The New Kindle

My husband loves his gadgets. Not only does he love them, but he likes to buy them when they first come out. This makes the planning, research, type-A person in me just cringe. I would much rather let other people try them out and then after a year or so give them a try. Sometimes Joe sees it my way (thankfully he is still waiting on an iPad, but if they delay the second generation release much long I am afraid I might lose him), but many times he trumps me and just goes for it. One time he went for it against my judgment was when Amazon released the Kindle. I was really wary of him buying it. I mean you couldn’t even go try ti out at a store and we didn’t know anyone who had one.

This was one time when he was right on his instinct. We got our first Kindle back in the summer of 2008. Although it had a few bugs and we had to send our first one back and have it replaced, it was a great resource for us with all the traveling we do. I logged a lot of time on that first Kindle when I was breastfeeding Naomi. I didn’t think I would like reading on it, but I ended up enjoying reading on it more than I did a regular book.

The one downside of our original Kindle was that we could not use the Whispernet technology overseas. We could still buy books though and download them to our computer and then upload them to the Kindle. Not a huge hassle, but not as convenient. We also had one Kindle for 2 readers in the home. And once Abby started reading and realized she liked reading on the kindle, there were three people in the house who wanted to read on it. I usually avoided using it after we first got it because I got tired of trying to track it down. So once the Kindle app for the iPhone came out, I was primarily reading our Kindle books on that.

But last month for my birthday, Joe decided to get me a new Kindle. We hadn’t upgraded when the Kindle 2 came out. But with the Kindle 3 having the option of Wi-Fi, we figured it would be a great way for us to be able to wirelessly get our books even while overseas (the Kindle 2 offered an international version, but with very few other upgrades to the original Kindle, we didn’t feel it was worth the price to upgrade yet).

So I have been using my Kindle 3 now for about a month and I have to say, I really love it. It was another purchase of Joe’s that I wasn’t sure was necessary, but now that I have it, it really is much better than our original. There are a lot of design changes that make it even easier to read on. And having the Wi-Fi to be able to download our books instantly is great since we spend the majority of our year overseas. For us, the extra $50 for the 3G didn’t seem necessary since very rarely do we need our material “on-demand” while away from the house.

And now Kindle allows you to “loan” books among Kindle users as well. Joe and I have successfully loaned out 2 books so far, so feel free to trade books with us. For some of the books we may have on Kindle, you can become my friend on Good Reads.