What can I add to what’s been said by the 7,081 reviewers before me? Three things: first, why I almost didn’t buy a Kindle; second, some less heralded Kindle features; and third, whether or not I regularly use Kindle to read books.

I read a large number of reviews, blogs, and critical commentaries. Despite their overall more or less high evaluations, I focused on a few comments that concerned me. Chief among them were:

**I realized I’d been reading only the one-star and two-star reviews. I started reading the four- and five-star reviews. Many contained useful, often rumor dispelling information.

**”You can’t share a Kindle book.” Untrue. You can have up to six Kindles sharing all the books on your account. My wife and I are currently reading the same copy of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol independently using our two Kindles. Kindle even keeps track of our individual places in the book.

**I was concerned by Amazon’s snatching the 1984 and other Orwell novels from customer Kindles. What I didn’t know is Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos apologized, promised not to act so precipitously in the future, and returned the novels with their annotation files (this document is all over the web, search for `Bezos apology’). The apology doesn’t make up for the rash act and his promise doesn’t cover all future issues. But I believe Amazon will ride the rocky road of evolving e-book law and practice with the rest of us. Amazon seem to understand their and our interests in this area are much the same.

**For some reason, I thought moving my own documents to Kindle was limited and cost money. It is nearly unlimited and you can do it for free if the 10-cent Amazon fee bothers you.

**From my reading I became convinced Amazon had withdrawn text-to-speech under pressure from the Authors Guild. They haven’t. They have permitted authors and publishers to restrict the feature for their publications. That lets the marketplace decide the matter. Does an author want to lose sales by eliminating text-to-speech for their book to please the Guild?

I found simply backing up Kindle files to one’s computer greatly mitigates many what-if/might-be fears. Such information plus taking just a bit of salt while reading complaints (did the screen crack when it was dropped just 5″? maybe, but mine didn’t) made me comfortable enough to order a Kindle.

Descriptions of some of the Kindle 2 how-to books provide good lists of Kindle’s undocumented or less-advertized features: see the mobi book Kindle Shortcuts, Hidden Features, Kindle-Friendly Websites, Free eBooks

http://comparati.com/1125-Amazon-Kindle-vs-Sony-Reader

But… The major differentiators are (and these are very big deals):

1) The Kindle has EV-DO internet.

2) The Kindle has 4x the titles to choose from.

You just can’t argue with those two facts. That’s why the Sony Reader was a dud and the Kindle will pave the way for success in this market.

“Why is the new Kindle eBook reader from Amazon and not Apple?”
http://counternotions.com/2007/11/19/kindle-vs-iphone/

Not until the price reaches $100, the device has a colour screen and can read a variety of non-DRMed formats like Palm, textfiles and PDFs.

This is a single-use (and ugly) device that may only marginally appeal to affluent travellers. Even then they may balk at carrying one *more* piece of hardware.

Not if the e-books still cost as much or more than a paper version of the books, and on top of that you have to pay $400 for a reader to read them.

Not for $400 it isn’t. If I wanted to surf the web and such, I’d buy a better cell phone. The Sony reader is far from perfect, but I’ll likely get one later this year.