

Jakob Nielsen: Kindle2 Usability Review - edw519
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/kindle-usability-review.html

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coffeemug
I just received Kindle 2 as a birthday present a few days ago. I wrote a
little review for some friends, here it is verbatum:

I know that some of you were considering getting it for yourselves, so let me
write a little review. I hope it'll be helpful. I don't think I was ever
driven to write a positive review for a product before. There are very few
things in a consumer electronics world that I love enough to do it. (The only
other product I can think of is the iPod touch, but I never wrote the review
for that because that would be superfluous).

First, let me note that I'm probably the last guy on the planet to spot
innovation. I wouldn't know innovation if it hit me in the face. When I first
heard about YouTube I thought it was a stupid idea (who would want to watch a
bunch of home videos?), I thought Facebook was stupid (I kind of still do, I
don't see too much utility), I've been to MySpace once (just to see what all
the fuss was about) and I still don't get Twitter. I love the iPod touch, but
when people talk about the tremendous potential of the platform they lose me -
there are thousands of applications in the app store and there isn't a single
one I'm really tempted to buy (or even download for free).

Keeping this preamble in mind, it took me about ten minutes of playing with
the Kindle to realize that it changes everything. One day it will devastate
the paper industry and the publishing industry, and will turn information
delivery on its head. One day Borders (along with dozens of entire industries
and probably tens of thousands of companies) will brace itself as it files for
Chapter 11, courtesy of Amazon Kindle.

Kindle's biggest benefit is also its downside - it is absolutely trivial to
buy content from Amazon. Want Ernest Hemingway? Click. Oscar Wilde? Click. New
York Times? Click. Wall St. Journal? Click. A shitty John Grisham knockoff?
Click. Kindle is the Google of published information, except that it isn't
free. You'll only see the credit card bill at the end of the month, and all of
that money will go to Amazon. If you own a Kindle, you will buy from them more
frequently that you could ever have imagined. (It's cheaper than regular
books, though. No more paper to cut, pages to print, delivery trucks to fuel,
and cardboard to package it all).

Now, there are many negative reviews online. Essentially, everything they say
is true. Kindle isn't perfect in the same way that iPod touch is - there are
interface quirks, hardware quirks, and service quirks that you can read about
elsewhere. However, complaining about them would be like complaining about the
Ford Model T - it comes in one color, it isn't powerful, or comfy, it's hard
to find gas stations, and dozens of other quirks people undoubtedly complained
about. But the Model T had one thing going for it - it was so much better than
a horse and carriage that all of the other inconveniences paled in
comparison[1].

The Kindle device and service contract will continue to evolve and improve,
the UI will get more comfortable, the electronic paper will get better, the
service will become more reasonable. When you use it you don't feel a sense of
perfection you do when you use the iPod. But what it offers today is so good,
all of the imperfections pale in comparison.

If you love reading and are thinking of getting it, do it and don't think
about it twice. It's an amazing device, it's easily worth its price, and when
you use it, although you won't feel a sense of perfection, you'll feel a sense
of innovation you've probably never felt before. Get it, and you will hold in
your hands a device that's similar in importance to the first printing press.
Except it's not clumsy like the first printing press - it's already very very
good.

I'll now go back to reading Ernest Hemingway stories.

[1] I am not comparing the feel of books to the feel of Kindle 2 here. I'm
comparing the purchasing experience.

------
jrockway
_For people who are just reading a book at home, however, print will do just
fine. For linear reading, Kindle offers no advantages and, for nonlinear
content, has many disadvantages — so why pay $359 more?_

I disagree here. Reading is only one aspect of the experience, the other
aspect is the convenience of purchasing books. I am really bad about buying
books. I don't quite understand why -- there are lots that I want to read. But
when it comes down to paying $30 and waiting a week for shipping (or paying
more for 2 day shipping), I put orders off indefinitely. This is bad, because
time I should spend reading books ends up as time spent watching TV or playing
video games.

I thought buying a Kindle might break this cycle, and it in fact did. I've had
a Kindle for under a week, and I've already finished two books. I don't think
I've even cared about TV all week. Making reading very convenient (and
pleasurable) was well worth the $350.

(I also travel a lot, and end up bringing two books on every trip so I don't
run out of reading material. That is a lot of unnecessary weight to carry
around, and I often finish both books fairly quickly anyway. The Kindle is
very light, and I can easily buy another book wherever I am. I have not been
on a trip with my Kindle yet, but I think I can say goodbye to boredom during
unexpected delays.)

Finally, the Kindle delivers an experience I have always wanted -- doing
something useful from the couch. I like my couch, but I could never get
comfortable with my computer there. I always end up wanting my nice keyboard
or 24" monitor, rather than my tiny eeepc (or larger Thinkpad). So I never
compute (or read) from the couch. The Kindle changes this; I can email it a
PDF (or buy a book from Amazon), and then read it from my couch. This has
multiple benefits; I can't get distracted by anything, since I'm physically
away from my computer and desk, and it's also really comfortable. (The Kindle
is lighter than the books I usually read, so there is less fatigue. Yeah,
maybe I am just really out of shape.)

