I Sold my Kindle

Regular readers may recall that a month ago, as soon as it went on sale in Canada, I bought myself a Kindle.

I really like the Kindle: it has an extremely readable screen, there’s a decent collection of e-books available, both from Amazon.com (for purchase) and from elsewhere (for free), and, as Jeff Bezos said it would, the Kindle recedes into the background when you’re reading, so it “feels like a book.”

There’s only one problem for me, though: the “next page” buttons happen to be designed in a way that makes my latent repetitive stress issues flare up.  There are two of these buttons, one on each side of the Kindle, and a combination of where they’re located and the degree of resistance you meet when going to push them in just happens to tweak all the wrong RSI buttons for me.

This is unlikely to be an issue for many other people, and unless you’ve been tap-tap-tapping at a keyboard for 25 years as I have, you’ll likely quite enjoy the page-flipping mechanism on the Kindle.

So, I’m selling my Kindle. The Kindle is sold: only took an hour!

Comments

dria's picture
dria on December 18, 2009 - 20:23 Permalink

That’s too bad, Peter. I bought a Kindle shortly after they came out in Canada as well, and I like it a lot. It’s actually changing how I consume books, which is unexpected. My only quibble is that I wish the screen were more contrasty.

Hope you find a buyer. It’s a great little device.

911jason's picture
911jason on December 19, 2009 - 11:33 Permalink

Dria — try the font hack to install a much darker font which improves the contrast immensely! You can find the files here: http://charles-reace.com/Kindl… or visit the very friendly community at www.KindleBoards.com for more details and info if you’re not sure.

Doug McLachlan's picture
Doug McLachlan on December 20, 2009 - 04:43 Permalink

If you have an iPhone you can read Kindle content by downloading the free Kindle for iPhone app which was made available in Canada about a week ago. Some find the screen to small, and it is certainly not as “paper like” as the Kindle but I find it quite workable for reading sessions of up to an hour or so. There’s also Kindle reader for Windows PC’s

Craig's picture
Craig on December 21, 2009 - 05:18 Permalink

Peter, why not try Taoist Tai Chi. It’s very helpful in dealing with RSI, especially in the arms. Then you won’t have to sell off your gadgets :)

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on December 21, 2009 - 17:01 Permalink

Tell me more: where do I start?