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The Kindle Chronicles: Part the Third
Features
I’ve already told you about Font Size, Go to Location, Search, wireless, and touched on the Amazon.com store. But my favorite feature of the Kindle is the built in dictionary! Used to be, if I didn’t know a word but could get enough out of the context, I would continue on unless it was a REALLY unusual word. But now I point the cursor at a word and the New Oxford American Dictionary tells me what it thinks. Hurray!
Another great feature is that the Kindle opens any book to the last page you were on. Seems a simple thing but since I’ve been sampling a lot of books lately it’s been great. No need to find a dozen receipts to use as bookmarks! Speaking of bookmarks, there is a feature to bookmark pages but I haven’t used it much yet. I think I remembered to use it once when I went hunting for something earlier in the book…
Highlighting text is kind of cool –just click around the phrase and the phrase you’ve highlighted not only changes shades of gray it also appears in a list on the main menu (complete with title, Location, and date). It’s great for saving neat quotes!
I played around at first with the text-to-speech feature. It’s pretty good (although it’s pretty funny when it tries sci fi and fantasy terminology) but I just don’t have a use for it right now. Maybe someday when I’m sick I’ll see how I like it reading to me.
On the other hand, I love the iPhone app for the Kindle! It syncs with my Kindle and opens to the last place I read; when I go back to my Kindle it resyncs and again picks up where I left off on the iPhone. The one major drawback is it only works for books I got directly from Amazon.com. Even the things I sent for translation to Amazon don’t show up on the iPhone’s list of books. Boo, hiss. I really like having my library in my purse for emergencies—or just for waiting rooms. If I complained about flipping pages too much on the Kindle – yeah, the iPhone’s even worse. But for a quick read, it’s fine.
To wrap up the features section, I’ll just mention two features the Kindle DOESN’T have: color and a clock. I think lack of color is the second main reason I don’t use the Kindle for web surfing if I can help it (the first reason being the difficulty of using a cursor rather than a mouse). Also, I would really like to see the book covers in color. It’s such a small thing to miss that it doesn’t bring my overall review of the Kindle down any; when I go shopping for the next e-book reader, however, I’ll likely wait to get one with color. As for the clock, I’m torn. Part of me says a digital gadget ought to have a clock. The other part of me wonders why on earth I’d want to pollute my reading experience with a timekeeper! Give a hoot, don’t pollute…
1 comment
As far as a digital copy coming with a paper book(mentioned on FB) - I know there's been a lot of talk of that. Most publishers are still trying to figure out what to do with ebooks, though. Amazon would probably have to take the lead.