There are only two drawbacks -- it is very hard to skim things, and the PDF
conversion doesn't handle diagrams or math formulae very well. This isn't a
deal-breaker, but there's no reason why it shouldn't work.

------
scott_s
The Kindle isn't attractive to me because I have an irrational, emotional
fondness for books. I like carrying around the current book I'm reading, I
like the THUMP! big books make when I put them on the lunch counter, I like
the progress of seeing my page marker march down the width, and I like looking
at the cover and I like the fact that the actual layout of each book I read is
different in subtle ways.

I know that in theory it would be cheaper to read books on a Kindle, but I
suspect I would read less. Buying a book is an investment. Because I've spent
money on it, I have the mentality that I should read it to justify the cost. I
think this mentality since it reinforces my commitment to read a book.

Finally, I like that I can treat books casually. I don't abuse my books, but I
make no attempt to coddle them - their value to me is being able to repeatedly
get at information, not their condition. I doubt a Kindle is as resilient as a
book.

~~~
dcminter
I have a Sony Reader which despite very similar flaws to those described by
Nielsen I rather like.

For me the killer feature is not cost, despite my own nasty physical-book
habit. No, the value is in being able to take a significant reading library
with me when I travel.

In addition to that, I like being able to download and read Gutenberg texts
that might not be available to me in physical form without a significant
delay.

------
scharlesworth
I have a Kindle 2, and a friend has the Kindle 1.

I think the scroller thingy on version 1 likely WAS better than the '5 way
controller' on the new one. It allows you to move about more quickly.

The pdf-> Amazon format is kind of hit and miss, which was disappointing. I
read a lot of whitepapers and so on, and it goofs up the format. In one case,
it took away all spaces between words.

The web interface is kind of lacking, but since it's under 'experimental', I
suppose we can cut them some slack. I do very much like the idea of the
WhisperNet, but would like it more if the web experience was better.

As far as reading goes, it is a win, as JN says. I forget I'm using a Kindle
and get absorbed in the material.

Overall I can't complain, it was a birthday present after all, but there are
some thing's I'd be aware of before buying.

------
sam_in_nyc
"Let's say you want to see The Wall St. Journal's articles on technology.
Where would you click in this screenshot?"

I agree. I, too, would click on the "Technology" text, expecting to be take to
a list of technology articles.

However, if you'd asked me: "Let's say you want to see the first article in
The Wall St. Journal's Technology section, where would you click?"

I would answer just the same: The technology text should take me to the first
article in the Technology section, not some parenthesized number.

I think there are situations in Usability where you have to chose the lesser
of two evils, and expect your users to adapt to what you've made. This would
be one example of that. I would expect that learning to click on the
parenthesized numbers to show an enumeration of articles would happen quite
quickly.

~~~
dsil
They chose the worse of two evils.

------
there
the newspaper navigation was the main reason i canceled my trial subscriptions
on my kindle 2. i don't want to read the newspaper front-to-back, or even by
an entire section at a time. i just want a simple table of contents for the
entire paper and to jump around.

the nice thing about the kindle is that they can quickly deliver improvements
to the reader's operating system over the air, so i would hope something like
this can be easily changed.

------
nategraves
Does anyone who has a Kindle or Kindle2 also have the Kindle application for
the iPhone? I wouldn't expect the app to be an adequate substitute, but I'm
interested to see how people would compare it.

~~~
dgallagher
I ordered a Kindle 2 after playing with the iPhone app. I haven't had it long
enough to really give the Kindle 2 a good review, but there are a few things
that stood out:

1) It's a lot nicer to read on than the iPhone screen. Larger, and easier on
the eyes.

2) Kindle UI is clunky here and there, but once you're reading a book it
disappears. Easier to turn pages on the Kindle than the iPhone (you get tired
of swiping all the time on iPhone)

3) I'm surprised how well the computer-voice readback feature sounds. Probably
useful in a car, or if you love audio-books.

4) It's a poor-mans computer for browsing the internet. The iPhone is miles
better than that.

5) Nice and light, good screen with light

6) I'm going to read a lot more books now, I can already tell. :)

. . .

===== DRM Issue =====

I did have an issue with one of my ebooks, "Hackers and Painters" no doubt,
having a DRM issue getting this message:

"The selected item could not be opened"

The message said to go to Amazon.com and I'd find an answer on my "Manage Your
Kindle" page. Nothing there, unfortunately. I emailed Amazon about the
problem, but solved it before I got a response...

===Troubleshooting===

I tried deleting and re-downloading the book, and de-registering and re-
registering the Kindle a couple of times with no luck.

===Solution===

Finally I figured it out. I plugged the Kindle into my computer, deleted the
Hackers and Painters ebook from the Documents folder on the Kindle (there were
four files for the ebook), manually downloaded the ebook from Amazon's "Manage
Your Kindle" page to my PC, and transferred the book onto the Kindle Documents
folder via USB connection.

Sure enough that worked.

I bought this book on my iPhone initially, along with another one. The other
worked fine, Hackers and Painters didn't. So my initial impression of the DRM
is it's flaky.

The other two eBooks I've purchased haven't given me any trouble.

