I got an email from one of my professors telling me I had registered for a class in the fall that makes me eligible to receive a free Kindle. As it turns out, Amazon chose Reed College and several other schools to use the new Kindle DX in a pilot program. As long as we fill out several surveys, participate in a couple interviews, and follow their file-sharing rules, the $489 Kindle DX is ours to keep when the semester ends.

• The Kindle DX and my reading for the weekend.

So two days ago, I went over to Computer User Services, signed my contract, and took home my Kindle. I peeled off the first screen protective layer, but there was one more on which something along the lines of “Congratulations on Your New Kindle” was printed. I spent a minute getting frustrated that I couldn’t get my nail under the plastic to peel it off.

Then I realized that was the actual screen.

More about the Kindle below the cut.

I slid the power switch at the top, and the words disappeared, replaced with a new page, asking me to sign in with my Amazon account. On the home page, I had three reading options: Kindle DX User’s Guide, The New Oxford American Dictionary, and something called “Welcome Rachael.”

The next morning, I awoke to find two books for my class on Nuclear Politics (The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation by Jaques Hymans and Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East by Etel Soligen) had automatically downloaded.

I got excited and began to figure out how to highlight and annotate. There’s a little square knob on the right called a “5-way clicker” that lets the reader navigate along the page. Click + scroll + click to highlight. Click + type + click to make a note, which shows up footnote-style. It also has a text-to-speech feature, which is potentially useful should I want to do some reading on my drive to school…although the voice isn’t quite human-like enough to get all the words right. My favorite feature so far is the automatic word definitions — bring the cursor in front of a word, and its definition automatically pops up at the bottom of the page.

The Kindle DX also supports PDFs, which is necessary if you’re a student. You can’t download PDF files from the Kindle store, but you can use a USB port to connect to a computer to upload the files, or you email the files to your automatically created Kindle email address, which will then delivered them to your Kindle for a fee (or, if you’re one of the lucky students in the pilot program, free).

A few concerns: the screen flashes when you turn the page, which is standard, but annoying. Also, is Amazon tracking what students in the pilot program read? And the keyboard is very small — making notes might become somewhat of a pain. Plus, I can’t throw it across the room when I get fed up. Well, I could, but I’d probably regret it.

• It also came with a sweet leather case!

Still, it looks like I’m sold. I don’t have to pay for my textbooks for my Nuclear Politics class (they’re free as part of the pilot program), nor do I have to buy several ink cartridges to print hundreds and hundreds of PDF readings. Even if I did have to pay, it’s still much cheaper — $30 instead of $80; $15 instead of $25! I won’t have to carry my textbooks everywhere, and I’ll always have all my readings with me. But ask me again on Monday how I like it after I’ve finished my 170 pages for my first Nuclear Politics class.

-Rachael Marcus