I had a lot of pre-purchased downloads and they populated my Kindle, her name is Trixie, effortlessly and seamlessly. I couldn’t even keep track as new items became available all the time. Of course, this will vary based on your location.

So, in minutes I had a months if not a year of reading. I had old favorites, and some classics that we’re told we should read, samples that had caught my eye, and lots of new choices — and I held them all in my hand. A banquet of choices, with a veritable never ending feast when I need more.

I chose to read the New York Times first, and loved the experience. The pictures were crisp and clear, and it was a quick learning curve to navigate between pages, articles, and sections. I found myself reading the articles while talking heads on TV were referencing them, and it was delivered to me effortlessly.

It’s very intuitive — anybody who spends time with gadgets and tech stuff will get this with only a couple missteps, and a muttered, “Doh.” I believe that even the less tech savvy will catch on pretty quickly, and I can imagine this as a boon for older people with strong ties to reading, and I would suggest the younger generation gives them access to see if it’s a device that will help them.

I know I need to go to the optometrist, but the Kindle will aide and abet me in avoiding that for a while — the page is easy to read, the font size is easy to change, and my eyes sail across the words, my finger hits next page without me giving it thought.

The previous page is a little difficult to access considering the way I hold it, and I do tend to move ahead, think “wait, what?” and need to go back a page, but that’s probably more about my personal style than a true flaw.

My hands are small, so the kindle does not on it’s own fit in my hand securely, but the Cole Haan cover that I have, or any appropriate cover, provides something to hold and allows for greater comfort, making it an even more comfortable hold than a novel.

The dictionary function is great — I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I do like to look up unfamiliar words, and now that’s a breeze. I read a New York Times article set in Tanzania, and I wondered exactly where that was — I mean, I knew Africa, but wanted more specifics — and I used the dictionary function to give me enough of an answer and satisfy my curiosity enough to move on.

As I read, the light shifted in the room. I know backlighting was important for people, but it seems like it would make the easy-to-read text less easy to read. Instead I attached the light purchased just for the purpose, and it worked beautifully and allowed the Kindle to do it’s job as a reader with the goal of displaying pages with the grace and practicality of a print book.

I’ve only had it for hours, and I’m hooked. Please note I didn’t have a K1, because I was a skeptic. I was like a lot of people — I liked technology, but books were a separate and sacred thing. So, since Amazon was a habit for me, I had to see the constant reminders of an item I didn’t feel I needed or wanted.

But I was working, nay, abusing my Amazon Prime to the point that I’d run out of room — and when it occurred to be that while 2 day shipping was fast, it wasn’t the same as immediate.

I’d been a reader of ebooks for a while, but on my laptop the stories compete with my constant obsessive-compulsive need to check emails (which I’m fighting doing even as I type this) and checking blogs, and surfing…

A Kindle elevates reader back to where it belongs – as a thing to be celebrated and not some trivial thing that has to share space with everything else on your laptop. You like blogs? Kindle will deliver them to you when there’s something new. Other than that, you can settle in and just focus on stories and on papers stripped down to what matters most.

Highly Recommended.

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4/11/2009 — Edited to add new comments after being a Kindle user for a while:

There’s no shame in someone deciding it isn’t for them. We all can look at one another’s purchases and come to the conclusion that other people waste a lot of money, because we all have different priorities. The thing that is a must have for you might be nowhere on my radar. The thing I want might make you shrug. We all get to spend our disposable income the way we would like.

I don’t believe there has been a day that’s gone by since I’ve received my Kindle that I haven’t used it and been glad to have it. I read longer, I read more, I read a wider variety. With print books, I was always losing them. They didn’t go far — under a couch, under a bed — but out of sight, out of mind. I would remember the book and not feel like going looking when I could go to the bookshelves. Rinse and repeat. By the time I found the book, I’d forgotten what had happened so far or was not in the mood to read at that moment. There were a lot of semi-read books never getting finished.

1 Kindle, tons of books.

Now, all I have to do is keep track of one expensive advice that I’m naturally inclined to protect. I can have multiple books going at once and switch easily depending on my mood. And the books get completely read, because they’re always there when I need them and ready to open to the last “page” I’d read. That convenience is huge.

I’m not claiming it saves me money. I know I find a lot of great bargains, of course, but that convenience makes book buying so easy and tempting. Someone mentions a book, I have it in rapid order, ready to read. I just finished a book by an author, I can read another one in no time. Even with Prime I would order and maybe some of the interest in the writer would have waned by the time it arrived so the book hit the TB(maybe)R shelf. Here’s one: I subscribe to the NYT on my Kindle, and they are famous for their book reviews — the only way it could be easier would be to actually link to the store.

I’m not claiming it doesn’t save me money either though — there are those bargains and the cost of all the aforementioned never finished books. And the gas. I also live pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There is a small bookstore and a used bookstore in my town, and then an hour’s drive to Target. A “real” bookstore would be another half an hour. To be in an area with a choice of bookstores, 4 hours.

Even ordering print books from Amazon isn’t doing mother nature any favors, right?

While I understand it’s not for everybody and if it feels like a waste, it’s not for you. But it was such a great purchase and so worth it to me, that I recently bought my husband his own as a present. He’s never been a major reader, but now he’s reading every night and discussing books with me. Sorta huge!

In a fire, I save my grandmother, my pets, my kindle, and then the spouse! (I kid, I kid! The Kindle is small and I could tuck in somewhere, waistband, bra… so hubby can move up in line a little ::grin::)

It was partly an experiment to see if I could do EVERYTHING on the ipod. I wanted to record, edit, upload, and ping itunes all from the ipod.

Turns out that I could, except that poddio doesn’t export as mp3, and when I uploaded wav files, people were having trouble downloading and listening to them. So I transferred to my netbook and uploaded from there. Experiment failed in that regard, but the podcast was still fun.