Kindle

I did it. I bought a Kindle. It felt like a really decadent purchase (even though it was technically a birthday/achieving ABD present). It's a second generation Kindle but not a DX which I thought would be too big an cumbersome, and, ok, I wanted it NOW! So I've downloaded books and read them and experimented with converting pdf documents into Kindle format (which they will do for free). I took it with me to my last conference, in fact, it's hardly left my hand since it arrived.

What's best about it? Well, the size makes it very portable, the screen is readable even in the brightest direct sunlight, it's got 2G of memory so no more lugging four or five books with me on trips so I don't run out of reading material, it will read to me in the car so I can even listen to books on the way to work, and it plays both Audible books and MP3's (which is one of the formats I can get audio books in from the library).

And the worst? You have to turn it off during taxi and take-off since it's a portable electronic device, the keyboard isn't really useful for anything but hunting and pecking, it's not back lit so you have to have some light in which to read it...that's about it I think. All of these are minor irritations, I would definitely make the same decision if I had it to do over.

Oh, one final thing, the cord, you only get one cord with it but it can be plugged in either directly to a wall socket OR into the USB port of my computer to recharge and, in the latter case, to copy files back and forth. This feature is much cooler in person so ask me to show you when I see you 'cause I'll probably have it with me. :-)