A good online friend who is a man of mystery started a site not so long ago about the fact that the Amazon Kindle is now available to those in the UK. Being somewhat backward when it comes to even thinking about buying much in the way of gadgets I was intrigued about the kindle after being somewhat dismissive at first.
Anyway as a Dog owner (duh), after my initial scepticism had worn off, I realized that these are actually quite a good idea. Anyone who likes to have a handy reference for Dog training techniques and is trying new things or wants to learn a different way of training will often take a book with them as they are out and about with the Dogs.
It is often handy to be able to refer to the book while you are trying to get your head around what you are supposed to be doing. This is where the Kindle comes in. First let me say to the American readers that I am sure that you know all about this gizmo but we have only just been allowed to order it in Europe so it is all a bit new to us.
Okay here is a little about the Kindle.
After my scepticism I decided to take a proper look at it. I assumed that as it was an electronic book reader it was going to be just like a mini laptop or notebook where you would have a white glaring screen and black text. There really is a lot more to it than that and I was quite surprised.
The screen is quite muted and the color is actually more realistic than I thought. It mimics very well the real color of paper and the text does the same. Everything I could find written about them, and I am including many reviews here from owners, indicates that it is extremely close to the look of a real book as far as the color of the page is concerned.
What I was surprised at is that you can have something like 1500 books on the Kindle reader which is pretty amazing. You can also now download a book in less than a minute from over 100 countries which I find really rather impressive. Of course the initial price to buy one is quite considerable but as the books themselves are cheaper in the virtual world it could pay for itself fairly soon if you are an avid book reader as many of us are. The only thing that would put me off would be the fact that I like to own the actual thing. I don’t download music or have an MP4 Player (right?) because I would much rather have hordes of unoragized items spilling over the shelves in an untidy manner.
There are loads more technical details but I wont bore you with them.
What I am surprised at is that they really do seem a lot better and more natural than I would have anticipated. They may be a very good idea for anyone who likes to have lots of reference material with them for Dog type activities, but for me they seem like the perfect thing to take on holiday. It would be great to be able to be lying on a beach and get the latest Sookie Stackhouse book in a minute if I fancied it (OK, I have got sucked in to the Vampire world a little).
Anyway just a quick post to highlight a new thing I learnt and to be honest they have surprised me a little. Anyone own one? I know no one in the UK will yet.