Dead Ink Vinyl

UPDATE: This review is now available as Kindle DX optimized PDF — because I get a kick out of the irony.

Summary

The Kindle DX is good, but not great. It’s everything I expected, but nothing more. It lacks the refinements I’ve come to expect from my electronic devices (*cough* from Apple *cough*). Amazon’s product description for the Kindle 2 states that their “top design objective was to make Kindle disappear”. They missed that mark with the DX — though just barely.

It does change the way I read books and documents. It does lighten my backpack substantially. It does render PDFs well. In this regard, it does everything I wanted it to do. And despite that, I don’t believe it is worth its $490 price tag — yet. That could change if Amazon updates the PDF software to improve interaction and if publishers create PDF content targeted specifically at the Kindle DX.

Oh — and above all: avoid the Amazon-brand cover for the Kindle DX.

Wherefore the DX?

As context for my review, you might want to know the following:

• The Kindle DX is my first ebook reader. I did not own an original Kindle or a Kindle 2 before buying the Kindle DX.
• My primary interest in purchasing the Kindle DX is to replace the 2-6 technical books I’m always carrying in my backpack.
• I have little interest in buying ebooks through Amazon — wirelessly or from my computer. The book publishers I prefer all provide DRM-free ebooks through their web sites.
• The Kindle DX is preferred over other ebook readers because of its screen size and PDF rendering. I want the large screen size so that technical diagrams and software code listings will be clear and legible.
• Since I’m replacing huge technology books, not paperback novels, the additional weight of the DX over the Kindle 2 is not a concern. The DX is still lighter than nearly every book it replaces.
• My interest in the Kindle DX’s PDF rendering extends beyond books: there is a lot of material that is only available online (for example, Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide and iPhone Human Interface Guidelines) that I want to take with me for reading while offline.

With that background established, let’s get to the important stuff!

Reading

The overall experience of reading ebooks on the Kindle DX is pleasant. It doesn’t start that way, though. I had to ditch the Amazon brand cover (see Accessorizing) and spend ten days tweaking the DX’s settings, adjusting my expectations, and improving my interactions before the Kindle DX finally started to “disappear” as I read. Finally.

Screen blink

When I started reading on the Kindle DX, I thought the screen blink was going to drive me nuts because it completely disrupted my rhythm. Within an hour, though, I didn’t notice it at all and I haven’t noticed it since. A little self-observation leads me to believe that I’ve learned an optimal time to click Next Page button and I’ve adapted my eye movement so that the content will be ready when my eyes arrive in the top left of the page. The salient point is that the adaptation occurs quickly and naturally — I did not have to consciously train myself.

Contrast

A slightly stronger contrast would help the Kindle DX “disappear” better. The contrast is best described as (you guessed it): good, but not great. Something about the dark gray text on the light gray-brown background is distracting every time I pick up the Kindle, although I consistently stop noticing it after a paragraph or two.

Landscape mode

As others have reported, the rotation might be a little over sensitive — the Kindle DX seems a little too eager to switch into landscape mode. It has not posed a problem (or even an an annoyance) yet, but if a future software update made it a little harder to switch into landscape, it wouldn’t hurt the user experience.

I thought I’d use landscape mode a lot more than I do. There is little advantage to landscape mode for books from the Kindle Store or MOBI books¹ and I don’t switch into landscape for PDF documents as much as I expected. Lack of an easy-to-press Next Page button when holding the device in this orientation may be partially to blame. A firmware update that allows the spacebar to be used as a Next Page button could help.

Is it bigger than a breadbox?

The Kindle DX is a little smaller than I expected based on its pictures and reviews. It is certainly thinner than I expected. Both of these were pleasant surprises.

The device is actually surprisingly light, which creates a very positive first impression. It is lighter than the hardcover edition of the first Harry Potter book. It is of comparable weight to Pragmatic Version Control Using Git and Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, if either of those are in your library. It is definitely lighter than most (all?) of the programming books on my shelves.

