If you are purchasing a ereader device for reading , one very important consideration is the screen technology. Unlike other devices that have LCD screens, the Kindle e-readers use the latest generation of electronic ink ( E Ink) technology or E Ink Pearl which is designed specifically to deliver clearer sharper text that makes reading for extended periods of time more comfortable. Here are some of the advantages to reading on an E Ink device.
The E Ink screens look and read just like a real paper. Kindle e-reader’s matte screens reflect the light like ordinary paper and use no backlighting so that you can read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room. Unlike your LCD screens the E Ink screens have no glare.
Because the E Ink uses actual ink particles to create a crisp print like text similar to what you see when you read a physical book. And because Kindle e-readers use proprietary hand built fonts to take advantage of the special characteristics of the ink to make letters appear clear and sharp.
With this format, every time that your eye switches from a bright screen to a dimmer ambient room, your eyes have to adjust which can cause fatigue. You can avoid this with the E Ink, the page is the same brightness as everything else in the room so there is no adjustment needed. As you can see Kindle has gone through great lengths to make it easy on the eyes of the reader.
You also have reduced glare with the E Ink surfaces as they are treated to be matte like a printed page therefore reducing the glare and increasing legibility.
E Ink screens have a uniform contrast ratio that does not change with your viewing angle, so that you can read in any position. This will help a great deal if your reading in bed or on your favorite sofa or while riding on a bus.
With Kindle E Ink screens you have 100% aperture ratio, so there are no gaps between the pixels. The blacks and whites on an E Ink screen are uniform therefore improving the image quality. The E Ink displays deliver the best reading experience.
With the Kindle Keyboard weighing in between 5.98 ounces to 8.7 ounces, the Kindle e-readers are lighter than most of your paperback books. They also weigh about half as much as many of the LCD tablets devices, making it much easier and more comfortable to hold for an extended periods of time. The Kindle Keyboard is only 1/3 of an inch thin and as stated before it is lighter than a paperback and also thinner than a magazine.
The Electronic Ink screens also have the advantage of significantly lower power consumption than your typical LCD screens. The E Ink screens do not require the power to maintain a page of text , which allows you to read up to a month or two on a single charge versus hours on a tablet or a smart phone. This is based upon a half an hour a daily reading time.
With Kindle you have a choice of either going Wi-Fi or 3G. The Kindle Wi-Fi is a great choice if you already have a computer that has the high speed internet connection and a wireless router which is set up in your home and you don’t want the added convenience of a 3G connection. With the 3G you have the ability to download books from anywhere, while on the go. If you do not have Wi-Fi set in your home, the Kindle 3G may be a better option.
With the Wi-Fi hotspots at home or on the road, you can connect to all AT&T hotspots across the U. S.
Kindle 3G is the easiest option because there is no wireless set up required, your ready to shop, purchase and read what ever you want right out of the box. Kindle has Built in free 3G connectivity and uses the same wireless signals that cell phones use, but with Kindle there are no monthly fees or commitments. Amazon pays for all of the 3G wireless connectivity. This added convenience of 3G allows you to download books anywhere, anytime ,while on the go with out having to find a Wi-Fi hotspot connection. And this wireless coverage is offered in over 100 countries and territories, Kindle 3G is a great option for travelers.
Remember that there are never any annual contracts or monthly fees with Kindle’s 3G.
One of the most elegant feature’s is that the physical book actually disappears while your reading it. You the reader become so immersed in the author’s world and his idea’s that you don’t notice a book’s glue or the stitching or ink. Kindle’s whole objective was to make the Kindle Keyboard disappear just like a physical book so that you can get lost in your reading and not in the technology.
Kindle’s Keyboard 3G is so easy to hold and read. They designed their ereader with long form reading in mind. When you read for long periods of time, people will naturally shift positions and often like to read with one hand. Kindle Keyboard 3G’s page turning buttons are located on both sides which allows you to read and turn pages from any position.
