We’ve had a Kindle 2 lying around the office for a while, but we never really got round to actually getting anything worth reading on to it. During the weekend I finally transferred a bunch of Gutenberg books to it, along with the new Dan Brown book.

I’ve read books on odd platforms before, primarily my iPhone. People stare at you and think you’re mad, but think about it: The letters are the same size, there just aren’t as many of them on the “page”. You have a few more page turns, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same. And it’s backlit …

On the Kindle there is no backlight, and the screen is different. The Kindle uses an eInk screen, the properties of which I won’t bore you with now. Suffice to say it’s more like paper than an LCD or even OLED. It’s either on or off, meaning the “picture” is very calm. On the Kindle 2 people have complained about the contrast being subpar and I kind of agree. The difference between the background and the text isn’t quite there. I’m told the first one was better and the DX is also supposed to be rid of the problem.

So the actual reading experience is fine – not brilliant, but entirely sufficient. The physical feel of the device has ups and downs. You flip through pages with buttons on both sides of the screen. On the off you’d expect the left one to be “back” and the right to be “forward”. However, they’re both “forward”. Back is situated above the left “forward” button, which initially confused be a little. Once you realize why, though, it makes sense. Because of the thinness of the device you find yourself holding it differently during different situations. Sometimes being able to turn pages with you left hand is just nicer, and I now find it to be the best solution.

Once you’re reading a book the menu and general interface aren’t really present at all. You just turn pages. When you set the book down it “sleeps” and wakes up on the same page. When you want bookmarks something or return to you list of books the experience is somewhat less perfect. The usability of the device is far from ideal, which springs from a combination of CPU-power (menu lag) and clunky menus in general. Amazon needs to have a look at apps such as Stanza for the iPhone, which incorporate some good ideas.

All in all the experience of reading a book on the Kindle is pretty good and I can recommend it. Being able to bring tons of books with you without the weight is nice, and your arms are less likely to tire out from holding a heavy book at an odd angle. In addition to purchasing books online, there are tons of resources for free Kindle content, such as FreeKindleBooks, SinShoppe Kindle,  Feedbooks, Fictionwise and Manybooks (which is probably my favorite, they have tons of formats). There’s good stuff there too, not just no-name fan fic. The arrival of new devices such as the Plastic Logic reader, the Barns and Noble reader and the eeeReader from Asus might mean mainstream acceptance of the idea of the electronic book.

As an added bonus: Shakespeare read aloud via the Kindle’s speach synth. Oh, and the Dan Brown book is more like Angels and Demons than the DaVinci one.

Note: I’ve not touched on WhisperSync, because we only get it on iPhones in Europe. Sounds good though. Also, I haven’t commented on the fact that the Kindle only supports certain formats and not really PDF. This is sort of a none-issue though, since there are ways around it. And don’t even get me started on DRM.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bfishadow/3659800448/