The new Kindle

in «Technology, Linux & Free/Open Source Software» by moftasa

Warning! This post is very old and may contain information or opinions that are no longer valid or embarrassing.

Kindle

LCD screens on your flat-screen TV, laptop or phone are direct descendants of the cathode-ray tube TV. Difficult for prolonged reading. Although recently I read around 400 pages of a textbook on my laptop, I had to, it was difficult and wasn't an enjoyable experience. The last time I enjoyed reading a book on an electronic device was using the Palm PDA. I think the Amazon Kindle is a direct descendant of the Palm PDA, real paper and the Etch A Sketch combined. Perhaps other ereaders as well but the Kindle supports the palm doc format and it's more recent incarnation the .mobi format.

Kindle sunset

I won't go into the technical specifics of the new Kindle but I want you to know how electronic paper works. The display is simply formed of tiny barrels each filled with black ink and a small sediment of titanium dioxide at the bottom. When an electric current passes through; the titanium dioxide particles rise to the top where you can see it as white pixels. The pixels, however, can't be seen unless you use a magnifying lens. It's wonderful, if you have a pdf with nice calligraphy you'd be happy just by looking at it.

The Kindle is slightly cheaper and has better Arabic support than all other ebook readers. Arabic PDFs of all kinds appear perfectly and the Webkit browser displays Arabic webpages. However, it doesn't show Arabic text files or mobi files.

Kindle arabic

Oh and today I drove for a little less than 3 hours listening to the text-to-speech version of Why Zebra's don't get ulcers by Robert Sapolsky.

Comments

  • Amr

    Posted on - 🔗

    I'm considering getting a Kindle and your post will really help. I have a lot of Arabic PDFs and I was wondering how well they work.
    I have two questions:
    - Does kindle support MP3s?
    - How much does listening to MP3s affect the battery life?

    Thanks for the great post.

    • moftasa

      Posted on - 🔗

      Yes it supports Mp3s. I don't know about battery life when playing Mp3s but I suspect that it will last around 6 hours if it uses the same battery life as the text-to-speech since when it drained 50% of the battery after 3 hours of usage.

  • Ahmad Farghal

    Posted on - 🔗

    Thank you for this review. Did you order it through Amazon or did you get a friend to get it to you from abroad? How much did it set you back?

    • moftasa

      Posted on - 🔗

      A friend ordered it for me from Amazon UK and it was delivered to her place in the UK and she got it back with her when she came.

  • Lasheen

    Posted on - 🔗

    hi moftasa
    i want to buy the new kndle but iwant to know if it support arabic books
    if so can iread them easily or better get kindle dx

    • moftasa

      Posted on - 🔗

      The latest kindle does support reading Arabic pdf files.

  • Daichi

    Posted on - 🔗

    thankthank

  • Daichi

    Posted on - 🔗

    are you able to open websites that seem to be using flash like www.alhayat.com (al-Hayat newspaper's website)?

    • moftasa

      Posted on - 🔗

      Flash isn't supported and it's not feasible the e-paper display isn't
      made for animation, it has a slow refresh rate.

      Non-flash parts of the site opens normally.