Hasta La Gadget!

Oct 21

Hands-On With the International Kindle and Its Surprise Web Access

Posted in: e-books, kindle, Media Players, Today's Chili

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Two days after launch, Amazon’s international Kindle has started to show up on doorsteps around the world, including mine. For those outside the United States, the Kindle has until now been a curiosity. Now it’s a way for English speakers everywhere to get quick and cheap access to otherwise hard-to-find books. On Monday, we summed up the problems with the rather contemptuous attitude Amazon has shown with the “international” Kindle. Today we take a look at how the actual hardware shapes up.

When I first opened the package (with its cute “Once upon a time” tagline), I tried to peel the sticker off the screen, giving instructions on charging and switching on. This was, of course, the e-ink screen, a novelty in these parts. But of course, y’all across the pond have known that for a couple years already. On to the differences.

The first moan we had was about the power adapter. The Kindle ships internationally with a U.S. plug. This is in fact a USB wall-wart, and could easily be swapped out. The included USB cable, of course, works fine anywhere. Result: Not as bad as we thought, especially for me, as I have a U.S./E.U. adapter always in the wall for testing products from the States.

Next up, wireless. The new machine’s full name is “Kindle with U.S. and International Wireless”, and it uses a GSM cellular radio which works pretty much everywhere in the world. Service is provided by AT&T with a roaming agreement, something that means U.S. travelers have to pay extra for content to be delivered when they are away from home. It also means that, as we previously complained, many users don’t get the web browsing features. This turns out to be only half true, as we shall discover in a moment

The connection is supposed to be 3G, but it was dead slow. I bought David Byrne’s new book, The Bicycle Diaries, and it took a couple of minutes to arrive, despite being just 4.4 MB. Still, these are e-books, so there’s no real hurry.

The big surprise is that web browsing does work. Or at least, you can visit one and only one site. This is not Amazon.com (although you can of course browse the Kindle Store from the device). It is Wikipedia. If you were to choose just one web site to visit, it would probably be Wikipedia, and even without pictures it is very useful. There’s just one problem: You can only visit http://en.m.wikipedia.org/. Want to access the Spanish version, in Spain? Tough.

Am I pleased to have it? Hell yes. I do almost all my reading on my iPod Touch these days, so the Kindle’s bigger, sharper screen and longer battery life are welcome. I’d love to have a real web browser in there, along with PDF support, but the ability to have instant access to thousands of books in my own language is worth the price on its own. Oh, and the leather case (bought separately), is nice, too.

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Photo credit: Charlie Sorrel