If weight were the only factor, the Kindle DX could be used one-handed, but make no mistake about it: this is a two-handed device.

Holding the Kindle one-handed for a couple of minutes, it becomes evident that the balance of the weight is off, prohibiting regular use of the device in this manner. Due to the placement of the Next Page button and the joystick, the natural placement of the right hand is at the very bottom right of the device. Unfortunately, the Kindle DX is relatively evenly weighted from top to bottom and left to right, so when I hold it by the right-bottom edge the full diagonal of the device is acting as a lever against my grip. It makes the Kindle DX feel much heavier than its true weight and my fingers and wrist quickly tire when gripping the Kindle DX this way.

Trying other locations to place my hand along the right edge of the device, I find that the midpoint is best in terms of weight and balance. Unfortunately, this places the Next Page button under my thumb’s carpometacarpal joint (where the thumb joins the wrist), making the button impossible to use. The joystick is below that and also impossible to use when the Kindle is held this way. The only control that is easy to manipulate from this position is the Home button.

I can switch the Kindle DX to my left hand (again, gripping the midpoint of the device feels best) which leaves the buttons available for manipulation by my right hand. This works, but still isn’t comfortable due to the aforementioned lever effect — even when my elbow is braced on a table or the arms of a chair. Moreover, I find that my right hand naturally wants to say gripping the device after I’ve clicked the Next Page button.

When both hands are gripping the DX, the natural placement of the right hand is still at the very bottom of the right edge to easily manipulate the Next Page button and joystick. Correspondingly, the grip of left hand slides upward near the top of the left edge so that the top of my thumb lines up with the top of the screen. This two-handed, offset grip makes the Kindle feel like a feather in my hands, but isn’t comfortable because of the asymmetry of my arms. Thus, I inevitably place my right hand in its natural position at the bottom of the right edge and my left hand opposite it. This makes the device feel heavier than it should, but beats all of the alternatives.

It would have been much nicer if most of the weight was at the bottom of the device so that it could be gripped with the both hands across from each other without tiring out my hands and wrists. I hazard to guess that a Kindle case that added dead weight to the bottom of the device might significantly improve overall experience in spite of increasing the overall weight of the system. It’s things like this lack of attention to the balance of weight in the device that gives me the overall impression that the Kindle DX engineering team was happy to get it working and make it look good, but never actually tried using from it for extended periods².

When taken together, the weight and balance of the Kindle DX are good, but not great.

PDFs

Everyone I know who is interested in the DX has one thing in mind: PDFs. There are three things to you need to understand about PDFs on the Kindle DX:

1. PDF files are rendered accurately and beautifully
2. Despite that, the overall experience of reading PDFs is lacking
3. When I have a document in both PDF and MOBI formats, I always read the MOBI version

PDFs are really stunning on the DX. You should have no concerns about PDFs rendering properly. Every PDF I have tried worked beautifully³. That said, the experience of reading PDFs varies greatly from file to file based on three factors: the PDF’s page size, use of serif typefaces, and use of text in colors other than black. Finally, important Kindle capabilities aren’t available while reading PDFs.

Page size

Before I had the DX in hand, I feared that shrinking PDFs to the DX’s portrait screen size would render them illegible. I imagined that rotating the Kindle DX to landscape would resolve the problem nicely. The good news is that it turns out that portrait mode is better than I imagined, so the need for landscape mode is minimized. Which is good, because the bad news is that landscape mode is not the panacea I imagined.

Text (except the fine print legalese) is always legible in portrait mode — small, but quite readable. I wouldn’t want to read lots of text that way, but it works. Rotating to landscape mode allows the page to be viewed in its original size⁴, but requires a lot of page flipping — enough to be a little annoying. This might be improved if the Kindle DX had a Next Page button within reach of a thumb when held in landscape, but it doesn’t. To move to the next screen, I have to carefully hold the entire device one-handed and move my other hand under it to click Next Page. Repeating this 3-4 times per minute feels like a disaster waiting to happen. This makes landscape essentially unusable for more than a couple of pages.

