A New Way of Reading

Guess what I got this time!!!

Nope, its not a planner nor notebook but instead....

Jeng jeng jeng jeng...

A KINDLE :D

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have succumbed to the preposterous idea of ebook reading *averts eyes*

Ok ok so being the elitist bookworm I am, I have always secretly scorned the idea of ebooks, brushing it off as a cheap gimmick which can never ever compare with the weight and feel of an actual book in one's hands. Tangible pages where you can actually flip back and forth to your heart's desire to reread that one beautiful sentence or find that elusive scene located way back in the beginning that is currently being referenced by the protagonist and which you do not seem to remember reading and are now itching to find it. Also, why pay the same price for a bunch of electronic codes?

Thanks to the awesome libraries in the US, finding books to read wasn't hard and so I continued to scoff at ebooks. Until I was shipped off to uni where the only library books available are horribly soporific academic ones T.T

Then my suitemate got herself a Kindle and I finally witness firsthand just how simply amazing it is.

Yes I am a huge Agatha Christie fan :3

SRSLY. So that is what E-Ink is!!! Its like friggin ink on paper ok and that picture doesn't do it justice. Its not those typical LCD backlit screens on psp and ipads and the likes but like actual typed paper however you call it. Since its not backlit, there is no strain on the eyes and best of all: it is unaffected by the glares of the sun. Like an actual book! So I can read comfortably anywhere and everywhere!

Except sadly, in the dark D:

But nvm, nothing a booklight can't fix.

Its really light, its thin, it has an inbuilt mp3 player, a text-to-speech thingy something like audiobook, dictionary, adjustable fontsizes, line spacing whatever, can read manga and has a web browser which is slower compared to laptops etc. but fast enough to check emails or facebook or twitter or read fanfic etc. The downside of the Kindle is its all in black and white and does't support flash but really, its meant for reading so I don't care.

The only gripe I have of the browser is that I have to zoom in on certain pages for it to be legible which means I have to painstakingly scroll left and right by pressing alt+J as it is not touchscreen >C

See how you have to scroll right. And this is a more acceptable site already. There are worst.

Some sites can be remedied by changing it to landscape mode so I needn't scroll left/right but then the font sizes are less than optimal and thus I have no choice but to zoom and so I'm back to square one, having to scroll left/right *annoyed* Both the PSP and iPod Touch can 'fit to screen' all its webpages so why can't the Kindle too?! There is a feature called 'article mode' which tries to do that but it only works for selective sites which coincidentally aren't the sites I care for. I demand a hack for it ok!

Anyways, buying books is easy as your Kindle is linked to your Amazon account which I tried out yesterday to download free books heh. Alternatively, you can also upload whatever books of your own that you find from anywhere onto the Kindle by converting them into Kindle formats using calibre hurhur.

The Kindle comes in 3 different models: Wifi, Wifi+3G and DX (simply a larger version like the DSi XL). The 3G model is slightly more expensive than the Wifi only model internet access is free to use anywhere and anytime you like. No monthly 3G fees of the sort :D

Jailbreaking the Kindle doesn't do much except letting you set your own screensavers -which you can see I have immediately abused with the onslaught of final fantasy characters, never mind the fact that they have nothing to do with books whatsoever, they are pretty to look at ♥- and others which I didn't bother to learn because I find them of no use.

All in all, the Kindle is an awesome ebook reader and one of my best purchases ever! All the books in the world at your fingertips! I spent my past weeks just blazing through books after books. There are many other ebook readers out there too like the Nook but I prefer the Kindle best. Feel free to ask me any questions about the Kindle if you like. Anyways, if you are an avid reader like me, you might want to look into getting an ebook reader for yourself :D

Srsly, e-ink. Best invention ever.


*ok so apparently, Amazon does not ship the Kindle outside of the US atm and in order to buy books, you need to have a US residential address although you could probably just googlemap a random US Pizza Hut or something but just a heads up to look further into this matter if you're from overseas.