Hey everyone, it's a sunny day in Budapest and today I want to show you my Amazon Kindle. So basically this is $139 on Amazon. I got one that was $50 more because it has 3G and I'll explain that in a second. Now the thing is I don't actually like reading books so much - the physical book side of it. I really like reading. I like processing information, but the physical book just hasn't worked for me so well. So this is why I was very happy to invest in this. Basically you might associate it with a computer - an iPad or maybe a laptop, but it's very different because this uses what's called eInk technology. So even though I'm actually in (the) middle of the sun here, it's shining right at it, you can read the screen very well. You can't do this, I mean if I show you very quickly my phone you can see that's very difficult to actually see the screen in the sun. So you can read outside which you can't do with most electronic devices. That's great. And it's very, very light. And another thing because it's got no back light, the back light from a computer screen might actually hurt your eyes after a while. So this is, the eInk technology actually prints it, more or less like a book, it prints it on the screen and it will stay there. It's not using any battery power right now. It stays on the screen until you press "next". So that's why I really thought about getting.. investing in this. And the battery lasts for a month. So you do not need to recharge it until after using it for a month, as long as you have the Wifi off.
Ok, so just showing you very quickly here. I've got different categories and I've got several books in each of these categories. And these are actually books that I downloaded. There are PDFs or epubs that I've converted. And I've been very much enjoying myself reading these books. And here I've actually got today's newspapers. I've got - I'll explain in the links after the video. I've got a way to read today's news articles from lots of books. I can actually show you. For example, we go down to "le monde", the French book and when that opens up you can see it has a picture and the news article. This is about sport. So I very much enjoy reading that everyday.
Okay, so next thing I want to show you is the fact that it's from Amazon means that obviously you can buy the books from Amazon to read on it. For the whole time I've had it I have not spent any money on books. Everything I've put on it so far has been free. Because on the internet there's a lot of free information in PDF form and in ebook form.
So I'll show you one PDF for example. I'm currently studying Hungarian. So I've got a PDF of the grammar book. So you can see the PDF actually goes on the screen. It's not very easy to read. So, just with PDFs you are better rotating the screen and you can see that's pretty easy to follow. I find that with the native books you get off Amazon, which you can get for free I'll show you in a second, and converted epubs, you don't .. you can read it portrait, but you have to read it landscape if it's a PDF book. So most of my books are PDFs so I actually read it most of the time like this.
Let's see what I'm going to talk about next... (transcribed up to 3:42)
Okay and then on top of that, you can just transfer them by plugging the usb in and dragging them over, so it's very simple. You don't need any applications like iTunes or something.
Okay, now, on Amazon itself, you've got actually well over half a million books that you can read, and buy of course, but what I've been enjoying more than buying the books - since I haven't done that yet - is browsing the books, so I'll actually show you right now. Let's say I wanted to read the Diving Comedy in Spanish. So you would just - it doesn't matter where you are - if you're on the home screen or in a book - you type in Divine Comedy - so <Spanish> - and search for that in the store and now it's using the 3G. The cheaper version - you can do this when you have wireless access. And it shows you a selection of the different books, so you can go down, select a book if you want to check it out, and what I really like about this is that you can read the first chapter of nearly all the books that are in the Kindle store, so instead of clicking buy, you click try a sample. And right there and then it'll download the sample and you can read through the first chapter. So it's doing that - and I'll actually show you immediately so you know it did work. You go to your home screen and there it is - <Spanish>. Click on it, and there it is. And you'll be happy to hear that if you're reading in other languages, all the accents - the <Spanish> in Spanish and even symbols. I was just trying - I'll show you - I got another book for free - the first - the preview - just to see what some kanji in Japanese looks like, and that comes through okay, so that's pretty good. So I actually use the Amazon store to just browse books without even having to buy them.
(transcribed up to 5:52)
Ahm, okay so I've actually got the more expensive 3G version because I if you're not traveling, you don't really need this just wait till you get till Wifi to get your stuff. However, as a traveler I find this very useful cuz it's international, you've got over 100 countries, where you have unlimited Internet access and you don't have to set up anything in advance. In October I'll be traveling through lots of countries. So I've just arrived, check my e-mail, the way I see it I'm paying the extra 50 dollars for unlimited worldwide Internet which I would easily spend in Internet cafes in a very short amount of time. And when I'm out and about if I want to look up something, so for example a restaurant I like here in Budapest is called Govinda, so I type in Govinda Budapest. And you can search on Wikipedia, on Google, you can look it up on a dictionary, in this case you can look it up on Google. And it's got a full web broswer. So you can see here see exactly where it is you can click through to look through Google maps to see exactly where it is, click to the website to see what they have on the menu, you can click reviews to see if it's worth eating there. So it's like any Smartphone or even the iPad you can use it to browse the Web. But all of this is free, it doesn't matter what country you're in if you've got the 3G version it's free if you've got the Wifi version. And obviously I wouldn't use it to browse the Web all day it's good for looking up things very quickly. Uh okay so that's great I've been enjoying it very much for reading books, I've been using the Internet aspect a little bit as well.
