For reasons to do with accidental coffee spillage I found myself suddenly and tragically e-readerless. Now as much as I will always love printed books and will always prefer reading from them, I do most of my reading nowadays on my e-reader, and I read a LOT, so this was a situation I couldn’t stay in for very long.
So, off I went to amazon.co.uk because I’d heard about these fantastic new kindles (specifically the Touch and Fire). On a side note I almost jumped up and down when I heard about the full colour Fire until I realised it wasn’t some new kind of colour e-ink but was just a generic tablet. Scratch that, I want e-ink for reading or nothing...
So, the Touch looked cool then; small, compact e-ink touchscreen. 7 kinds of Awesome.
Then I found out that along with the vast majority of the rest of the world, I don’t in fact live in the United States, and if you’re not in the US, you’ll have to wait. Gotta love international corporations with national nepotism issues...
So basically that meant I was stuck with ordering the basic new Kindle 4, 6”, 2011-whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Fair enough, no big deal. I order it online for next day delivery and it comes looking all sexy and aluminium fresh. Love the metal feel, love the size, love the screen... oh wait, there’s a big blank line running through the centre of it.
Great... Called tech support, and after speaking to a very helpful woman I was told my new Kindle was broken and I needed to return it. Meanwhile I’m doing some research that I should have done before ordering it...
Turns out the Kindle 4 has exactly the same screen as the Kindle 3 (now called Keyboard).
Turns out it can’t do audio at all. No speakers, no audio output.
Turns out it has half the memory. HALF.
Turns out unlike the Kindle 3 the mains charger comes seperate as a rather large extra cost.
Plus it has no touchscreen or keyboard and in my brief encounter with my broken one, trying to type anything with just a D-pad took forever.
Added to all that, the Kindle 3 (Keyboard), which in my opinion is better for the above reasons anyway, had been reduced in price in my local supermarket to less than the Kindle 4!
Naturally I posted back my busted Kindle 4 and bought a new Kindle 3 from my supermarket. Cheaper and better.
So, unless there’s more future coffee issues this will see me through the Kindle 4/Touch/Fire era entirely. Sorry Amazon, would have happily bought the Touch if you'd released it around the world at the same time.
In conclusion, unless you live in the US, or unless you’re bothered about a slightly smaller Kindle in shiny metal, I’d go with the Kindle 3 (Keyboard).
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