Yeah .....?

The Amazon Kindle. At first blush, it is an interesting piece of technology. You get to carry around several hundred books (not to mention magazines like TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes and some top national newspapers like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post) with you anywhere you go. It has free EVDO wireless functionality but apparently you can only go to Amazon's website to buy books. It has some limited web connection; mostly to blogs and Wikipedia. You can also e-mail files to the Kindle but from what I've heard there's a charge for that. It appears to have a rather nice screen with crisp clear text.

Good idea, horrible execution. That sucker is ooogly. It's too blocky and what's the keyboard for at the bottom? I mean how many missives could you possibly type on the thing? Unless you are a copious note taker in your books, that keyboard seems like wasted space. Generally, the way I would hold a book is exactly where buttons are. Other people I have heard talk about the Kindle have said the same thing. And judging by how hard I am on my electronics, it should come with some sort of double- hinged hard cover to protect the screen.

The only other problem I have with it is the fact that when you "turn the page", the text has a nasty tendency to flash and blink repeatedly. Since I suffer from pretty nasty migraines on occasion, flashing and blinking anything makes my brain and eyes freak out on me. Blinking once would be acceptable I guess but multiple times is insane to me. Anyways, I'd love to get my hands on an actual unit to really give it a good looking over.

Back to the paper book pile ......