I hold out hope that a future firmware update will allow the spacebar to be used as a Next Page button when the device is oriented for landscape. It would improve the utility of the landscape feature immensely.

Wispy serif typefaces

Serif typefaces with significant line contrast appear wispy and give the impression of being rendered one or two shades of gray lighter than their true darkness. The smaller the text, the more pronounced the effect. I imagine this is related to the anti-aliasing engine in use. It is noticeable in both portrait and landscape orientations and is not related to page scaling. (PDFs created with a page size matching the Kindle DX screen size show the same behavior as PDFs rendered for traditional page sizes.) Since larger text is less affected than smaller text, rotating to landscape can be used to improve the legibility of any particularly bad passages.

Transitional serifs (Baskerville, Times New Roman) and modern serifs (Bodoni, Didot) are the most severely impacted. This is unfortunately because it seems that most PDF content relies heavily on them; e.g., the PDFs from Sun and Apple make extensive use of these typefaces. Old style serifs (Garamond, Palatino) tend to fair well; slab serifs (Bitstream Vera, Rockwell) are actually very attractive on the DX.

Every sans-serif typeface I’ve seen so far in a PDF has looked good. As an example, the 2009 IRS W-4 form makes an exceptional demonstration of the Kindle DX’s PDF capabilities.

A Kindle software update that tweaked the antialiasing of fonts would resolve this.

Text in colors other than black

Text that is not rendered in black — such as the red, hyperlinked Table of Contents entries in PDFs from the Pragmatic Programmers — renders as a very light shade of gray. Such text is exceptionally hard to read. Fortunately, colored text is not often used in the PDFs I’ve viewed on the Kindle.

It would help if the Kindle DX had a high contrast or pure black & white rendering option for PDFs. Accurate shading has its place, but it’s not paramount in all situations. A software update in the future could address this.

Interaction

The Kindle DX’s rendering of PDFs is really impressive, but everything else about its handling of PDFs is, put generously, incomplete.

The most glaring problem with PDF books is that the Kindle does not use the PDF’s table of contents. Do you want to jump to chapter 8? Congratulations, you’re our next contestant on the Guess the Page Number game. Enterprising readers might take note of page containing the printed table of contents and jump to there to lookup the correct page number. Hopefully, Amazon will address this with a software update in the near future.

I can understand why notes don’t work with PDFs⁵. What I don’t understand is why bookmarking isn’t available. Searching works, though, and is another way to jump to different parts of the document; i.e., search for “Chapter 8”.

Cross-links within the PDF cannot be used. When you read a sentence like “We will talk a lot more about the classes that Core Data provides to make this job easier in Section 10.5” where “10.5” is a link to that section, it would be really nice to have the option of jumping to that section. Or when you’re browsing through the printed table of contents, it would be nice to click on an entry and jump to that chapter. (This is doubly true since, as mentioned, the PDF metadata about the document’s outline is ignored.) Finally, when reading research papers it is inexcusable that the linked endnotes cannot be reviewed by clicking the link (which would allow the Back button to return the reader to the original page).

Finally, very large PDFs (such as Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails, 3rd ed, 20MB) cause the Kindle to grind to a halt. They are simply unusable.

PDF versus MOBI

Most of the books I have on my Kindle DX today are from the Pragmatic Programmers. Purchasing an ebook from the PragProg site gives you access to a PDF, a MOBI, and an EPUB. The Kindle DX can read PDF and MOBI files, so I’ve put all of my PragProg titles on the DX in both formats. Initially, I expected to read the books as PDFs, but I quickly found that experience unsatisfying. This is partially due to the behaviors and limitations discussed above, but it is partially due to the fact the Pragmatic Programmer’s PDFs are just horrible for reading on the Kindle DX.

