Dating the Kindle

I have to start out by saying that I have had some limited experience with an Ipad and I do own (and love) an Iphone so I had some difficulties in my new Kindle relationship.

There are a few things that are very important to me in any relationship:

Looks- The first thing that struck me about the Kindle was its appearance. I would say that it's not exactly sexy. My initial reaction was that it looked a bit like a glorified graphing calculator. That being said, I enjoyed using this little guy alot more than I ever liked any of my calculators.

Physical Chemistry- It took me longer than it probably should have to realize that it was not going to respond to my touch. I learned this after spending at least a minute trying to expand the view with my fingertips. The fact that the Kindle is not touch operated was something that I had to continuously remind myself of throughout our time together- just an iphone habit I had to break.

Being on the Same Page- The single most frustrating aspect of my reading experience was the directional arrows for paging on each side of the device. Both the left and right sides of the Kindle have one small arrow button above a larger arrow button. Now, my brain kept telling me to turn from page 1 to 2 I should click the arrow button with my right hand and oppositely, to go back from page 2 to 1 I should hit a button on the other side with my left hand. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Both of the larger buttons progress the pages forward and both of the smaller buttons went backwards. Maybe I missed something here, but this seemed really alien to me. I often found myself on page 4 when I was expecting to be on page 2.

Corny relationship analogy aside, I did enjoy using a dedicated e-reader. The built in dictionary was probably my favorite tool. I know that in my general book reading, when I do not know a word it has to be pretty important for me to actually look up a definition, but using the Kindle, if my cursor was on the word, a definition appeared at the bottom of the page. I am willing to bet my vocabulary would benefit from this feature. I also liked being able to see the passages that were frequently highlighted by other readers and then have the ability to turn that feature on or off at my discretion.

Overall, I enjoyed using the Kindle. It definitely convinced me that I need to invest in an e-reader for my very own, but I have a suspicion that after a little more dating I will end up in a happy, healthy relationship with a Nook Color.