I bought myself a Kindle a week ago. This was my second attempt to enter the world of digital reading. I had originally bought a BeBook One, mainly because at the time I couldn't buy a Kindle (wasn't available outside of the US) and the BeBook supported most ebook format. Things were good with it until I actually tried to read a book. I got about 10 pages into The Ghost Brigades before I gave up. Something I hadn't realised would be a problem ended up making it impossible to enjoy the reading experience. The page refresh speed.
Every time I turned the page, my flow was broken. The BeBook just wasn't fast enough. My eyesight isn't great either, so I couldn't read the whole page fit (on page based formats like PDF) on the 6" display - I needed to increase the font size, which meant I increased the number of page turns and the frequency at which I'd turn the page. Meaning my flow was broken quite often. The buttons were also unresponsive at times, which meant I'd occasionally think it hadn't registered pressing next page and press it again. It was clear the BeBook just wasn't going to suit me at all.
Unfortunately I'm fairly stubborn, so while I gave up trying to read on it, I didn't give up assuming I would eventually. That's the reason I have had The Ghost Brigades listed as the book I'm currently reading for months now. When I gave up, I just gave up reading. Sure, I read a few technical books since then, but my fiction reading just stopped. The Ghost Brigades was at the top of my reading list and I was reading it on the BeBook, I just wasn't using the BeBook. Stupid, I know. I could have just grabbed the paperback copy I had, but I was stubborn. At the time it wasn't clear why I wasn't using the BeBook. I just knew that using it frustrated me. It wasn't until recently that I managed to isolate the issue.
My plan more recently was to buy an iPad. Paul got one and I had a look at the iBooks application and Stanza. It seemed like that was the holy grail. Big screen, fast page turning and a book store. My biggest complaints were the backlit glossy screen, and price. I was concerned that I'd end up straining my eyes reading on a backlit screen and it would suck to use on a beach somewhere. I couldn't justify the price for the few uses I could find for an iPad even if it became my primary reading device (I use my iPod Touch/iPhone constantly for web browsing too, so a bigger version of those would have been good). I still wanted an eInk screen. I loved the concept, but it just seemed like the technology wasn't there yet.
Just over a week ago, Amazon sent me an email notification telling me they'd dropped the price on the 6" Kindle 2. I did some research and it seemed the refresh rate on the screen was much faster on the Kindle 2 and the new price made it less risky on the off chance it didn't solve the problems I had with eInk in the past. It was backed by a book store even though I can't use it directly on the device in the Isle of Man (no coverage for the free 3G) but I'd at least be able to use it when travelling. So I figured I'd give it a shot.
I'm ecstatic. It really is fantastic. Doing a side by side comparison, it's at least twice as fast as the BeBook. I can turn the page on the Kindle twice in the time it takes the BeBook to turn the page once. It's fast enough that it doesn't break my flow, by the time my eyes have returned to the top of the page, it has basically refreshed. I did have to re-buy quite a few ebooks though. You really want to get the books in Kindle/Mobi format - the PDF support sucks. You can't change the font size on a PDF. The only way to make it bigger is to change the screen orientation. I could have just converted them to mobi format, but I lost some formatting when I tried that and it was just easier to hit buy again rather than screw around converting/fixing each book. I did have to convert a few I couldn't find to buy again on Amazon.com though.
I started reading The Ghost Brigades on Thursday night, and finished it up this morning (Sunday). I'm incredibly happy with the purchase, even if some of that is just the excitement to be reading fiction again :) There was parity between the experience of reading an actual book without some of the annoyances I had with the bulkier physical books. Thoroughly enjoyable book too. Now we just need to solve some of the problems with the ebook ecosystem. The format should be standardised (we should have an mp3 format of ebooks), and the territorial bullshit and DRM can die - too many books aren't available in Europe/UK. Availability is one of the major reasons books should be digital.