So, over the years, I have been stacking up books by the
gross till such time that I have run out of space for my books. When a friend
providently gifted me a Sony e-book reader a couple of years ago, it seemed
like a marriage made in heaven. Not! Though there are plenty of free e-books available
which could be loaded onto the Sony e-reader, I somehow did not take to it. For
one, it was an earlier generation reader, so though it had a touch screen it
was resistive and not capacitive. The actual page on the e-reader was pretty
ok, however it had two fundamental flaws, one was battery life, which meant
that I needed to plug it into a laptop every so often (using an external
charger seemed to take much longer, though I don’t have any data to support it)
and the second was inability to seamlessly shop online (no Wi-Fi).
This year I got my hands on the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and
my reading experience has now completely changed. Firstly, the backlight does
make a difference, however the best feature is the ability to connect
seamlessly and send books to my Kindle from the Amazon store (now available in
India for payment in Indian rupees – not a small benefit!). Secondly it has a
neat feature of allowing you to email free e-books to a specific email id which
is tied to my Kindle. No more messing around connecting it to my laptop. Last
but not the least is the battery life. It is amazing and its now been over a
week and I haven’t had to recharge it. One thing I haven’t done is to get a 3G
enabled device, I can’t quite imagine myself in so desperate a position that I *have
to* buy a book when I am at the airport or wherever. If I can’t rely on my
e-library to re-read something then it is a sad commentary on my reading habits
and taste.
I am now a full fledged convert and would recommend it
highly to anyone who likes reading and doesn’t want to go through the hassle of
buying physical books. I would additionally highly recommend buying a cover for
it, which has the dual advantage of being a screen protector and gives a close
to physical experience of reading.
