Amazon's Kindle e-Book reader is out, and we've poked around in every nook and cranny. If it's needed in this day and age, here's your 56k warning.
Kindle comes in a big, book-like cardboard case.
Opening the book on a new kind of, um, book...
The package contains a wallwart, USB cable, manual and the Kindle itself.
The Kindle itself is white and geometric.
The keyboard looks manky, but is actually well-designed and very easy to type with.
The Kindle has a headphone, USB and power port on the bottom, alongside the volume controls for MP3 playback. It lacks physical play, stop, fast-forward or rewind keys.
Kindle is about the size of a paperback novel. Will it replace real literature?
The chiclet keys are easy to type on, but will get dirty and grimy fast.
The innovative control system is another pleasant surprise. It's easy to figure out, if a little slow to respond.
Designed in R'Lyeh was this thing's weird shape.
Kindle-hurling competitions will require an intimate understanding of aerodynamics.
From the other side...
The Kindle is smaller than it looks. Seen here, it's only about twice as long and wide as an average smartphone.
Kindling and fire...
Type quality is excellent — e-Ink is much less of a strain to view in the long haul than an LCD.
The Wikipedia-thing built in doesn't seem to work too well...
The rear has a cute rubber panel covered in alphabetti spaghetti.
In preliminary tests, the only thing it would consent to be synched with over USB were text files and MP3s. RTF, DOC, PDF and so on don't even appear in the Kindle's file browser.
Plugged in via USB, the Kindle appears as a disk drive.
