I Love my Kindle

Well maybe love is a little strong. But the Kindle 2 (www.amazon.com/kindle) has been a lifesaver for a road warrior who loves (yes loves) to read. But I am surprised at the other benefits this little device has provided over the last 5 months, other than getting me to purchase more books on Amazon over the last several months than in the previous entire year.

Invariably when leaving for the longest trips I am in the middle of a large heavy book. Halfway through the trip, the book is done and another is started. I can’t just leave a book somewhere, so it gets carted around taking up precious space and weighing down bags which get heavier and heavier as the trip wears on.

It’s not that the Kindle couldn’t be improved, yes there are a couple of little annoyances including poor image quality, not being able to easily find a glossary in the back of a book you are reading, not being able to go chapter to chapter easily, etc. but overall. It is a great device. The seamless connection to the Amazon store is especially nicely done.

But more and more I am finding that the Kindle isn’t just about being a great light, personal library of books which is great on a trip. It is becoming more and more about all the other reading which used to get saved up and gone through while traveling. For years I have cut out newspaper and magazine articles which look interesting but just not interesting enough to read, right now. All of these are put into a file which I would read while on planes, trains, hotel rooms or while eating a meal alone. However, more and more now these interesting articles are blog entries, or other online postings. But just like magazines and newspapers, I don’t always have time to read these “right now”. I am experimenting with ways of clipping these into little online libraries so when there is time I can get to a single location and read over everything I have marked. But I still don’t have a great system for doing that.

Well the Kindle pretty much solves this problem. It also solves the issue of my not wanting to spend any additional time in front of my computer other than what I am already spending. One thing about being in front of the computer at home is that my family assumes I am working and they are reluctant to talk to me. This is not the case while reading the newspaper or a book, but it happens when I am sitting in front of the computer. Sometimes this is just fine, but really, when at home, I shouldn’t put up any more barriers to talking with family than I already do!

How does the Kindle help solve these problems? When an interesting article appears somewhere, I print it to a PDF using a free PDF print driver, or copy it to a Word document and save it to a directory called “Upload to Kindle”. This way I can surf the web and find a number of articles pretty quickly and just save, save, save. I do this for several days and collect a number of articles or posts. When there are about a dozen or so I attach them to an e-mail and send them to [myname]@free.kindle.com

In just a couple of minutes Amazon sends a return message with the files all converted to Kindle format and it is easy to save them to the Documents directory on the Kindle. They are now ready to be read any time. Additionally once they are uploaded I move the PDF or Word files to another directory called “Already Uploaded” in case one is so good I want to send it to a colleague. This empties out the “Upload to Kindle” directory so there is never any confusion as to what was uploaded.

Also unlike purchased books, none of these articles are stored by Amazon so keeping them on the computer is a simple way of backing them up and I don’t feel strange about deleting them off the Kindle once they are read.

The other nice thing about the Kindle is the Clippings File. There are a lot of great articles our there but the fact is many times I really only want to remember a single section or a couple of ideas or links. Do you really need to keep the entire article for that? No, not with the Kindle. Just highlight the interesting section and the Kindle puts that selection into the Clippings File and it stays there even when you delete the original article!

You can also copy this clipping file to your computer where you can open it in Word or a text editor in order to navigate any links you may have clipped or send off information to anyone else.

I know it is possible to subscribe to blogs and even to surf the net with the Kindle. But I am cheap and don’t feel like paying to read blogs. It is cheaper, quicker and easier to use the computer to surf and it is easy to download only the articles which look interesting.

So now instead of carrying multiple books and loads of clipped paper articles, everything is all in one simple package. Plus the benefit of not spending as much time on the computer and getting at least at little more talk time with the family.