Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Kindle DX Update...

Questions, I get questions...  Now that I've had my Kindle DX for a couple weeks, what do I think of it?  Am I using it?

The more I use it, the more I love it.  And I'm using it a lot.  I've got just over 150 books loaded onto it now, and about 135 of those were free (mostly from Project Gutenberg).  I've read 3 books on it, and I'm nearly done with the fourth (Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe – last read when I was a kid, and much better even than my memory of it).  I no longer even think about how to use it; it's become as intuitive as turning the pages in a book.

Last night, just for fun, I tried the text-to-speech feature that's built into the Kindle DX.  I have heard computer-synthesized text many times, and had never been impressed with it, so my expectations were low – but I was pleasantly surprised by the Kindle's computerized reader.  The male voice was clear, the speech had (mostly) appropriate inflection and pauses (like a human speaker would make), and it was perfectly understandable.  I let it read an entire page of Robinson Crusoe, which included a dozen or so place names and other proper nouns that text-to-voice systems often screw up (because they're not in its internal dictionary).  Everything was pronounced either perfectly or very close to it.  I had no trouble whatsoever understanding the entire page.  I could imagine listening to a book on my commute with this thing...

Debbie has been resisting even looking at the Kindle.  Last night she borrowed it to check it out.  I'm gonna hazard a guess here: we're likely going to be a two-Kindle family someday soon...