Out of all of the super Christmas presents I received in 2010, the one which is with me most of the time (yes, day and night) is my Amazon Kindle. The next most used present is a gadget which is a combination of a laser pointer and an LED lamp which my children gave to me. When I am awake during the day, I read my Kindle. When I am awake at night, I read my Kindle in bed using the lamp just mentioned.So, it sounds like I am insomniac with a taste for gadgets. Well, that's right. (One of the books I am reading on the Kindle, which I bought at night after reading a free sample! (Sad) is called 'Waist Disposal' talks about waking up at night could have something to do with what I am eating (Even more sad)).
But, in the last week I have been traveling on business to see suppliers. For most meetings, I need to carry the contracts we have in place between us. Often, these are twenty to thirty pages long. If you see three or four suppliers per day, that's an awfully large amount of paper to carry around. It's also heavy.
But, by transferring the documents onto my Amazon Kindle, as well as the agenda for each meeting, plus the descriptions of all of the products we buy from them, I completely cut out the need for all of that paper I used to carry around. Without all of that paper, my briefcase was about a quarter of its normal weight.
Aside from using the Kindle for business, I also carried around about ten books with me. A novel or two, Stephen Covey's 'The 7 habits of highly effective people' (always useful), two military history books and some other classics which I will read, one day.
I hear people scoff at gadgets like the Kindle, saying 'why don't people just read and buy paper books?' Well, in answer to that, I used to buy printed books for myself and others. Now, I just buy printed books for other people. I am also not printing off reams of contracts which just go into a recycling bin when I am done with them.
The Kindle has done for my reading habits like the iPod has done for my listening habits. I am now buying and reading more books than I ever used to do, as I am music and podcasts on my iPod.
Related articles
- Amazon's Killer App: the Kindle (fool.com)
- Is a Kindle better than a book? (dontfeedtheanimals.net)
Very nice content here, i will be back for sure. I would like to leave a comment on rechargeable Kindle batteries, they eventually lose their ability to hold a charge. Nook's battery is user-replaceable and relatively inexpensive. To replace Kindle's battery, Amazon wants you to ship your Kindle to Amazon, and they will ship you back a DIFFERENT Kindle than the one you sent (it's the same model, for example if you send a white Kindle 3, you get a white Kindle 3 back, but you get a "refurbished" one, NOT the exact one you sent them). I don't like this at all.
ReplyDeleteNice content here, keep up the good work. I'm seeing a lot of forum's, and I've noticed a lot of ebooks out there that just seem to be garbage, usually "Free Ebooks". Just FYI. When I go to a site to get an ebook on how to program flash for example, it tells me what flash is. When I get game cheats on xbox, it tells me what game cheats are, etc etc. I've gone to showmemy ebooks.com and found a ton of good ones. They sell them, but none are more than $1 thru paypal- totally worth it though. I've been downloading them into my collection.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip, Elvia!
ReplyDeleteHi Stanley,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. There is a lot of rubbish out there and even some of the books on Amazon for the Kindle have surprised me at just how poor they were. The beauty is, however, that I have not paid as much for most of the eBooks as I do for printed books, so I am less worried!
Thanks again
Will