I am a gadget guy at heart. I’ve got tons of cool gadgets, but I’m not made of money. I buy my gadgets on ebay or craigslist in the hopes to get a good piece of technology for a low price. I was considering a tablet device (iPad: $600, Samsung Galaxy Tab: $400, or an e-reader: $various). After weighing all of the options (I have an android phone already which gives me all things android (email, browser, …) and a google TV which gives the kids the ability to watch youtube and netflix on the TV), so I was searching for a device that can offer a different experience for me.

My eyes have been watering for about 3 years. It started when I was working at Pronto. I thought that it was eye strain from sitting in front of a computer for 9+ hours a day, but it turns out that it was a combination of many things. Lack of sleep, computer eye strain, cell phone eye strain and driving in the car with the heating or A/C on, while the sun shines in my eyes. All-in-all, it was a lot of light shining in my eyes (sun, phone, computer, …). My eyes were getting bombarded almost all of the waking hours of my life.

I started to research the e-ink technology. E-ink is mainly just little balls floating in a liquid that are painted black on one side and white on the other side. They’re magnetically charged and roll one way or another depending on the way they’re charged. The e-ink ‘page’ doesn’t require any power once the page has been changed, so the battery life is very nice.

Before I bought, I downloaded the free kindle app for Android and the PC and started reading books that way. I downloaded some free books and got used to reading a book on a ‘device’ instead of the old paper way. It was nice, but not great. I figured that I needed the e-ink format to ease my eyes.

I bit the bullet about 2 weeks ago and bought a kindle 3 after comparing the sony, nook and kindle (sorry John - the old CEO of Pronto.com, John Foley, is the COO of the electronics division of Barnes and Noble (the nook)). I seriously considered the nook, but ended up going with the kindle because of a few things: 1.) the ‘free first chapter’ policy that Amazon has. 2.) I’ve never had a bad transaction with Amazon - ever! 3.) many other friends of mine had kindles and recommended them without reservation. 4.) sales people at Barnes and Noble couldn’t answer hardly any of my questions about the nook - they’re not really trained all that well or they don’t care about it. 5.) the newspaper and magazine selection for the Kindle was better than the nook selection.

I got the kindle and immediately, I loved it. The battery life for the wi-fi version is about 3 weeks with ‘average’ use. 4 weeks if used gingerly, 2 weeks if you download stuff daily and read > 2 hours a day. I download daily and read about 1-2 hours a day most days.

Instapaper! If I’m at work and someone forwards me a long article that I don’t have time to read at work, I can use instapaper to send it to my kindle for reading later. It sends 20 articles at a time and does a great job (and it’s free). Reading internet articles on the kindle has already saved my eyes. I can tell a difference already.

Books! Not all of my favorite books are available in the kindle format, but many are. > 80% of my favorites have a kindle version. I’m concentrating on reading some books that I woudln’t have normally read in paper form (I’m reading 20,000 leagues under the sea now).

Newspapers and Magazines! I downloaded a few one-time magazines and newspapers. They’re all very nicely converted and the newspapers don’t have any ads! What an awesome selling point! Love it.

Overall, I’d say that the Wi-Fi kindle is worth every one of your $139.

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