For standard PragProg books, the block of text on the page is slightly smaller than 5×8 inches (or 5.4×8 inches if you include the section numbers offset to the left). That would be perfect for the Kindle DX’s screen, which is a fraction smaller than 5.5×8 inches. The problem is that the PragProg books put banners on the top and bottom of each page so that the Kindle DX cannot crop off the margins and focus on the text. (The Kindle DX is smart enough to crop out the empty margins surrounding the document’s content.) So instead of reading the text, code, and diagrams in their original size, nicely laid out with PragProg’s distinctive typesetting (ahem), I’m squinting and developing a headache when I read for more than a few pages. Hence my switch to the MOBI format.

Closing thoughts on PDF

There is nothing wrong with PDFs on the Kindle DX that cannot be fixed by an update to the Kindle’s software (firmware?). When Amazon addresses these problems, I will have no hesitation in recommending the device — even at its current, staggering price point. However, now that a member of the Kindle family supports PDFs, publishers have an opportunity to maintain their branding (typography, layout) within their ebooks by publishing PDFs optimized for the Kindle DX (page size, contrast) and I have high hopes that savvy publishers will take advantage of this. Even without the software updates I’d like to see from Amazon, if PragProg and O’Reilly provided Kindle DX-optimized PDFs I would be able to recommend the DX to others whose interests in the DX match mine.

Accessorizing

Here is everything you need to know about covers for the Kindle DX: avoid the Amazon-brand leather carrying case at all costs!

I did not start to like my Kindle DX until I ditched the Amazon cover. Let me emphasize that because it is so important: I did not start to even like my Kindle DX until I stopped using Amazon’s cover for it.

The Amazon cover pushes the overall weight of the Kindle DX above some critical threshold where it’s simply not enjoyable to pick up, much less hold for extended periods. The cover doesn’t fold back well, increasing the discomfort of holding the device even more. It has two strong magnets on the center of the right edge — to hold the case close, I guess — but I’m not happy with strong magnets going in my backpack next to my laptop. Additionally, the magnets cause the cover to snap closed, which occasionally clicks the Back Page button. The materials and craftsmanship of the cover are an embarrassment for Amazon and certainly nowhere near worth $50. While the cover is strong and I would reasonably expect it to protect the Kindle DX’s screen if a cat walked on it, it affords no protection against drops. And did I mention that it’s unbearably heavy?

I have to imagine that anyone else’s Kindle DX cover will be a better value. I chose the Kindle DX Slip Case from WaterField and I’m very pleased with it. It is nicely padded for drop protection, provides a stiff surface to protect the screen, and — this was a pleasant surprise — it is so light and thin that I don’t bother putting is aside when reading; I usually just hold it behind the DX and it’s still immensely more pleasurable than the Amazon cover. It was such a pleasure to do business with Gary at WaterField and I’m so impressed with the quality and value of their product that I’ve already started spec’ing one of their cases for my MacBook Air (to be purchased at some distant point in the future).

Endnotes

¹ Readers who prefer the two largest text sizes on the device may have a better reading experience in landscape mode since it allows more words to be displayed per line.

² If you’ve owned a recent Ford sedan, you’ll recognize the feeling.

³ Blog Kindle has a good article on the Kindle DX’s PDF rendering, including TeX equations (work flawlessly) and features from later PDF versions such as 3D modeling (no joy, but who expected that?).

⁴ Or nearly so, depending on the page’s margins.

⁵ Text selection is so difficult in PDFs that Apple makes a big deal about Mac OS X 10.6 being able to determine column layout in PDFs and only select the appropriate text.

On the eve of Amazon’s announcement that was entering the ebook reader market with its Kindle device, I wrote an overly long article examining the reasons why I felt the concept of reading books on an ebook reader wouldn’t gain broad acceptance. During that discussion, I made the assumption that most digital books are either little more than raw text and images (I’m including HTML here) or were PDFs of the print edition.

