I’ve now had my Kindle for almost four months, taken it on a few trips, and thought I’d report back on my experience and share some new information. If you didn’t read my first post on why the Kindle is one of the best gadgets for travel and considered to be the best e-reader available, please check it out. In that post I talk about the difference between the Wi-Fi only and the Free 3G + Wi-Fi versions and about many of the basic features and advantages. In this post I’m going to go a little more in depth in terms of some of the specific uses in terms of traveling with the Kindle.
Guidebooks:
The photo above is of two of my bookshelves packed full of guide books from more than 10 years of travel. If I were to turn the Kindle sideways, it would disappear from view because it’s about as wide as a #2 pencil. As much as I love my books, I’m running out of room. I’m not sure I’ll ever buy a paper guidebook again if what I want is available electronically.
I recently downloaded samples (another great Kindle feature, the free preview: try before you buy) of the Frommer’s and Lonely Planet Cambodia guidebooks. I had the paper version of the Frommer’s book and I can say the Kindle version was pretty much the same. After looking at them, I chose to buy the Lonely Planet book because they have formatted it so that it’s easy to jump (via links) though the chapters and the Frommer’s book does not have this. They both have hyperlinks within the books which means it could take you out of the book and into a browser to see the website.
Lonely Planet also offers books by the chapter for Kindle which can be a money-saver. For example, many people may only visit …
I had the pleasure of being able to borrow my mother’s Kindle 2 for our trip to Panama. At first I was sceptical; was this just another electronic device to carry and worry about? What about the romance of the paper book? Almost everyone, including David, has said the same thing to me, “I love books. I love the smell, holding the books, leafing through the pages…”
