Last night I bought China Mievelle’s Perdido Street Station from Amazon.com to read on my Kindle. About an hour later at 8pm – so plenty of time I think – I tried to download it. It took me about 40 minutes of trying, including turning on/off and rebooting as suggested. Amazon.com showed that the book was ready to download. It appears it couldn’t connect to Whispernet.

I wonder if the Whispernet contract Amazon has is bandwidth limited and as more Aussies have signed up we’ll see this sort of delay at peak times as normal. It is additionally annoying as I had to turn Wirless On to connect so chewed up the battery which was low and I had to get out of bed and recharge it – grumble, grumble, grumble.

Maybe it was just a one-off glitch but would be annoying if becomes common. Any thoughts?

Even if I buy an iPad, and I probably will eventually, I will still use my Kindle for reading books.

Having had my Kindle now for about 7mths I can say I like it better than when I started, especially now the choice of e-books has increased dramatically – largely as a result of Australian publishers reacting to the e-book demand and getting e-publishing agreements in place. One of the the things I most like about it is the size – it’s the size of a small penguin classic, one with 100 pages. It is easy to read anywhere but particularly in bed. About the only negative aspect, for me, is having to shine a reading light directly onto the page as, despite what a lot of non-users think, it is not backlit. I heard about the problem of page flicker from a non-user who described it (based on another user’s description) as like it was “flashing” at you as the page changes. For me it’s nothing of the sort and I barely notice it. I guess some people’s eyes/brains are wired differently and it may be a problem. Probably best to borrow one first and try it out.

When I read Wolf Hall it came into it’s own. You can either buy WH as a 1000 page normal print book and damage your wrists holding it up or a 350pp book with tiny print and damage your eyesight. On the Kindle you can vary the font size depending on the time of day. Even though I wear reading specs my eyes appreciate the larger font late at night or in poorer light. I know this would also apply to other e-book readers and it’s probably the main reason I prefer e-books over paper ones.

I also like the access to Wikipedia. I used it recently to look up a mathematics theorem that was mentioned in one of the books. In John Banville’s The Untouchable there were about 100 archaic words that I didn’t know the meaning of and the instant dictionary (just move the cursor in front of the word and its definition appears at the bottom of the page) made it quite enjoyable to come across them. Possibly a feature that most Kindle users have yet to make much use of.

Even if I buy an iPad, and I probably will eventually, I will still use my Kindle for reading books.