Kindle: good for reading, not for anything else

But then, it doesn't need to be.

When I first tried out the Kindle, a few things made for a jarring introduction:
(1) the screen flashes black-with-white-text when you turn the page, (2) the large button on the left-hand side turns forward one page (sorry, left-handed folks, this is just too weird), (3) you can't adjust the zoom/amount of text per screen (or, I couldn't easily figure out how to do so) and (4) the square controller is small and it's far too easy to hit "Back" instead.

Once I got past these peccadilloes, though, the Kindle was a surprisingly enjoyable experience. The varied screensavers of authors and illustrations warmed my literary heart, the lack of backlight was a nice change, and it's incredibly light and sturdy. In fact, in one way it's actually superior to a print book -- I could read it while walking to and from the Metro. (Travel at your own risk.)

I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and found myself able to focus on the story and mostly forget that I was reading it on the Kindle. Trying to navigate to another book, do anything interactive ("Tweet that you have finished this book"? "Rate this book?"), or find any features or settings (see zoom issues above) was considerably more difficult, or at least not immediately intuitive. I'm not particularly tech-savvy, but it can't be too complicated - can it? (Help me out here, Kindle users.) Bottom line, though: I really enjoyed the Kindle as a device for reading.

Who needs technology? Just give me a book - electronic or otherwise.

2 cool! The iPad 2

Pros: The color display is sharp, impressive, and lends itself well to e-reading. Apps like Morris (an interactive picture book with moving pictures and audio) and T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland (which includes analysis and commentary, images of original drafts, readings of selected sections, etc.) show how much the iPad's features can enhance the reading experience. I didn't have any trouble with the backlit screen, but found the slight glare from a lamp faintly annoying. iBooks, Apple's e-reading app, was easy to use; the shelves were visually a nice way to organize content, and I like that iBooks can view and store PDFs. In-text features like the dictionary, bookmarking and highlighting were helpful, too (though how to "un-highlight"?). Most importantly, being able to access a class syllabus, Wikipedia, or anything on the web while reading was hugely useful. When compared to the black-and-white Kindle, for example, a multitasking color tablet seems like a no-brainer.

Cons: The iPad gets heavy quickly if simply held in your hand. Although I used it only on the Metro to and from work, and for a few hours one evening, the battery was down to 70-75% after relatively little use. It's also quite expensive, even for all of the iPad's capabilities. A small quibble: when viewing PDFs (though the ability to do so is nice), a reader can't continuously scroll down. This means that, unless the page is at full-screen zoom (often rendering the text illegible), you must scroll down, then flip sideways to continue reading. And a final note: different orientations resulting in different layouts, I found that being unable to picture the position of text on the page made it more difficult to recall the content, for some reason.

Bottom Line: Though a staunch fan of print, I'd definitely purchase an iPad 2... if I had $500 lying around.