Kindle

I received a Kindle for Christmas (3G, WiFi only). I've read several E-books both on my laptop and Palm TX, but I was never happy with having to be rushed because the battery is going to be dead in a couple of hours. And, of course, I didn't have much battery left to do other things besides read. Plus, it's hard to read for a long period of time with the back lit screen shining in your face through fuzzy fonts.

The first time I saw a Kindle in the store, I thought it was a dummy model. The display looked like it was a paper overlay with the text and images on the surface, instead if behind it. I liked the idea of having a long enough battery life to not have to worry about it, but they were expensive and only had a couple GB of memory (though that probably would have been more than enough).

The latest version is smaller, lighter, with twice the memory, better contrast, longer battery life, and cheaper. Plus it's as easy to hold as a paperback for long periods of time. OK... so I put it on my Christmas list.

So far, I like it. For reading, black and white is just fine, thank you. And images render nicely in black and white, so I'm more than happy to have the e-paper display than a back lit LCD. It's nice to just leave it on, have it go to screen save, and pick it up days later, reading for hours on end without hardly making a dent in the battery charge.

The operating system, such as it is, is pretty primitive, and though it can browse the web in a pinch and does a decent enough job for casual use, you wouldn't want to surf the web much with it. But for just reading books, it's perfect. If I want to do something else, I'll drag out the laptop.