After several months of consideration, I treated myself to a Kindle last week. It is primarily for personal use to avoid taking quite so many physical books on holiday – but I can see a significant business use as well.

I have to say right up front that I love books – my home is full of books – all sorts of fiction as well as business books.  I struggle to throw away any book – just in case I want to read it again.  One of the reasons that I have taken so long to purchase a Kindle was that I was concerned about losing the joy and anticipation of opening a new book.  I read the back and front covers – reviews and introductions all as part of the anticipation before getting started.

My practical side however could see the advantage of a Kindle – no more books to carry when out and about was a definite advantage and with an impending holiday abroad, no more stuffing the suitcase with books and then worrying about excess weight!

So, the purchase was made.  I went for the wi-fi option rather than 3G. I didn’t think it was worth the extra money as I don’t travel a huge amount so will be near a wi-fi point most of the time.  With Amazon’s usual efficiency the Kindle arrived within a few days.  I was most impressed with the packaging and ease of use.  Clear instructions were available if required – but it was also easy to just ‘have a go’ if that is the preferred method of learning!

The immediate annoyance was the lack of touch screen.  I’ve had my iPhone for nearly a year now – it is amazing how quickly you expect everything to react by touch!  I downloaded a couple of the free books to give the experience a try before spending out too much money.  I have to say, I was impressed with the quality of the reading experience – a good amount of print on a page in an easy to read format.  Easy to hold and turn pages.  No more bookmarks to lose as it simply saves the page you are on.  I can see myself buying and downloading more books for the holiday.

Just as an aside, I’ve started to use the Kindle for business as well.  I downloaded a business book and use it to store pdfs that I have downloaded from the internet.  One annoyance with the business book download – although you get charged VAT, you can’t get a VAT receipt as ‘Kindles are intended for personal use’ according to Amazon.  The free pdf documents that I have downloaded from the internet onto my computer were easily transferred to the Kindle and fairly easy to read.  In portrait form, the text can be quite small, but by pressing the Aa button and swapping to landscape, the text fits on the page in a more legible format.

By the way, I brought the £27.99 Kindle case from Amazon which I would recommend.  It keeps the Kindle locked into the case and protects the screen.  I’m also looking at the 3 year warrenty/ accidental damage for £24.99 which seems good value.

Have you thought about buying a Kindle?  What have been your experiences?