The mark of a good e-book reader is the ability to deliver the pleasure of reading, of losing yourself within the theatre of a good story, while continuing the relationship you already have with the books you love. This is something the Amazon Kindle, now into its second generation design and available for the first time to Canadians, does well even as it grapples with technical issues that want to spoil the experience.

THE JOY OF READING

In design the Kindle is much like other e-book readers. It’s about the size and weight of a pocket book, perfect for curling up with at the end of the couch, by the light of a bedside lamp, or against the window on a plane. It is very slim, white, and unstylishly simple. It has a good-sized 6” screen that uses electronic ink, a type of display that simulates the look and feel of paper. What you see embedded within the white plastic frame is very much a book page; easy on the eyes, limited to black-and-white, and useless in the dark.

Most computer screens light up, but this one, made of solid particles that change in response to electrical charges, can’t. Like other types of computer screens it can change the image it displays. This means it can transition from one page to another, just like turning pages, and can adjust the size of a book’s fonts, change its spacing, and even mark up the pages without permanently changing the book itself. It also means that it will remember the last page you read and will return to it the next time you open that book.

For those who have never seen an e-book reader before, the way the screen changes is magical, often inspiring double-takes and long, obsessive stares from on-lookers.

Among the digital tricks the Kindle offers is the ability to change text through six different sizes, adjust the number of words per line, use a virtual highlighter to mark up sentences or passages, and even “clip” out articles or chapters and save them to a personal computer as editable .txt files. You can also add bookmarks, as many as you want, in order to make it easy to return to favorite pages.

The controls are fairly simple. There’s a set of buttons on either side for flipping pages to and fro, a clickable mini joystick paired with a set of “menu” and “back” buttons for navigating, and a keyboard with tiny, bubble-like keys that are fine for picking out letters, but could never be used for actual typing. The keyboard adds a great deal of bulk, but is worth it as it allows users to add notes, search books by keyword, and navigate both the internet and Amazon’s online store.

The Kindle has the ability to speak. A computer voice, your choice of male or female, can be activated to read aloud the text on the screen. Although robotic in pronunciation, both voices do have a natural rhythm even if they tend to run words together. You can change the speed of the speech, and that helps a little.

A copy of the New Oxford American Dictionary is included and can also be used to look up any word on-screen by simply placing the cursor over it. This works even when you don’t want it to, causing little on-screen bubbles containing definitions to pop up with an accidental bump of the controls.

SHOPPING AND CANADIAN SERVICE FEES

The Kindle can hold approximately 1,500 books, which for many people would be every book they’ve ever read. Carrying that kind of selection with you while travelling would mean that you would never have to read something you weren’t in the mood for.

To help you fill your Kindle, there’s a “Kindle Book Store” at Amazon.com where you can see that the e-book prices are lower than their print counterparts and download both free sample chapters as well as free classic titles from the public domain.

Canadians have access to most of the titles in the store, approximately 300,000 titles, just shy of the 360,000 titles available to Americans. It’s the same store, but some titles have yet to get clearance for sale in Canada.

Buying books from the store is intended to be done straight from the Kindle itself. A wireless internet connection fills the screen of the device with a basic version of the store and you can browse, buy, and download new titles in just a few clicks. Amazon calls the wireless feature their “Whispernet” service, but despite the fancy name it is the same 3G data connection used by iPhone and Blackberry smartphones.

This wireless connection makes it a breeze to browse, buy and download books from the Amazon Store. I only wish that once added to the Kindle itself, there was a better system for grouping them by category (books, magazines, personal documents) and subject matter (mystery, reference, non-fiction, etc.)

The Whispernet service doesn't reach all areas of Canada, you can consult this map for your neighbourhood, but shoudl you fall outside of the zone, you can use your personal computer to buy and download e-books from Amazon.com directly. When you purchase an e-book, you can select to download the content to your computer for free and then transfer it to your kindle using a USB cable.

This wireless connection puts a heavy drain on the battery life. While most e-books readers can last weeks if not months before needing a charge, the Whispernet service will reduce that down to a day at most. To say the least, it’s best to turn the Whispernet connection off when you’re not using it.

MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS

One of the advantages Amazon has over their competition is a series of partnerships with leading newspapers and magazines from around the world including more than a dozen different countries. Canadian publications include The Globe and Mail and The National Post.

Time Magazine 

You can purchase these as individual issues or as part of a subscription service where each issue will be downloaded automatically (with an added service fee of $4.99 US per week). The “Kindle Version” of these publications are not quite a match for their real-world counterparts, often missing illustrations and using spacing that tends to mash text together, but the basic content and feel of the publication is there.

The Times Newspaper 

Amazon does offer popular blogs as part of their subscriptions to US customers, but not to Canadians. Consider that blogs are normally free, but priced at $1.99 per month for the Kindle, and this is perhaps not a big loss.

ADDING YOUR OWN CONTENT

Although the Kindle supports a number of document types; Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF, and structured HTML, these files have to be formatted for use on the Kindle first. Rather than supply you with the software to do this yourself, Amazon requires you to e-mail them the files so they can handle the process on their end. They in turn will send the formatted files back to you as a download link included in a response e-mail so you can add them manually from your home computer for free.

The same goes for digital pictures, including JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP files which can be displayed as black-and-white photographs. Amazon advertises zoomable controls for pictures, but really it’s just a choice to see them framed or fullscreen.In the United States, Kindle users can opt to have their content sent to them wirelessly through the Whispernet service for a fee of $0.99 per MB. This is not available in Canada, which is okay, as the free e-mail-based system works just fine.

Support for PDF files is quite limited, some files may come through Amazon’s conversion process alright while many others will fail. I’ve tried a few PDF documents and the results have been mixed, with illustrations missing and text running into each other. Amazon admits that this is a feature that needs work and so if the use of PDF files is important, I suggest you wait for the 3rd generation Kindle or news of a software update that improves this.

In addition to Amazon’s own e-book format, they also offer support for e-books created using Mobipocket software, although not any files that have been protected by DRM.

EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES

Some features Amazon has marked as “experimental” to indicate that they are still works-in-progress, such as the built-in web browser which you can use this with the Whispernet connection to surf the internet for free (no service fees included). It can display basic text and graphic content, no flash animation or video, offers support for javascript and cookies, and keeps a history of your browsing sessions. It also includes the ability to create bookmarks and Amazon has included their own bookmarks for sites it knows works well in a basic view. It may be a basic browser, but with a free connection to the internet it offers a great value.

You can also listen to music while you read. By connecting the Kindle to your computer you can drag-and-drop MP3 files onto it. Rather surprisingly, there’s no playback controls, no pause or track listing, or ability to skip tracks. Just an on/off switch. That seems a little too sparse.

As with audiobooks and the text-to-speech computer voices, you can listen to the music either through the speakers on the back or with a pair of headphones. The sound quality isn’t bad and there’s volume controls on the side.

KINDLE WITH OTHER DEVICES

Outside of the Kindle itself, Amazon is working on allowing users to read their purchased e-books on other devices too. In Canada the choice is limited to Windows-based computers where you can use the free Beta version of Kindle For PC. This basic software merely allows you to read the books you’ve purchased, but with the added trick that it can sync with your Kindle itself, using an internet connection and the device’s Whispernet connection, so that you’re always on the page you last left off, no matter which device you’re using. That alone makes it worth the download.

The same is true of the Kindle iPhone App and other mobile applications currently in the works. The iPhone app is only available for US users at the moment, but a Canadian release is expected for some time in the future.

STILL EVOLVING

The Kindle is a device that is still evolving. Amazon is a company that is still learning. At its heart the Kindle is a warm welcome to the world of e-books, with a store selection that is rewarding and a full-featured reading experience that knows the tricks digital books can offer, but it’s still not quite the device it can be and you can bet Amazon is already working hard on a third generation Kindle.

NOTE ON CORRECTION: When I first posted this review, I incorrectly reported that service fees would be charged to Canadians for each book and subscription purchased through Whispernet. This is not the case, these fees only apply to American Kindle users traveling outside of the US.