Bernie Goldbach in Fenn's Quay | 495 words
AFTER AN ACADEMIC YEAR of reading, annotating and sharing essential content on my Kindle, I can strongly recommend Amazon's Kindle as technology that delivers high value for money.
I think the standalone Kindle is better than having an iPad with the Kindle app, primarily because when you read on a Kindle, you're less likely to be interrupted by notifications and less prone to procrastination via Facebook.
Both the app and the Kindle lets you read Kindle books, newspapers, magazines and PDFs through an intuitive interface. I've Kindle editions of all the essential and supplemental textbooks for five creative multimedia modules that I teach in the Limerick Institute of Technology. Plus I've paid subscriptions to both the Irish Times and the Financial Times. And I get Kindlefeeder content once a day along with items I send to my Kindle via a Klip.me bookmarklet. Every day, I have no less than 50 minutes of reading arriving on my Kindle.
Surprisingly, I actually read with my Kindle for at least an hour every day. I also use Amazon Whispersync to remember my last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across devices. This means I can resume reading my e-book on either the Kindle, my iPod Touch, my laptop or an iPad linked to my Kindle account.
Whispersync is a lovely technology. It remembers where I paused my reading in any book on any device that is running the Kindle App. It's fooled only when my wife starts reading beyond where I left off. We've solved that problem by leaving individual bookmarks in the books we've put onto the Kindle.
I've sent documents (DOC and PDF files) to my Kindle but they have bloated the poor Kindle's memory so I'll be clearing out those file during the summer break and regaining some speed on the device.
I like scaling the size of the text of Kindle books becaues I need to upscale after 10 at night. I also like the weight and form factor of the Kindle because I can hold it with one hand in the direct sun and read page after page. I can also let the Kindle read to me because most of the essential textbooks on the modules I teach have the text-to-speech enabled directly from the publisher.
The one negative factor about owning a Kindle is the ease of ordering items with it. Mine is one-click enabled which means when I search Amazon for an epub or Audible product and want the item delivered to my Kindle, I get the service without any confirmation. This has resulted in me paying an average of $32 each month during the 16 months that I've owned my Kindle. I'm spending more with Amazon by using my $105 Kindle than I've spent as an owner of any other electronic operating system. I hope my purchase pattern converts to a deep discount when the next generation of Kindles hit the shelves.
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