The Kindle Keyboard 3G has an easy to use 5 way controller for the on screen navigation for highlighting text or for looking up words. This is great for searching and note taking, Kindle Keyboard features a physical keyboard. This means that the quiet page turning won’t disturb your partner when you read all night while in bed. You also have the option of sharing meaningful passages with your friends and family with the built in Twitter and facebook integration.
The Kindle Keyboard 3G is not like a laptop, it never gets hot so you can read comfortably for as long as you like.
The Kindle Keyboard 3G offers the convenience of no wireless setup, so you are ready to shop, download and read right out of the box. Kindle Keyboard 3G uses the same wireless signals that your cell phones use, so that you don’t have to worry about Wi-Fi connections, passwords or internet commitments, as Amazon pays for Kindle Keyboard 3G wireless connectivity.
Your Kindle Keyboard may also use wireless connectivity to make other services available, such as wireless delivery of personal documents, and this may require an additional charge.
With it’s wireless coverage in over 100 countries and territories, Kindle Keyboard 3G lets you download books anytime, anywhere, whether your are relaxing on a beach , or are halfway through a hike, or just waiting on a tarmac.
For U.S. customers traveling abroad, there may be additional charges for the wireless delivery of periodical subscriptions. In order to avoid these charges you can always download these items to your computer and then transfer them to your Kindle using an USB or a Wi-Fi connection.
Wi-Fi comes built in the Kindle Keyboard 3G so that you can search, and shop, and have books wirelessly delivered to your device without synching to a computer. The Kindle Keyboard 3G automatically detects nearby Wi-Fi networks wherever you are, making it easy to connect at school, home, or at your office, or favorite cafe.
With Kindle you can enjoy free access at all AT&T hotspots across the U.S. for shopping and downloading Kindle content, and there is no AT&T registration, sign in or password required.
The Kindle Keyboard 3G has eight adjustable font sizes to suit your reading preference. With this you can increase the text size of your favorite book or periodical with the push of a button. This is in case your eyes become tired while reading all that you need to do is push a button and increase the font size and continue reading comfortably. Kindle Keyboard also has three font styles to choose from, and all are optimized and hand tuned to provide the best reading experience.
The Kindle Keyboard uses hand built custom fonts and font hinting to make words and letters more crisp, clear and natural looking. The Font hints are instructions, written as a code that control points on a font characters line, which improves legibility at small font sizes where few pixel’s are available. Hinting is a mix of aesthetic judgments and complicated technical strategies. They designed their proprietary font hinting to optimize specifically for the special characteristics of electronic ink.
The Kindle Keyboard 3G has very fast page turns. They have done this by fine tuning the Kindle’s Keyboard proprietary waveform, this is the series of electronic pulses that move from black and white electronic ink paritcales to achieve an optimal display of images and text.
The images and photos that display crisply on Kindle can be zoomed to the full size of the screen.
Kindle Keyboard 3G supports the display of non Latin characters, so that you can read books and document in the translation that’s right for you. Kindle Keyboard 3G displays Cyrillic ( such as Russian), Japanese, Chinese, (Traditional and Simplified) , and Korean characters, in addition to Latin and Greek scripts.
You are able to manually able to rotate the display from portrait to landscape to view maps, graphs, tables, and Web pages.
You can easily reference and cite passages or read alongside others in a book club or a class with the real page numbers. Using the computing fabric of the Amazon Web Services, they have created algorithms that match specific text in a kindle book to the corresponding text in print book, to identify the correct, “real” number to display. The real page numbers are available on tens of thousands of our most popular Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions. Page numbers are displayed when you push the menu button.
The Kindle Keyboard 3G makes it so easy to take your personal documents with you. Therefore eliminating the need to print. You and your approved contacts can e-mail documents, including Word, PDF and more, directly to your Kindle Keyboard 3G and read them in Kindle format. Delivery via Wi-Fi is free; there is a small fee for delivery via 3G. Your personal documents will be stored in your Kindle library on Amazon and ready to download conveniently anywhere at any time. You can add notes, highlights and bookmarks, which are automatically synchronized across devices along with the last page you read using our Whispersync technology.
