Amazon Kindle

All you that have been following me on Twitter know that I've got a Amazon Kindle 2 one week ago. It's time for getting my thoughts out there. I don't need to say that I'm a strong believer on electronic books. I don't think there is any future for traditional books anymore. Who wants to carry around heavy, no-environmental-friendly, paper-based books?

I've got rid of my Sony eBook 3 months ago. Mostly, because I was waiting to get my hands around a Kindle 2 at some point this year - I didn't think it was going to be so early though. The Kindle 2 solves two of the my top three complains with the Sony:

1) It has wireless access, so I can buy books on the go (e.g., compulsive buy on the airport before getting into the plane). At the same time, the wireless access ensures that every morning I'm getting the WSJ on my device without me doing anything - other newspapers are available (e.g., New York Times)

2) It has a small keyboard that let you take notes. You can also clip articles that you like or highlight portions of a book, article and bookmark it. That's great as a substitute of the side note the I loved making on traditional books. It's not perfect, but it does the job.

I'm still missing a color screen, but that's not big deal for most of the books. For magazines is important, but for now, I can keep reading magazines on my computer. That's ok with me.

I don't need to say how impress I am with the device. It's responsive, works great, is light, ... However, it doesn't matter how good it was, because today it has became better. Amazon has launched the Amazon Kindle app for the iPhone. That means that all the books that I'm buying are available to be read also on my iPhone.

For me that's a big plus. Now, my library is available for me 24x7 on multiple devices. I have to say that this is the factor that helped the most in order to eliminate something that all of us, early adopters of ebooks, are facing: the fear of obsolescence.

I'm talking about the fact of investing $$$$ into buying books that after 5 years no platform supports anymore. I lost 10 books when I sold my Sony eBook, but I'm confident that the Kindle is a keeper. They are taking the right steps. Let's hope it doesn't take them 7 years to drop DRM, as took iTunes.

Anyway, in short, this is a great device, not perfect, but as good as it can get now.