somethingkindawierd

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.