Academic

THE KINDLE DX starts shipping tomorrow, which reminds me that I promised some thoughts on travel wit?

By Glenn Reynolds

THE KINDLE DX starts shipping tomorrow, which reminds me that I promised some thoughts on travel with my regular-sized Kindle. Overall, I’m quite happy. It’s as readable as a paperback book, but more portable. Battery life is good — I took the (quite compact) charger with me, but it probably would have lasted the trip without it. It saves a lot of weight on travel, since I usually pack at least 2 or 3 fat paperbacks, and often more. With the Kindle you can take a lot more along, without a weight penalty.

Downsides: You have to turn it off when the airplane is taking off or landing, which sucks. I am, overall, disappointed with the selection of available books — it sounds like there are a lot, but when you go looking for specific things you discover that there are still a lot of books that aren’t available on the Kindle. It’s expensive — drop a paperback in the water and you’ve ruined a $6.99 book. Drop the Kindle and you’ve ruined a much more expensive gadget. That, in turn, makes me just a little bit less likely to take it along in iffy situations. And the Amazon “Whisper Net” wireless service doesn’t work outside the United States.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on June 10, 2009 (boomark / email).