About two weeks ago, the aussie dollar was near-parity with the US, which in my book is a cue for online shopping splurges. Mostly Amazon - even with shipping and the dollar at 80 cents, amazon is still often a fair whack cheaper than buying locally, but with such a strong dollar, the books are a comparative bargain.

I also picked myself up a new Kindle, for a few reasons: with all the developments in self-e-publishing lately, I've been meaning to try out a dedicated e-book reader; with all the reading I'm (supposed to be) doing for general writer-research, keeping up with the market and so forth, using an e-reader should be easier on both my wallet and my shoulder-bag;  also, I'm planning a long trip soon, and taking a few hundred books in the space of a chapbook sounds ideal.

So I ordered a 3G new Kindle, which arrived last week.

First impressions

On lifting it out of the box, I was impressed. When shipped, the screen is set to display the start-up instructions, and to the uninitiated it looks exactly like a piece of paper with printed instructions has been left on the screen. To the point that I wondered how many new Kindles had been damaged by people trying to remove the 'paper'.

It's a lovely thing to hold - light, but a satisfying size, and very slim - it's barely thicker than the headphone port at its base. The next-page buttons are easy to thumb through without accidentally hitting them, and it's comfortable to hold for long periods of time.

The screen is less 'white' than I would have expected - it's about the colour of recycled paper, or a cheap trade paperback, but there's plenty of contrast for reading, and on reflection (pun unintended) I think the beige colour gives a less glare-ful, more comfortable reading experience.

In comparison to reading on my iPhone, there's no comparison. My phone will make my eyes feel like they're being twisted together within thirty minutes, and give me a headache in forty. The Kindle is as comfortable to read after five hours as it is after five minutes. While I suspect some of the issue is with the iPhone's size, the difference  between reading e-ink and a backlight screen is amazing - an entire level of discomfort and strain that you never realised was there just disappears.

Reading

The main problem I had with any e-reader I tried - the Kobo, the Iliad and the earlier Kindle - was the several second wait for a new page. Several seconds may not sound like much, but if you consider that these e-readers generally displayed about 100-150 words a page, which would take maybe ten seconds to read, it starts to add up very wuickly. One sixth of your time is spent waiting for the page to turn, and pausing your reading every ten seconds is intolerable for a leisure-read.

The new Kindle has reduced their page-turning time to milliseconds, close to the time I would take to physically turn a page. There's almost no interruption to your reading. The screen still seems to display less than a paperback would per-page, however (even with the various text sizes and whatnot) and trading page numbers for the percent-completed indicator is unsettling - even if they just recalculated the number of pages for the text size I was reading, I'd like that far better.

I would have liked a larger screen - there's still a great deal of space on the kindle surrounding the screen, and even just an additional centimeter in width would feel far more 'roomy'. I think ideally I'd have liked it to mimic a C-format (the large trade paperback style that's slowly replacing hardcovers) rather than an A-format.

Browsing and buying

You can browse the Kindle store straight from the Kindle, which is a nice idea. Unfortunately, the whole process is just too slow and claustraphobic for me on that screen. While there's a search function, the store is rather intimidating for a newbie just looking for some things to read - I suspect my experience with Steam and with Amazon's general store has skewed my expectations of an online shopping experience. There are no recommendations, no "new" or "hot" or "on sale this week" sections to browse (not that I found on a cursory inspection, anyway), which is not enticing, and the kindle screen will only fit about ten titles per page.

Loading each page over wireless and 3G was also slow - though when Amazon's footing the bill for the 3G, I guess I shouldn't really complain. In all, though the in-Kindle purchasing is passable, I wouldn't want it as my only way to buy for it, and will most likely stick to shopping on a PC.

Conclusion

I'd recommend it for anyone who, for whatever reason, wants to read a fair number of books but not carry said number of books. It's a very comfortable reading experience and a fun little gadget.

If you want to do more, though - maybe browse online, watch movies or play games (though there are supposedly apps coming to the Kindle),  either get an iPad and be prepared for screen-glare and eventual headaches, OR wait for a few more generations when the colour and fast-response e-ink ventures into commercial production.