Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Time's Josh Quittner is Feeling the Kindle Love

I guess you could call him a convert. In a recent article Time's Josh Quittner talks about how he initially gave up on the Kindle but recently (re)discovered its virtues. Btw, I still get a kick out of all the people who constantly gripe about the Kindle's supposedly poor battery life. Am I the only person on the planet who routinely plugs my devices in almost every night? Sure, I could let it go another day or two, but why? All my chargers are lined up on one powerstrip at home so recharging is a daily habit I'd find hard to break.

Quittner also talks about the one Kindle feature that I think is the most underappreciated and underutilized: Amazon's free document conversion service. I can't tell you how many times I've forwarded a Word or PDF file to my @kindle.com e-mail address and within minutes the document is converted and wirelessly sent to my device. It's totally changed my approach to document management and printing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll gripe about the battery life. The Kindle makes a difficult demand: with all the other devices that we "need" and "need" to charge (phone, blackberry, headset, ipod, etc), a book that needs to be charged is a stretch.

I love my Kindle, but I'd like to be able to leave it at work for a few days, or at home for a few days, or in my bag for a few days, and not have to worry about it being dead when I want to use it.

Joe Wikert said...

I'll bet if you turn off the wireless signal and let it sit unattended for days you'll have plenty of battery life left next time you pick it up. I generally leave the wireless switch in the "on" position but that's because I charge it up every night. For those few times I haven't recharged overnight I've turned off wireless and never saw anything less than 100% charge the next day.

Ger said...

Another newcomer having some Kindle Love is the estimable James Fallows.

Here is a link to his Atlantic Monthly blog: http://tinyurl.com/36lwyf

Mike Shatzkin said...

Joe, how can you possibly charge your Kindle every night? Don't you read it in bed?

But I agree that battery life is no problem. I never leave the radio signal on; that's a big drain eliminated. And whenever I'm not near my Kindle power plug and the meter shows less than half charged, I just turn the device off in between reading times. It actually is no more time-consuming to do that than it is to put on the screen saver.

This machine does NOT have a battery life problem. Anybody who is encountering one almost certainly is causing it themselves.