26.04.2014
I haven't written a post in more than two weeks. The new blog design took a lot of time. I have promised to write a review of Kindle Paperwhite. I am sorry that I am so late with publishing it. I am not an expert when it comes to e-readers. I've only owned Kindles and I don't know enough to make a comparison with other brands. I am just sharing my personal experience.
A lot of people say that they prefer to hold a real book in their hands instead of an e-reader. I am not one of them. I am totally in love with my Kindle. I like the fact that I don't own books that take space in my room and collect dust. I haven't settled down in a place I can call my home yet so I move quite often and the e-reader makes moving easier. I think that it is the perfect solution for a young person and especially for students. I hate heavy hardcover books, Kindle is so light. I photographed it next to "The host" by Stephenie Meyer because I can't even hold this book in my hands. Reading it is just a torture.
My e-reader at the moment is the second generation Kindle Paperwhite, the model that was introduced in 2013. The European Amazon websites don't deliver it to Bulgaria, I could only order it from the US site. You can buy Kindle from a few distributors though. I bought mine from Technomarket. The next problem was finding a cover for it, because Amazon does not ship the orginal cover to my country too. Fortunately other brands do Kindle covers too. I ended up purchasing this one from the UK Amazon site. I am quite happy with it.
The reason I wanted to replace my old Kindle with the new Paperwhite was the fact that the new model creates the illusion of reading white paper and the screen has a better contrast. My eyes are very sensitive and when I was reading in the evenings I could feel my eyes straining. Reading on the old Kindle models is like reading a newspaper paper. The Paperwhite screen can glow and this creates the illusion of white paper. When you read at night when the lighting is not that great this function is quite handy because it makes reading easier on the eyes.
Amazon have integrated Goodreads in the new Kindle model, you can become my friend here. You won't be able to see the Goodreads icon the first time you power your device, the integration comes as an update. There is a build-in dictionary in the e-reader, this is great if you read books in English, you just click on the word and you immediately see its meaning. You can check words in Wikipedia too. There is an experimental browser, but of course surfing the Internet via e-reader is not that attractive.
Not too long ago Amazon made possible the function Send to Kindle. You just have to install an add-on on your Chrome or Firefox browser and you can send every article from the Internet to your Kindle, the text is formatted for the e-reader. This function is competitive to Instapaper and Pocket. Send to Kindle is extremely helpful if you have to read some documentation for work on the Internet, which is an issue for most of the people.
The main difference between the e-readers on the market is the formats that they support. My advice for pople who are considering an e-reader is to decide based on the formats of the books they plan to get. Kindle does not support popular formats like epub and pdf. Another thing you should take into consideration is the language you plan to read in. The books on my Kindle are all in English. Other e-readers like Kobo are better for reading in other languages. There are a number of programs like Callibre that let you convert the format of the book, but of course it is better to choose an e-reader that suits your needs.
The only problem that I've had with my Kindle Paperwhite is that its screen froze once. I did what Amazon advice you to do in this case - I pressed the power button for a few seconds and the device was fixed. Kindle Paperwhite is quite small and I can hold it in one hand. You have the abilities to change and enlarge the font and the orientation of the screen. I definitely recommend Kindle Paperwhite.