But just some things I don't like so much about it I'll show you now. The position of these keys for going to the next and previous page are great when you're reading it this way but when you're reading it that way it's a little uncomfortable to change books, to change pages like this. Luckily it's very very light so you can spend hours holding it holding it with a couple of fingers like this it's not going to hurt you, not going to weigh you down or anything so that's great. But this location means that I have to keep changing the position of my hands to actually change so that's a little annoying. The operating system has a few things that I really wish they would tweak. This is not hardware issue, it's just Amazon needs it's just Amazon needs to change the settings a little bit. So for example...
Sorry about that the battery went on my camera so I'm afraid you have the very boring background now of my apartment. Just to wrap up what I was talking about, I was pointing out a few things that aren't perfect about the Kindle.
(transcribed up to 8:38)
So, in the operating system you have, for example, if I show you now, if I press menu, you can see at the very top it tells me the time in P.M. And I actually prefer 24 hour time. So that's kind of annoying for me. I can't change that. I mean, a five dollar watch will change it from 12 to 24 hour. It's a very simple thing to put in the settings, but hopefully Amazon will do that in the future. And here's another thing. When you turn it off, or put it into standby mode, it puts a picture of an author on the screen, which will stay there until you turn it back on again. And there's only about 10 or so of them, and I actually would prefer to put my own pictures there: the book I'm currently reading, or maybe a picture of my family or something interesting, but it's only,
mostly American authors on the screen. So that's annoying. I wish I could change that. But again, that doesn't interfere with the reading experience. The actual timeout itself is 10 minutes, about 10 minutes, and I use this to study. So I might be on a page, reading vocabulary, and then taking my time
to process it, and then it'll turn itself off. So, it should have the options to configure these kind of small details, small settings. It doesn't at the moment. Hopefully Amazon will update that. You can see something it's in right now, its particular holder, its case. I just wanted to mention that very quickly.
I actually don't recommend that you buy this. This is the official Kindle case from Amazon. The reason I don't recommend it is because it's very expensive. It's not really worth the amount you pay for it. This was 60 dollars. Now, of course, it's very well hooked in, so it's not going to fall out, so it's very
secure and protected you've got the cover here to keep it closed. The reason it's 60 dollars is because it actually comes with a light. So, if I turn it back on again, you can see that this light will help you read. And I have been using it at night time and I sat down at a cafe for a couple hours. I started reading it
just before sunset, without the light, and when the set, I just pulled it out. It was convenient, but 60 dollars. It's not really a good way to spend your money. You'd be better going into a stationary shop to get a similarly sized cover which might fit with it, and then buying a clip-on light which will work for any normal books. So that would be a cheaper way. But otherwise if you want the convenience, if you don't mind paying the 60 dollars. This is the reason Amazon can actually make it as cheap as it is, the actual device, 139, because firstly they know, you know, dudes like myself will go and buy the first accessory they can find. And secondly, they know they will make money from the Amazon store itself, because the interface, the operating system is made that every time you press the menu, the first thing it's waiting to click on is "Go to Amazon store." The operating system is not designed for the user's benefit so much as to encourage you to buy more books. And I will eventually be buying books with this, but as I said, you can use it for reading completely free material. So, that's it, I hope you've enjoyed my... Oh yeah, I'll just show you very quickly a close up of something because I didn't show it previously. So this is back to my text for learning Hungarian. I'm just changing the orientation. You have to change the orientation manually. So, hopefully that is more or less clear to read. It is very, very crisp, crisper than other e-book readers in the market at the moment. It's very easy to read. You forget you're reading an electronic device. And you can read it outside. I have been reading this mostly outside, during the day, and I think that's great because I love technology, but technology tends to keep me indoors, unfortunately. But this is the best of both worlds. It's like a real book in that you shine light on it when you read it, it's easy to go through, the quality and so on is very crisp. And yet, it's electronic. You change screens, this is a PDF, by the way, and you
go up and down. I think this is way better than a book because of all of the advantages I've just listed. So this is going to be my new reading device for a while. And I hope you've enjoyed my little review of the Kindle. There's some more information about how you can get benefits from this and just general
information about why I prefer e-books over physical books just below. So check that out. Thanks for watching!
