I have been read­ing on my 6″ Ama­zon Kin­dle 2 for quite some time now and really enjoy it. But, as with all inno­va­tions that try to re-invent a tried-and-true prod­uct, it has its trade-offs. It does not com­pletely replace the expe­ri­ence of read­ing a real paper book. I thought it was about time we had some side-by-side shots — the same book in print and on the Kin­dle 2, so you can see the exact dif­fer­ences. The book is Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder (link to the Kin­dle edi­tion.)

Gallery

It is imme­di­ately appar­ent that a real book has more con­trast than the Kin­dle. And images are harder to view on the Kin­dle;  the 5^th image above, of the ship dia­gram, is almost unread­able on the Kindle.

Ways that the Kin­dle bet­ters the ordi­nary book

• Built in dictionary
• Search within books
• Search within notes and bookmarks
• Dynamic resiz­ing of the text size
• A whole library of books in one device

Ways that the ordi­nary book bet­ters the Kindle

• Con­trast
• Res­o­lu­tion (espe­cially images)
• Smell
• Typog­ra­phy
• Sense of which chap­ter your cur­rently in. On the Kin­dle there is no way to know which chap­ter your read­ing other than pag­ing for­ward to the next chap­ter or back­ward to the begin­ning of the cur­rent chap­ter. Books can place this info at the top of every page.
• Sense of loca­tion within the book. The progress bar below the text on the Kin­dle works ok, but it’s not nearly as good as page num­bers and the feel of the thick­ness of the pages before and after the open page.

Hav­ing recently pur­chased an Ama­zon Kin­dle 2 I am in the mar­ket for a jacket. I have spent alot of time research­ing and review­ing var­i­ous options and want to share my expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge so you can make a bet­ter buy­ing deci­sion. Today I am con­cen­trat­ing on the M-edge GO! Jacket for the Kin­dle 2.

Sum­mary of product

The M-edge GO! Jacket has a gen­uine leather exte­rior with a grey microfiber inte­rior. It is one of the most min­i­mal­is­tic jack­ets for the Kin­dle 2 — when closed it’s only 0.66 inches thick. It securely latches onto the Kin­dle and has a very soft inte­rior to pro­tect the screen from scratches.

It has no extra­ne­ous fea­tures (dis­trac­tions) such as pock­ets or straps. This is great for the Kin­dle user look­ing for a sim­ple & ele­gant pro­tec­tive cover. The front and back are made of high-quality, durable mate­ri­als. The cov­ers are very stiff, offer­ing great pro­tec­tion for the Kin­dle 2 screen. The microfiber inte­rior is incred­i­bly soft so there are no wor­ries about it scratch­ing the Kindle.

Per­haps the best fea­ture of this jacket is the way it attaches to the Kin­dle. It is the first third-party jacket I have seen that uti­lizes the Kindle’s built-in hinge mech­a­nism (see pic­tures below.) This makes for a very strong and secure attach­ment. Fur­ther­more, because of the outer-edge straps, it is more secure than Amazon’s offi­cial cover because your Kin­dle will not loosely flap around.

Details

The M-edge GO! Jacket is made of padded 100% gen­uine leather on the out­side with a very soft  microfiber ultra­suede inte­rior. It’s dimen­sions when closed are 8.25in. x 5.25in. x 0.66in. And it only weighs 7.2 oz so you will not notice much added weight.

Likes

• Access to all ports while closed
• Very low profile
• Qual­ity mate­ri­als and durable, trust­wor­thy construction
• Great pro­tec­tion for the Kin­dle screen

Dis­likes

• Ini­tially I wished for a strap to keep it closed (I am a fan of the Mole­sk­ine). How­ever, after using it for a few weeks I love it as is (so this isn’t really a dis­like after all.)

Opin­ion

This is one of the most min­i­mal­is­tic jack­ets for the Kin­dle 2. It has a sub­tle style and durable con­struc­tion you can trust in. It pro­tects the Kin­dle well and is easy to hold while read­ing. I highly rec­om­mend the M-edge GO! Jacket for the Kin­dle 2.

If Ubuntu Linux had not won me over yet then it cer­tainly has now. Ubuntu Net­book Remix is a fan­tas­tic set of tools for run­ning Linux on small screens and boost­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity in a lim­ited work­space. The offi­cial descrip­tion of the project says:

Ubuntu Net­book Remix is a ‘remix’ of the stan­dard Ubuntu Desk­top 8.04 release to enable it to work bet­ter on devices with small screens, such as Net­books (sub-notebooks), although these pack­ages will work on any 8.04 installation.

The Remix instantly cap­tured my atten­tion because of its focus on small screens. I have a 13″ Mac­Book lap­top. Its 1280 x 800 screen can feel cramped some­times, espe­cially com­pared to my dual-scren iMac setup at work.

Given that my entire Ubuntu exper­i­ment is about pro­duc­tiv­ity I had to give it a go. I have grown fond of how easy Linux makes exper­i­men­ta­tion. I knew that I could very eas­ily install the Remix, test it, and just as eas­ily unin­stall it when I was done. But I’m keep­ing it. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

As a Chris­t­ian I am keenly inter­ested in soft­ware that can help when study­ing the Bible. Com­ing from the Mac OS where there are no good Bible soft­ware offer­ings any­thing would be a bless­ing. So, for all you fel­low Ubuntu-using Chris­tians here is what I found.

GnomeSword 2 — 4 Stars

GnomeSword 2 is the only Gnome-native app of the bunch (I am run­ning Ubuntu 8.04 with the Gnome desk­top.) It is based on Crosswire’s Sword project.

Read the rest of this entry »