Kindle Experiments and Reflections

I had heard E-book for years and hadn’t own one until my husband buy me a Kindle as a birthday gift last year.  Even spending most my life reading through printed books, it was a breezy transition for me to Kindle. After all, I have had a number of years digital medium user experience. As a portable reading device, Kindle has benefited e-readers from various aspects.

1.      The books are cheaper. Amazon claimed Kindle Store owns over 550,000 books that cost US$ 9.99 or less and thousands of free books.

2.      A “pre-read” chapter. Buyers can pre-read first chapter to see if the book is something they are really interested in before place the order.

3.      Buying books is easy. Buyers can place an order and download the book in less than one minute with free built-in 3G wireless connection. Only the 3G feature comes with an extra price tag.

4.      An easy-to-carry portable library.  You can carry up to 3,500 books in a slim handheld device.

5.      Digital notes and highlights: You can take notes, highlights, clippings, and bookmarks on your own Kindle. Amazon also allows readers to store all the notes, highlight and bookmarks on their server and share with others, although some readers are concerning this feature might abuse their privacy and account security.

6.      You can do research while reading. Kinle enables me to research the unfamiliar words through built-in dictionary or connect to Google or Wikipedia for further information. This is one of my favorite features.

7.       Battery. After suffering from the battery with my other digital gadgets, Kindle’s long battery life is a breeze to me. Its battery allows you to read for up to one month on a single charge. Frequent travelers, especially traveling out of countries that have different electric voltage or power outlets, will greatly appreciate this advantage.

8.      Monitor display. Unlike most of digital monitors, Kindle’s electronic ink screen works just like real books and newspapers, eliminates the glare, and can be read easily even in bright sunlight.

Benefits in one context, may be drawbacks in another. Some things I don’t like about Kindle are:

1.      The price. The Kindle we have is 9.7 DX version came with a price tag US$ 379. You can get a full-functioned Netbook or replace an entry level iPad with another $120 which is a multiuse gadget rather than an E-reader. The cheapest model costs $139, it is still relative expensive while it only does one thing.

2.      No sharing allowed. Although Amazon allows buyers lending e-books to others, it comes with rather strict limits. First of all, not every e-book is lendable, it is publishers’ call.  You can only lend for a two week period and only lend a book once. Also the book is unavailable to you during the two week lending period. Not to mention that no reselling is allowed.

3.      Lack of real page numbers. It is challenging to provide footnotes for quotes because Kindle uses “location numbers” instead of page numbers.

4.      Frequent page turns are tiring. My husband is a math professor, and he particularly dislikes the downside of Kindle because he has the needs to locate certain pages of literatures or papers. Without “go to page” function

Kindle in Education

Without any question, Amazon would leave educational market behind and try to expand their market share. Here is what they state the reasons why the Kindle is an excellent choice for student, teachers, and school for K-12 and higher education. Their biggest sale points are no more overloaded backpacks, get digital textbooks instantly, and carry all documents on the go. In fact, Kindle and Princeton University and many other universities elaborated pilot programs in 2009 that Amazon provided free Kindle DX for the student participants for their classwork. The main common accomplishments revealed by the universities are cut the cost reduction in the use of paper and have immediate to all the course material in a lightweight device.  According to the pilot experiments and my personal observation, Kindle doesn’t have any killer feature exceed their competitors. This current E-reader, with black-and-write screen plus limited web surf capacity, seems doesn’t have a bright future as an academic tool. Additionally, its applications for educational purposes are not strong or unique which can be easily achieved by various devices like iPad, Tablet computers, Netbooks, laptops…and so on. Besides its high cost for an individual machine, Kindle’s single purpose – reading is not appealing to media multitaskers. Lee Graham indicated that the current student population is part of the “entertain me” generation. They wanna be engaged, as well as, entertained as they learn. http://www.elearning30.com/2010/05/27/kindle-failed-higher-education/  To become a key player in educational market, Kindle still has a long way to go.