Why I didn’t buy the ‘touch’ or ‘fire’ Kindle version
Yesterday Amazon announced a bunch of new devices in Kindle series. I looked [online] at all of them, and bought the new basic kindle, the version for $109, the one without special offers.
Why didn’t I go with Touch or Fire? Well, to my taste, the Touch version is a way too far from a real book, although it may sound strange.
I had the Sony Reader Touch Edition for a while, buying it as a gift to my parents. Touch is OK overall, but it crudely interrupts reading for me. Touch feature means that your screen won’t be nicely clean and unscratched anymore, just as with your favorite smartphone from Google.
It is fine to buy protective screens for a smartphone: although they make the screen look less crisp, it is still acceptable. But for the device that’s main purpose is reading and only that… I don’t want any more layers here. Just the screen as it was designed originally, preferably without the scratches and fingerprints. Side buttons to turn pages is OK. Nothing more is needed.
A kind of the similar concern I have about Fire. It’s too far from the device I would call a book now. Even an electronic book.
Surely, having a colored screen is nice, and I was anticipating the color Kindle from Amazon, but… that’s just not it. I don’t want an overpowered under-tablet that lives on the battery less than 8 hours for reading. I would be happy with colored pictures, but not at the point when they make my battery last thirty times less. Between color and battery life for a so-called book, I always choose battery life.
Why no special offers? Well, there are a lot of people out there who just doesn’t notice the ads, and therefore usually prefer the cheaper version of software, hardware, and everything. I just can’t. Maybe it’s my former media experience (I was designing ads for a while in the past), maybe something else, but I always notice the ads and most of the time they irritate me. And I just don’t want any ‘special offers’ in my book. I know Amazon does everything to make my reading experience nice and smooth anyway, but ads are still ads. Even if they are placed only on the idle screen, I don’t want to have them there, and I choose not to. Really.
It is the era of multifunctional devices, indeed. But for the old-fashioned activity such as reading a book, I prefer a simple, single-functioned machine such as a basic Kindle. With no touch, no color, no 3g and no ads.
It is my choice. What’s yours?
