Monday, July 06, 2009

Kindle Shines in the Sun

I recently purchased a Kindle DX from Amazon, mainly hoping to use it while travelling. I've more or less ignored it since the first couple of days after it arrived. But today is a gorgeous sunny day for a change here in Boston, so I decided to try to read something out on my deck, which is blazingly bright today. I brought out the Kindle and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to read while wearing a pair of extremely dark polarized sunglasses. I found reading on the Kindle easier on my eyes than a paperback book, perhaps in part because the print is somewhat larger on the Kindle. As a joke, I brought out my laptop. I could barely see anything on the laptop screen in the sunlight without my sunglasses and absolutely nothing with the sunglasses on.
On a nice sunny day I often would like to read outdoors, but usually find the eye strain too much. The Kindle seems to help in this situation.

On the other hand the E Ink display used by the Kindle has its quirks too: there's a dramatic flash when the page is changed and there's long decay time when erasing the cursor, etc. However, I don't really even notice the page change flash anymore, though I certainly did when I first got it.

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