Using Kindle for Grad School

Ok. I have had my kindle for a few weeks now.

I have never owned an e reader before but am an Ipod fanatic.
My goal in purchasing the Kindle was to save trees and lots of them.
I had looked at Iliad, Hanlin, Sony, and some others ereaders. (Including Palm because I used to love my palm V).
I chose Kindle because of EVDO, and the hope that one day I could purchase my textbooks via Kindle.

It was snowing when I came home after a late night on campus and saw the box on my doorstep. I didn't sleep that night for good reason, I fell asleep next to my Kindle, the batteries drained.

I had navigated WSU's databases, and successfully opened up searches to find articles.
I had successfully downloaded the samples from Kindle and read the User's manual both Paper copy and Ebook copy.
I had successfully downloaded mobipocket creator, and converted all of my pdfs to html.
I experimented with the experimental, sent out three questions, navigated the web page, and realized I could not play the background file without mp3 file loaded, so I purchased an 8 GB SDHD Sandisk which had a micromate included (89.00 from BestBuy, I think I used a 10% off coupon, and this is the faster SD card btw)
I discovered manybooks.com and began downloading free books.
I downloaded Free books from various vendors, signing up for accounts, some of them mobipocket sites.
I was ready to read!

This is when the doe eyed wonder of Kindle does become a list of cons.

List of Cons

1. Battery life is one day for a user like me, Even turning off the internet feature (remember why I went with Kindle to begin with). The battery does not last, Overnight I usually have a half battery drain. I will try turning it off to see if it helps, and will contact kindle about this. Today while reading after charging it. The battery drained after reading three pdf articles I had converted into the Kindle. This did include playing with looking up stuff in the dictionary, but still....my Ipod's batteries last forever so this is a big disappointment to me.

The Kindle batteries drain even when I have it PLUGGED into my laptop!

2. New pdfs work great, the older pdfs (the ones that you can't copy and paste the words) do not. They become an image that is really tiny on the screen.
(this is when I became an expert on free pdf programs -- I own Adobe Acrobat 6 but this did not help-- more on this later). As those of us in college know, professors love to keep on their reading list the pdfs that were scanned by the library (I want to say in the horse and buggy days, but scanners were not around then) and will remain on their reserves until they retire.

3. I never received an answer from the three questions that I so meticulously keyed in with the Kindle keyboard. So this bit in the Experimental is not really that great.

4. How do I scroll through these mp3s that I loaded in? Luckily I have my Ipod so that is not an issue but still...and since the Kindle batteries now nicknamed Kindle ephemera do not last long then....

5. Why can't I have an option to arrange by the folders I create, instead of just by author or title? I have more than 18 pages of titles now and it is annoying! And more titles once I figure out the pdf conversion thing.

6. Once you get the Kindle support email put it in a safe place or else good luck finding somewhere else that gives it to you.

7. Why when I try a lookup of a word (like this morning it was chaffinch, and ever word in the sentence is listed except for the one I want, when I do a typed search of the word...yes, Virginia it is in my dictionary grrrr)

8. The cover is confusing, I have to push it back up as it begins to slip out, and when I do the pages go crazy, so I put it in sleep mode, push it up into the jacket and invariably the plastic back cover that protects the battery will fall off, so the process continues until either I put the cover in a drawer so that I can read, or else stop worrying about it hanging off of the edge and not clipped into the case.

9. I am really fastidious about not dropping my gadgets, and the Kindle has been dropped more than any other device I have ever owned, due to the clumsiness of the cover. I think if I stopped using the cover it would be better for the Kindle but I worry about the glass screen cracking more than anything so I keep using the cover.

There are more but these come to the top of my head, in the next blog post will talk about Kindle, Python 2.5, Mobicreator, Pdf conversion programs