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If
you are a real book lover, the Kindle Touch might just end up being one
of your best friends.
Of all the ereaders and tablet PCs available, the Touch is really
optimised for reading books. The display is easy on the eyes, even in
direct sunlight. The battery holds a charge many times longer than
ereaders and tablets with color screens. The Kindle people say you
could go up to two months without needing to charge the battery.
The experience of reading a book on the touch in very zen-like. There's
nothing flashy to distract you... there's just you and your story. You
really can curl up with a good book and imerse yourself into the story
with the Touch.
While there are other features, they don't tempt you to "hey, check
you're email" or "it's been four minutes since you checked what KK is
doing (you know, Kim Kardashian). No, just relax and enjoy a good read.
One thing that surprised me is that you can't connect the Touch to your
computer with the supplied USB cable and connect to the Kindle store
via the internet. It's assumed you are going to use wi-fi. However, if
you don't have wi-fi in your home, there's a good free
program called Connectify which turns a laptop into a wi-fi hotspot.
Or, of course, you could take your Kindle to a place where there's
wireless internet.
It's nice to be able to download samples of books you're interested
in. You can download lots of them free, and peruse them at your
leisure.
Just for fun, I connected the Touch to an audiophile stereo system. It
was actually cumbersome, because I had to find an MP3 song; what I have
seemed to all be iTunes format (.aac). But the experience was pretty
awesome in the sense that the Kindle is completely silent. I usually
use a laptop which has the noise of the fan and hard drive in the
background. It's a little eerie to have excellent sound coming through
the stereo, originating from this silent ereader. It actually wouldn't
be practical or enjoyable to do this for most people, but I think the
idea has potential as ereaders improve over time, and can handle more
file formats.
There's a web browser included, but it should only be considered for
use when you really need web access and there's no other available
access.
The Touch is a lot of fun to use. It's something that is perfect for
times when like waiting in the doctor's office or have a few extra
minutes to kill.
If
you want web browsing and game playing, there are probably better
choices. If you are a true book lover, you'll probably really like the
Touch. At about a hundred bucks, it's a deal that is pretty hard to
beat.
Jan.
2012
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