tom robinson

When the iPad was announced I assumed it would eat the Kindle for lunch. After all, it had a large color touch screen and could do much more than just read books, right? Well, yes, but it turns out to be not very good at the one thing a tablet form factor is perfect for: reading.

I finally picked up a Kindle 3 after reading Paul Stamatiou’s great review. Here are my thoughts after a few weeks of nearly daily use with it.

• Kindle does one thing, and one thing well: reading. iPad does a bunch of things mediocrely.
• Extremely readable display.
• Lightweight and easy to hold. Not awkward to hold at any angle. No fumbling with folding the pages over trying to find a comfortable grip. This makes reading more enjoyable.
• Carry many books with you. No upfront decision on which book to bring on a trip. Read whatever you’re in the mood for. This is also a downside, as I find myself buying new books before finishing the ones I’ve already started. Currently I have 5 unread books on my Kindle.
• Satisfying mechanical click when going to the next page. No gratuitous virtual page flipping animation.
• I find I’ve been reading much more than I used too. I never read books daily before, but I do now.
• The built-in dictionary is useful, as is the highlighter feature (iPad has both of these features)
• Amazon now has access to lots of interesting data. So far they’ve only given us access to popular highlighted excerpts. Two things I’d like to see are the average time it takes to read a given book, and my personal words-per-minute rate. A speed-reading training mode would be neat too.
• Excellent battery life… if you turn off wireless. iPad’s battery life isn’t bad compared to a laptop, but Kindle will last a long time. It died after a few days of heavy use with the wireless turned on, but then I turned off wireless and it hasn’t run out of juice yet.
• Fewer distractions than iPad. With so many apps and websites just a button press away I found I had a hard time focusing on reading on the iPad. Not so on Kindle. While Kindle does have an “experimental” web browser (WebKit based) it’s not very useful, so I don’t find it distracting.

After several months of frustration trying to use the iPad as a travel computer I’ve given up. For now I’ll be sticking with a MacBook plus a Kindle and recommend anyone who does serious work on their computer do the same.