Category: Kindle

I got my new Kindle 3 in the mail today. And I’ve successfully transferred all my stuff over from the Kindle 1 to the Kindle 3, wiped the old Kindle, and boxed it up for Gazelle. It’s worth $15, which I guess is fair for a three year old, two generation behind, device.
So now here’s my list of gripes with the new Kindle:

• Biggest gripe: I didn’t realize that old magazine issues are DRM’d to the Kindle on which you received them, and cannot be transferred to the new one. Apparently, you can re-download recent issues to your new Kindle, but you cannot just copy the files over from the old device to the new. I had a bunch of Newsweek back issues on my old Kindle that I hadn’t read yet, and I was quite surprised to see that I couldn’t open any of them on the new Kindle. And they’re old enough that they’re no longer available for re-download. I don’t have any current Kindle magazine subscriptions going, and now I’m a good bit less likely to start any new ones.
• The keyboard. It’s just not as easy to use as the Kindle 1’s keyboard. And there are no dedicated number keys, which just seems weird. I’ve discovered that Alt-Q works for 1, Alt-W is 2, and so on, so there is still a way to type numbers, but it’s weird.
• Collections. I was fairly excited about this feature, but it turns out that, when you put something in a collection, it stays on the main screen also. I was really hoping to use collections to get some stuff off the main screen, just to make that more manageable.
• No user-removable battery. No SD card slot.

And now for some stuff I do like:

• The screen. It’s definitely an improvement on the Kindle 1, which itself was pretty good.
• The size and weight. Not that the Kindle 1 was heavy or anything, but it’s nice to have something just a little smaller and lighter.

Stuff I’m not sure about:

• The case. I bought the default M-Edge case. I’m not sure if I like it or not just yet.
• The navigation pad. I’m just not digging this yet. It might grow on me though.

I probably sound like I’m not that excited about the thing, but I am really excited to, once again, have a Kindle with a working battery in it. My main problem with the Kindle 1 was that the battery was pretty much dead. I’d thought about just buying a replacement battery, but decided that it was time to just go ahead and get a new Kindle. I bought the old Kindle in Feb 2008, so it had a pretty long life, as first-gen consumer electronics devices go.

I’m not sure what to think about this development. I canceled my Kindle Newsweek subscription a while ago, but I’ve been keeping an eye on what’s going on with Newsweek since it got sold for $1. It might be interesting to see what Tina Brown would do with it.

My Kindle 1 may be on its last legs. First, the battery doesn’t last long anymore. If it were only that, I’d just buy a new battery. But it’s also been locking up a lot lately. Thinking that this might just have something to do with my internal memory being almost full, I’ve moved nearly everything to the SD card. And today I deleted the system indexes from both the internal memory and SD card, to force the Kindle to recreate them. No clue if that will help. If it doesn’t, then I guess I’m going to be looking at the Kindle 3.

Newsweek Deal Announced; Meacham Will Leave – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com

I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s good that they found a buyer, and it’s interesting that it’s not anyone I would have expected. I’ve kind of liked Meacham’s Newsweek. I’m quite far behind though — I’ve got quite a few unread issues on my Kindle. Maybe it’s time to stop the Kindle subscription, and then think about starting it back up again once I see what the new guy does with the magazine.

I’ve had a Kindle subscription to Newsweek for a while now. I’m pretty far behind on my reading right now, but I am still reading it. I was disappointed to hear that The Washington Post is putting Newsweek up for sale. It’s actually a pretty good magazine.

It’s always possible someone interesting will buy it, and the quality will remain (reasonably) high. I’m worried that it will be bought by someone who’ll close the magazine, fire most of the staff, and just use the name for a generic news portal of some sort. Or it could get bought by Rupert Murdoch, which would probably result in a change in tone that would make the magazine much less interesting to me.

I guess if it goes under, or changes too radically, I’ll switch back to reading The Economist.

I’ve mentioned a few times in the past that I’d really like to see The Economist available on the Kindle. Well, now it is. But it’s $10.49 a month. Ouch. Newsweek is only $1.49 a month, and they’re both weeklies, with about the same amount of content. I was definitely ready to drop my Newsweek subscription in favor of The Economist, until I saw the price tag. They seem to have priced it so that it’s just about the same price as a print subscription. I understand the reason why they do this, whether it’s with Kindle books and magazines, or iTunes music and video downloads, but I really wish they’d give it up. It’s a lot cheaper to deliver a magazine or a newspaper electronically than it is to produce and deliver a physical copy. The price should reflect this.

This is kind of interesting. PC Magazine is now available for the Kindle.

PC Magazine stopped publishing an actual magazine a while ago, and has just been maintaining their web site, and publishing a digital version (which I think is in a weird format, not a PDF or any normal e-book format) since then. And, just this week, it was announced that ExtremeTech, a related Ziff-Davis site, would be shutting down. Or at least almost shutting down. So, I’m wondering exactly what they’ll be publishing on the Kindle. I’m guessing it won’t look much like the old print PC Mag. It’s interesting that they’re trying to keep it going in some form, but I wonder if anybody cares at this point. Is anyone interesting writing for it? Do they have enough of a budget to do benchmark tests and stuff like that?