The “raw text and images” approach is fine for shorter content—blogs, newspaper articles, and the like—but I’ve found that for longer content, real attention to typography and page layout is needed to make the experience enjoyable for me. (This is also why the current implementation of O’Reilly’s Safari service doesn’t work for me.) However, it never occurred to me that PDFs could be made specially for the ebook reader screen—complete with appropriately sized text and all of the traditional design touches normally reserved for print. Now I’ve learned that Rosenfeld Media’s PDF edition of Indi Young’s book Mental Models is designed to be read on the 4×6 screen found on many popular ebook readers. From the screenshot provided in Jorge Arango’s article, I have to admit: that looks like an ebook I would be happy to curl up with for hours.

In hindsight, it’s really obvious that publishers could design PDF ebooks specifically for consumption on ebook readers. In fact, it’s so obvious that I believe PDF books designed primarily for viewing on an ebook reader is the future of digital publishing¹. It certainly is a prerequisite for me to embrace reading books on a digital device.

¹ The technical implementation doesn’t have to be PDF. Any format that tightly defines the typography and layout of pages will work.

Amazon.com is rumored to be entering the ebook market with it’s own ebook reader, called “Kindle”. Kindle can be seen here in all of it’s glory. Amazon believes that Kindle will have competitive advantages, such as 3G wireless data service and access to Amazon’s vast ebook library, that will make it compelling to consumers.

To which I say: yawn!

First, the device is just plain ugly. Who wants to be seen pulling that out of their bag on the train ride to work? Anyone who is willing to drop $500 on a consumer electronics item expects it to be stylish. Even if “stylish” is asking too much, the device should at least not look like something dreamed up during the early 1980s. I know that the ’80s big glasses are back and the ’80s fashions are influencing today’s leading designers, but the ’80s look for electronics was dorky — even in the ’80s.

Speaking of people willing to spend $500 on consumer electronics, who is the target audience for this device? What is the value proposition of this device — or any ebook reader? Are ebooks going to be cheaper than printed books? Maybe a little, but so far ebook prices aren’t compellingly lower than traditional books. Certainly they are not low enough to overcome the risks associated with DRM content.

Convenience? I don’t see it. Most people read one book at a time, so the ability to carry dozens of books with you isn’t compelling. Also, for readers who consume one book at a time, trading the print edition for the ebook reader isn’t a big savings in space or weight. Finally, if I’m on the train, sitting in a Starbucks, or in the park reading the Biography of FDR, I want everyone to know that I’m reading the Biography of FDR. Yes, it’s snobbish, but so the are people who read biographies of presidents.

Some commentators are speculating that the Amazon Kindle could do to books what the iPod did to music. Not going to happen. The consumer’s relationship to books is very different than the consumer’s relationship to music. A CD holds an hour’s worth of entertainment. A book holds a day’s worth of entertainment. Musical selection is subject to mood, so the availability of a wide variety of albums or songs is great. Books are less subject to those pressures. What’s more, I don’t see digital books as having anything to offer above print books. Consequently, the ebook reader is not a compelling replacement for print books.

In fact, I assert that the whole term “ebook” is leading everyone on the wrong direction. Replacing books is not the ebook reader’s killer app. Where I do see very intriguing possibilities for ebook readers are in books for boomers, reviving periodical old media, and — most importantly — in new media.

Books for boomers. An advantage that ebook readers have over print is that ebook readers can change the size of the book’s typography. This is a huge benefit for people like my parents who love to read, but whose eyesight isn’t as sharp as their 20-something and 30-something children. Unfortunately, increasing the size of an ebook’s type makes the ebook content harder to read for long stretches by increasing the number of line breaks that the reader has to consumer per unit of content (e.g., 100 words). An obvious solution to this would be to have the ebook reader behave like MobileSafari and enlarge content without reflowing it when the screen is rotated into landscape.

