So, as my last post stated I decided to return the Nook and try out the Kindle. I made the decision knowing full well that if I didn't like the Kindle, I'd have to pay shipping to get rid of it, and go back to the Nook.
It arrived last night and here are the REAL differences I noticed between the Nook and the Kindle 3. If you research both of these products, you'll probably boil it down to something similar to what I wrote in my Nook review. So I won't rewrite any of that information, but I will talk about some of the points that I made before. It will be stuff that I never found in print.
The first thing that I noticed about the Kindle 3 was the screen. They say it's sharper and has better contrast, and they're right. It's not a night and day difference, but it's there. No matter how small I have the text I can always read it, whereas the Nooks text was only readable with the smallest texts with a good deal of squinting, concentration, and headache. IE, don't bother reading on the plane with tiny text. The Kindle is much, much clearer.
I also noticed that there are shadows on the Kindle screen. Not often, but it really does look a bit like screen burn-in back in the days of "big screen TV's". After some page turning it disappeared, so that's really not a big deal unless it occurs more often in the future.
Also in regards to the screen, when Amazon claims faster page turns, they're very right. Also, Kindle3 doesn't negative the whole screen before changing it to something else like Nook. The refreshes on the Nook weren't so slow that they were annoying, but if I were to go back from Kindle3, I'd get frustrated in a hurry.
My next delight was the size of the Kindle 3. It's light and small. On paper it's smaller than the Nook, and in your hand it's even better. The back is rounded on the outside cover (but not concave like Nook) and it sits in the palm of your hand quite easily. The page turn buttons are better (in my opinion) as well. Some people may not like how easily they are pressed, but the Kindle 3 is weighted so that if you're holding it in any number of natural positions you won't easily accidentally turn the page.
The keyboard is very reminiscent of many slider-style smart phones. It's about the same size, and while it's functional, I first thought Amazon really should have taken a note from Samsung or HTC on how to properly make a small qwerty keyboard. My biggest problem with it is that you're forced to use the "Sym" button to access most of the alternative keys such as ', !, ?, etc. There is an "Alt" key on the keyboard that gives you access to them without the menu, but without the alternates being printed, only experimentation will reveal them, and heavy use will master them for no-look typing. I'm already trying to master one handheld keyboard, so this one will have to wait.
That covers the appearance. So let's get into using Kindle 3. To activate it there is a power slider on the bottom. It's rather poorly placed because a stray pinky could easily lock it back up. Other poorly placed buttons are the volume rockers. Also on the bottom. The bottom of devices is rarely the ideal place to put any sort of controls. That's where they rest, and that's the most uncomfortable spot for controls. Really though, it's not a big deal. They volume buttons don't press that easily, and the Kindle 3 reacts within a second to lock or unlock.
You navigate by using a permanent 4-way rocker button with a select button in the center. I like this FAR more than the context sensitive touch screen of the Nook for many reasons. You always have it at hand, it's harder to fudge a button press, tactile feedback, to waiting for the device to reawaken the screen to do what you want to do (such as looking up a word).
When you start it up the first thing you see is the Home screen. When you compare this with the Nook and its color TFT at the bottom, it's like being in a barren wasteland. Nook shows you a big colorful list of things to do, Kindle 3 shows you a bland list of books and "collections". Collections are differentiated by being in bold italics. Nook tells you where you are. Kindle 3 lets you figure it out for yourself. There is a flip side of that coin, though. I'm quite happy to not be inundated by demands to buy more crap. Whether by chance or intention, the Kindle berate the consumer with unnecessary clutter (you know, like every smartphone!).
Hit the "Menu" key and you're greeted with a menu that reminds me of the old Windows CE or Windows Mobile 5.x, 6.x. You're given a tear down box with a few options such as Turn Wireless Off (bad form, by the way it ends in a preposition!), Shop in Kindle Store, Settings and Experimental (where it stores the browser, MP3 player, and Text-to-Speech).
This is the way with the Kindle in its entirety. It's descent use of the screen and interface, but for people who are used to overly elaborate GUI's like Windows or MacOSX it can be painful. Once you start tooling around with Settings and configuration you'll find that Amazon did a pretty piss poor job of setting up navigating the innards of the Nook. Settings are traversed by moving the underlined selection from option to option, rather from sub-heading to sub-heading. It makes using the menus confusing and less intuitive than it could be.
Once you've poked around inside Kindle 3 you'll find that it just feels empty compared with Nook. They have almost the same functionality, but the way that functionality is presented is pretty drab and boring. It could still be SO much better.
I loaded up the browser and while a black and white version of the web isn't ideal, it shows the ability of a device like this to shine. The cursor is controlled by the 4-way rocker and very smartly. When the website is too zoomed out to read the Kindle will sense it and give you a better zoom. It's very zippy for e-paper and easily matches the Nook's hybrid browser in usefulness.
Here we come to a touchy point for me. The main reason I can justify buying an e-reader is that most of what I enjoy reading is public domain. So like with the Nook, I used the Kindle's browser and searched for "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and immediately found the free version on the top. What irked me is that Amazon wants me to pay for "wireless delivery". Hmm.. I seem to be the one paying for my router, and my electricity... WTF is this charge, then? Is this for the people who have the "Free" 3G every time they buy a book? (granted, if you do the math and Amazon charges you $2 for ever book, you'd have to read 15 books a month. An easy feat for some, but I'm not into the quick reads as much as others might be).
I'm all for paying a buck or two for a book that isn't in PDF format (I'll get to this problem later), but I'm never going to pay for a "wireless delivery" charge. Maybe it's for "Whispernet"?
EDIT: I was not charged any money to download any of the free books. The "Wireless Delivery Charge" was waived much in the same way you get a free phone. It costs $99, but there is an 'instant rebate' and you don't actually pay a cent. I did a bit of digging around and couldn't find out why it existed. It could be a Christmas promotion or they may only assess it to those who are browsing and downloading titles via the 3G connection in many of the Kindle models. Amazon may be passing the burden of the cellular charge to only those who actually use it. If that is the case, then kudos to them. It is indeed a rarity in the retail world to only pay for what you use. END EDIT
Whispernet is Amazon's book centralization/synchronization system. Basically if you are reading your books on the Kindle, computer, and a cell phone, it will synch your books to every location, as well as your notes and bookmarks. I see how this can be very useful seeing as if I turn a few pages on my phone while waiting for my wife to rampage about the dollar store, I don't really want to have to catch up when I get back to my Kindle. It is, however, just a convenience heaped upon another convenience, and I'm not willing to pay for it.
Here comes the only problem I really have with Kindle 3. As of yet, I have not found a way to simple scale PDFs to smaller fonts the way the Nook does (adding more screens to each page and tightening up the margins when you zoom in). Kindle wants you to zoom in and move the viewable area as you go. This makes PDFs neigh unreadable if the font wasn't already big enough in the first place. I plan on converting books that I cannot get from the Kindle store (or are cheaper elsewhere) to PDF format for reading using free tools. This, folks, could be a deal breaker. Unless I'm missing something, the stark menus offer no consolation, only zooming and panning about PDF documents.
I'd have to say that so far the annoyances (and one glaring flaw) of the Kindle 3 are less than the Nook, and it's features outshine the Nook. The Kindle 3 is everything the Nook isn't, but not necessarily everything the Nook is. It just does what I need it to do very well, and the features it's missing? Well, I'm not missing them.
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