I gave in. I bought myself a Kindle for my 22nd birthday. Other than joining the bandwagon of e-Reader owners, I thought it made a nice birthday gift to myself. And now, I am completely hooked.
Believe it or not, it is THAT tiny. The “graphite” color differentiates the latest generation from the older versions and iPods. (Am I the only one who remembers those first generation white iPods?) And in the green leather cover that resembles Kate Spade wallets, my Kindle now permanently resides in my bag.
Despite the number of companies that make e-Readers – Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc. – I went with Amazon because of its name. After all, Amazon came up with an e-Reader first, and Kindle is most well-known.
Kindle also in a way saved Amazon. Due to the rise of the popularity of online shopping, new websites, such as Zappos and Overstock, quickly became competitors of Amazon. Subsequently, Amazon releasing Kindle gave it a new boost.
All in all, Kindle as a gadget, I LOVE.
I do wish, however, Kindle had more features similar to those of iPads. Honestly, $500 for an iPad did not quite fit my budget. In the end, I am still a poor college student – also another reason why I settled for a Kindle. But sometimes I want to be able to surf the web without delay or play those awesome zombie games.
Nonetheless, a few reasons why my Kindle experience has been superb so far:
I can download select books for free. Who doesn’t love FREE things? In the past, I have spent way too much money on books – novels I want to read, required readings for classes, let alone TEXTBOOKS. Yikes. I am still quite bitter about dropping $100 on my statistics textbook. (When am I ever going to need this Elementary Stats book down the road?) Thanks to Kindle, I have acquired classics, including Pride and Prejudice, and historic novels for free.
Easy-read format news blogs for only $1.99 per month. I subscribed to the New York Times blog updates via Kindle, which automatically downloads the latest headlines and full-length articles. I am basically reading the hard-copy version of the Times on Kindle for significantly cheaper than annual subscription fee.
Word games, one of the best ways to kill time or procrastinate. Alright, fine, not as cool as slicing fruits or killing zombies on fancy iPads or iPhones, but Word Shuffle can still keep you occupied for hours. Finding words… entertaining!
![]( "cover")
Yoojin Cho 