As I mentioned earlier, most people aren’t interested in carrying more than one or two books at a time and books aren’t particularly heavy or bothersome. Additionally, books tend to be read start to finish, so ebook readers don’t offer a lot of advantages. Finally, most ebook content will be encumbered by DRM, which means that consumers will need to worry about whether their ebook purchases will be readable in 3, 5, or 20 years. (Yes, 20! If you spend $150-$200 on the Harry Potter series or Lord of the Rings as ebook content while in your 20s, you want to know if you’ll be able to reread them or read them to your children one day.) However, newspapers are the exact opposite of books in all of these areas. They are somewhat cumbersome (though not bad) and they are a bother to read. They are big, they get ink on your hands, and most people read newspapers by jumping around to the content that interests them. Finally, almost nobody has the strong expectation that they should be able to read today’s newspaper article in ten years. Most people have a “read and discard” relationship with newspapers and magazines. Thus, an ebook reader is nearly a perfect match for periodical traditional media. The content could be searched, cross-linked, and have “Related Articles” to facilitate scanning for the bits of interest.

I would be willing to pay the WSJ, NYTimes, Chicago Tribune, Oak Park Leaves, and Crain’s Chicago Business each small monthly fees to have subscriptions to their latest content ready to be sync’d to my ebook reader every morning in an appealing format that takes advantage of the device. I say “sync’d” because I don’t want to be tethered to the Internet to enjoy my content throughout the day. Just like I listen to podcasts while offline, I want to read content offline.

There. I just saved the newspaper industry. But they shouldn’t be too happy: the same things that make an ebook reader great for periodical traditional media make them great for blogs. Sync everything in the morning, read it on the way into work and home again. Searchable, cross-referenced, and waiting to be consumed at my leisure. No Internet connection required after synching.

While I’m talking about myself, I should note that all of the stuff I said before about why ebooks aren’t a good replacement for books don’t apply to me. In my backpack I currently have six (6!) books.

1. Essential SNMP
2. Pro Nagios 2.0
3. Java Management Extensions
4. CSS: The Missing Manual
5. GUI Bloopers 2.0
6. Agile Web Development with Rails

Notice a trend? Yes, they are all technology books. Sure, six is a bit excessive, but I haven’t unpacked from my day trip to Bloomington yet. Anyway, I commonly find myself carrying two or three computer books in my computer bag. Having all of these books available in an ebook reader would be more convenient to carry around. Many computer books — particularly those that follow the “cookbook” or “recipes” format — are specifically intended to be consumed by jumping around to the sections of interest. Computer books are often referenced later, so an ebook reader’s ability to search the books would be invaluable. Finally, I rarely care if a computer book will be readable in 5+ years. The information in it will probably be obsolete. Not all technology books are like that, of course, but many of them — I would venture to say most of them — are like that. So the DRM on ebooks wouldn’t be terribly concerning. Unfortunately, full-length technology books are almost never available in ebook format. (Although more are available as PDFs, which is encouraging.)

Running with this idea of technology books in ebook format, the finish line would seem to be plugging into the O’Reilly Safari service or similar online book lenders. I don’t currently use the Safari service because it’s restrictions are incompatible with my book usage. I don’t read books online. Articles are a comfortable length to be read online. Books — even chapters in books — are not. I want PDFs that I can print. Not just HTML pages — real PDFs that have had the tender ministrations of a print designer, including good typography. Just give me the pages directly from the book. I’m getting off topic. My point is that the Safari service would be compelling if I could dump the books on my bookshelf to an ebook reader. Slap on whatever DRM makes the publishers feel comfortable as long as I can comfortably read several chapters in one sitting and view the diagrams.

One more thought of how an ebook reader could be useful is during research. Academic journal articles, books, and so on. The ebook reader could help researchers by allowing them to “highlight” (or underline, if you’re like my wife) relevant material and provide a mechanism to copy those quotes into another application and provide full APA, MLA, Turabian, and Chicago citation styles. That would be very, very convenient.

All of this is to say that I am the target demographic for ebooks and the ebook providers are still completely failing to convince me. Until the ebook providers seriously think about ebook readers as devices unto themselves instead of as simply a mechanism to display existing books they will miss out on opportunities to make really amazing solutions.