
10 reasons to buy a Kindle 2 and 10 reasons not to - vaksel
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/25/10-reasons-to-buy-a-kindle-2-and-10-reasons-not-to/
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garyrichardson
I don't know why I read these articles. It's so depressing to be in Canada.
I'm not allowed to watch Hulu, use an HD tivo or even try a kindle.

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scorpioxy
Yeah...try living on another continent.(i am from Lebanon)

I just ordered a Sony reader shipped from the US because i can't take it
anymore. Needless to say, shipping will cost me a fortune. It's not unusual to
pay more than the actual product price just for shipping.

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Herring
Any ideas on how to solve the mental map-making problem? I've been reading on
my computer for a long time. Sometimes the problem shows up, sometimes it
doesn't & I still can't tell why.

 _"1. It’s bad for research. I’m working on a book right now and I wanted to
use the Kindle for all of my research. Sadly, this is almost impossible. The
book is a physical object - you can move through it, skimming for notes and
important points - and there is something in our education that gives us a
sense of space inside a book. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but you
know how you can pick up a book and show someone what you’re looking for in a
few page turns? You know it was halfway through, maybe a third of the way down
the page, and it was near another set of words. The Kindle is not conducive to
that kind of mental map-making… yet."_

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mtrichardson
#7 isn't really a reason not to buy a Kindle - like most of the reasons not
to, they're just grievances, and #7 isn't even about the kindle, it's about
flight attendants.

(though, "You can’t explain that it’s epaper and uses no current. You just
can’t. It’s like explaining heaven to bears." is pretty awesome)

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blackguardx
I'm not sure where he was going with that one. It has a battery. It has a
microprocessor. It is an electronic device and should be turned off along with
Nintendo DS the 10 year old in the seat next to him is holding.

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jpwagner
He just needed an excuse to write: "It’s like explaining heaven to bears."

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paulsmith
I got one yesterday and can say I'm already reading better (i.e., more
thoroughly, more attentively) than I would at desktop or laptop. No zillions
of tabs, virtual desktops, tiled windows -- just you and your book or news
article. And no temptation really to tab around because refresh/redraw and the
nav is _just_ pokey enough to provide an incentive to stay on the page. Yes,
books and newspapers have been "full-screen" for hundreds of years, but even
then you can flip around, be distracted by adjacent stuff. That may be a bug
for some. For me and my ADD brain it's a feature.

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divia
_3\. The Kindle is flimsy. You’ll go through your day thinking you will break
your Kindle. You don’t fit that much screen on a thin device that is meant to
be thrown into a bag without a care and not risk cracking it. There will come
a day when you open your bag and see that your Kindle is dead, even in its
case. It’s not your fault. Say it with me: it’s not your fault._

True. I'm sure it's partly my fault because I'm not that careful with it, but
I've broken the screen on my Kindle (v1) twice in the year and few months I've
had it.

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davidw
They're no good for texts needing any kind of formatting:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=491664>

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throw_away
the new one does tables, but still no monospace.

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throw_away
correction: I have a doc with monospace (in a personal doc), but the purchased
computer books do not have the code samples in monospace for some reason.

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davidw
How about images/graphics/other support stuff?

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throw_away
they load much faster on the kindle 2. on K1, it used to suck to read
graphics-heavy docs (such as the pragmatic programmers beta iphone book),
because the page with the images would load more slowly than the text-only
pages. that is mostly fixed in this version. the images look better too,
thanks to the increased gray-scale support.

the screensaver images look great as always. it makes it seem as if image
handling is an under-utilized feature. a black and white graphical novel would
look spectacular on this thing.

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greyman
I want to ask: It is true that to put the .txt or .doc file into Kindle, it
will cost me 10 cents?

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Zev
It costs 10 cents to put it on the device wirelessly. You can still hook it up
via USB to put files on for free.

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Tichy
Kindle by the pool or beach - I would worry about it being stolen.

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kubrick
It's probably just me, but the 10 reasons to buy seemed to far outweigh the
reasons against. Someone I know is getting a Kindle2 soon, so I suppose I'll
get to judge for myself.

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TweedHeads
Every time I go on a trip I carry my laptop with me, good for reading ebooks
and surfing the web.

Sorry, no place for another gadget besides my cellphone.

And no, my eyes don't suffer after using my laptop for more than 10 hours non-
stop, been doing that for the last 20 years.

