My Amazon Kindle arrived today — thanks Julie! — and I’m eagerly putting it through its paces for an upcoming Gadgeteer review. Earlier this year I reviewed the Sony Reader and I’m looking forward to comparing the two. (The Kindle is definitely in the lead so far.)
I don’t want to spoil my review too much by talking about the Kindle here yet, but I do have a few first impressions.
Amazon Whispernet (the Kindle’s wireless service) actually works at my home, and quite well at that. Considering that it’s supposed to be based on Sprint EVDO, this surprises me greatly. I suspect it’s roaming on Verizon, unless Sprint lit up a tower close by very recently. If it’s roaming, I have to give Amazon props for allowing that — it makes the Kindle much more useful for those of us who live a bit outside the city.
A hardware tidbit: check the system/logs directory of the Kindle’s internal storage. Mine had a boot log showing that it uses a Linux 2.6 kernel on a 400 MHz PXA255 with 64MB of RAM, and EVDO module from AnyData. The software seems to be Java based with a plugin architecture so they can add more applications later, like the ones under the “Experimental” menu. Maybe someone will figure out how to hack it for user-installed apps, though I don’t have any more hope for that than I do for it on the iPhone.
I’m also pleased by the fact that the Kindle has native support for unencrypted PalmDocs. Although the Kindle’s native format for DRMed books is something new, its format for unencrypted documents is MobiPocket, which is essentially HTML wrapped in a PalmDoc container. Plain text PalmDocs work just fine too. Just make sure the file name extension is .prc, not .pdb — just go ahead and rename it, as the file format is the same inside. Other than plain text, those are the only formats it supports directly right now, but at least Amazon offers a conversion service which is free via email, or 10 cents if you email it a document to be sent wirelessly to the Kindle. Or, on Windows, you can use Mobipocket’s own conversion tools. From where I sit, this is far easier than dealing with the Sony because all of my books are on my Mac, and many of them are already PalmDocs.
And yes, this probably means that Pyrite Publisher is about to rise from the grave. I think this incarnation will be a Kindle-supporting e-book librarian though…
Earlier, I wrote about my search for the perfect mobile device, and why it seems like there might not be one. But what about a two-device solution? Palm seems to be taking a stab at that idea with their upcoming Foleo, and I’m looking forward to trying that. In the meantime, I’ve been playing with the Nokia 770, another interpretation of the “second device” concept.
The Nokia 770 is the first of two Nokia “Internet Tablets”. Its successor, the N800, is essentially the same device, but with improved hardware. The 770 has recently been appearing at various online vendors for under $150, while the N800 retails for $399, so I thought it would be an ideal way to try out Nokia’s concept without spending too much cash.
The Nokia 770 (and the N800, which shares the same basic design) is a horizontal form factor device with a large touch screen and connectivity through WiFi and Bluetooth. It runs a heavily customized version of Linux and a web browser based on Opera. In addition to the browser the software includes an e-mail client, Jabber and Google Talk instant messaging, and a streaming media player. Notably, the 770 and N800 do not come with PIM software — Nokia is positioning these products purely as Internet tools, not as PDAs. Of course, since the 770s OS is based on Linux, there is a lot of add-on software already available for it, and a convenient package management interface for downloading and installing it automatically.
But how does the 770 work as a “second device”? Better than I expected, although it still isn’t very close to perfect. The browser is far better than most phone browsers I’ve tried, at least in how well it renders the web as it is meant to be seen. It even supports Flash, although the 770 isn’t really fast enough for that, so I ended up turning it off. The e-mail and instant messaging support is seamless and automatic, although the e-mail client leaves a lot to be desired. (It’s no worse than the stock messaging app in Windows Mobile, I suppose.)
For my needs, one of the biggest things holding the 770 back from perfection is its lack of a truly usable input method. The only methods built in are a typical on-screen tappable keyboard (with word completion) and a decidedly sub-par handwriting recognizer that requires you to write in a fixed size box at the bottom of the screen. I haven’t been able to get the handwriting recognition to work well yet, and I doubt I ever will. So for a device with easy to set up email and IM, I find it hard to believe I could actually use it for either. The TyTns thumb keyboard is much more efficient, and the TyTn also has the Block Recognizer (a.k.a. Graffiti with the serial number filed off) which works well for me as a long-time Palm user. The Nokia tablets will work with a Bluetooth keyboard, but that’s yet another thing to carry around, not to mention being useless unless I’m seated.
So, in the end, the Nokia Internet Tablet is closer to what I need, but not quite close enough. I’m carrying it in my gear bag anyway, because it is occasionally useful for its browser. I’m guessing that the crispness of the display will make it a good e-book reader too, although I already have one of those which has been a permanent part of my kit for a while. The search continues… perhaps with a Foleo, next.
Looking through this site’s web statistics, I noticed that there are a few topics which are consistently (if infrequently) producing incoming search traffic. One of those is, apparently, profiles for the Nostromo N52 gaming controller, which I
reviewed here a long time ago. I don’t actually use the N52 any more; these days I use a Saitek Pro Gamer Command Unit instead. (You can read my review of the Saitek at The Gadgeteer.) But I thought I might as well post my N52 profiles here for anyone that might want to take a look at them — links and a description of my somewhat non-obvious control layout are after the jump.
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