You can read PDF’s in their original format and then convert them to the Kindle format so that it reflows like a regular Kindle book.
If you come across a word that you don’t know, the Kindle Keyboard 3G includes The Oxford American Dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions for free. Kindle lets you instantly look up the definition without ever leaving the page of the book. All you need to do is to simply move the cursor to the word and the definition will automatically display at the bottom of the screen.
Kindle Keyboard 3G makes it so easy to search and find what your looking for. All that you have to do is to enter a word or phrase and Kindle will search every instance across your Kindle Library in the Kindle Store, or on Wikipedia or the Web using Google Search.
If you use the Qwerty keyboard, you will be able to add annotations to text, just like you might write in the margins of a book. And because the Kindle Keyboard is digital, you will be able to edit, delete and export your notes. You can highlight and clip key passages and bookmark pages for your future use. You’ll never need to bookmark your last place in a book, because Kindle automatically remembers it for you and will always open to the last page that you read.
With this option you will be able to see what a million of Kindle’s readers think are the most interesting passages in your books. If several readers have highlighted a particular passage, then that passage will be highlighted in your book along with the total number of people who have highlighted it.
You will be able to share your passion for b0oks and reading with family and friends and all of the other readers around the world by posting meaningful passages to social networks like Facebook or Twitter directly from the Kindle Keyboard 3G, without leaving the page. Do you want to post or Tweet about a great new novel or newspaper article? When you highlight a passage or create a note in your book or periodical, you can easily share it with your social network. By doing this you can help your family and friends discover new authors and books.
You can share your notes and see what others are saying about Kindle books. Any Kindle user including authors, book reviewers, professors and passionate readers everywhere can opt in to share their thoughts on the books passages and idea’s with friends, family members, colleagues and the greater Kindle community.
You can lend eligible books to other Kindle or Kindle app users. Each eligible book can be lent once for a period of 14 days. Not all books are lendable, the publisher or rights holder determines which of the titles are enabled for lending.
As a Kindle customer you can check out Kindle books from your public library and start reading on any Kindle or Kindle app.
You have the option of organizing your Kindle library into collections or categories, this way you can easily access any book you are looking for. You can add an item to multiple collections to0 make organizing and finding titles even easier. One example is you can add the same book to your ” History” and “My Favorite Authors” collections.
With these option this allows you to customize your Kindle.
You can access the Kindle Store wirelessly right from you Kindle Keyboard 3G. You are able to shop the world’s largest selection of books that people want to read, plus magazines, newspapers, blogs, and games. They aut0 deliver all of your purchases in seconds, simply search, buy and you’re ready to read.
Kindle makes it so easy to discover new titles with the recommendations personalized just for you. The Kindle Store uses the same personalized customer experience you’re used to across the Amazon .com, by matching our best recommendations to your personal reading habits.
The Kindle Store contains one of the largest selections of books people want to read. With over a million books, including 800,000 at the price of $9.99 or less. They work directly with the publishers to get the latest bestseller’s. biggest new releases and the titles most popular with tens of millions of Amazon’s book customers. There are over 2 million free, out of date copyright, pre 1923 books that are also available such as Pride and Prejudice and Treasure Island.
The Kindle store also offers over 60,000 audible audiobooks available via wireless delivery. Discover and download and listen to over 60,000 Audible .com audiobooks. These books are read by authors celebrities and world class narrators, right from you Kindle Keyboard 3G . You can shop the internet’s key provider of digital audiobooks, with genres including mysteries and thrillers, romance, and biographies.
You can shop and subscribe to your favorite magazines and newspapers such as Time, Newsweek, and The New Yorker, from Newsstand. The new editions are auto delivered wirelessly direct to your device the second that they go on sale.