In this case the “….” is an Amazon Kindle. My wife is quite the Bibliophile. She not only works in a Library, she also binds books as a hobby, and in currently continuing her education for a masters degree in Library Science. It is the last endeavor that prompted me to investigate getting her a Kindle.

Many of her required textbooks are available from Amazon in a digital form. While the cost of this digital texts is still outrageously high, they are still less than the cost of the physical edition. I rationalized that the cost savings between the physical and digital edition would justify getting her a Kindle. Before handing the device of to my wife (which would assure me never seeing it again) I had an opportunity to play with it and evaluate it’s features.

There have been many comparison between the Kindle and the iPad, and after using both, I think these comparisons are unfair. While they are summarily shaped devices and there is some function overlap, the Kindle and the iPad occupy two distinct use cases. It’s not entirely out of the question that a person could own both and not feel that they are duplicating themselves.

The iPad is a full tablet computer, capable of video, audio, text, content creation, communication and gaming. The Kindle does one thing, display digital books, and it does that one thing exceptionally well. It is light in the hands, lighter in fact than most paperback books, and the positioning of the page turning buttons makes holding it with ether the right or left hand vey easy.

Best feature of the Kindle however is it’s screen. It’s difficult to describe the screen, and image of it online do not do it justice.

When I first opened the box that the Kindle was shipped in, and started to take the protective plastic wrapping off, I was puzzled for a few moments at how to remove what I thought was the protective “demo” screen protector. Having unboxed hundreds of new gadgets, it is quite common for me to have to remove plastic protective coverings from their screens. More often than not, manufactures will print dummy or demo screen shots on these protective coverings just to provide some flare when the user opens the box. All to often however the marketing departments get over zealous, and these protective covering screens look better than the real thing once it’s powered on. So when I saw the screen on the Kindle, it to me just looked like another case of this.

I was wrong. The eInk display was crisp to the point of fooling me. While the screen is indeed grayscale (i.e. black and white). The images and text that render on that screen are just as well defined as ink on paper. Because there is no backlight, touch screen layer, or LED fade, looking at the Kindle is oddly wonderful. The eInk technology also does not use power when it is not “transitioning”, so there is never a need to turn the device off, you simply set it down. There is a “screen saver” of sorts that will come on after a while, displaying images of famous authors, I this is purely for esthetics as there is no need to “save the screen” as with LEDs. Even after several days of having the unit around the house, I still get the odd impression that some has left an ink and paper drawing on top of the Kindle if I happen to see it laying on a table.

This amazing display has but a single draw back. It takes a noticeable fraction of a second to “redraw” the screen between page turns. However this time is considerably shorter than a physical page turn in a book, so the tradeoff is acceptable. This of course means that eInk, in it’s current form will never be a “video” display.

While I said that the Kindle is only an eBook reader, there is another feature of the Kindle that by itself would justify me buying one. The Kindle has one of the best “text-to-speech” options I have ever seen in a mobile device. This feature was the source of some controversy when the Kindle launched, with publishers claiming that “text-to-speech” somehow infringed on their “audiobook” rights/sales. However as someone who lives with a developmental reading disorder (dyslexia), I found this feature in the Kindle to be profoundly helpful. I had the Kindle “read” to me an entire periodical magazine on a short car trip. While “audiobooks” have allowed me to consume vastly more knowledge and information than my disorder would normally allow, there are to my knowledge no “audio-magazinesmagazines” widely available in the subjects I have interests. I feel it is rather offensive for publishers to take issue with “text-to-speech”, but sadly this “rights” question wasn’t the only “copyright foolishness” to crop up on the Kindle as I will cover in a moment.

There are “Kindle Apps” for my iPhone and iPad, and I have these loaded, however these do not include the “text-to-speech” features.  I suspect this has to do with licensing issues regarding Nuance Technologies, who provide the vocalization and the “Tom” voice used on the Kindle. (As an interesting side note, Nuance Technologies also provides the vocalization for Microsofts in-car control system known as “sync”, as well as voices for “xtranormal”, a website that has been used to make several meme videos from chat logs. It basically means that your Kindle and your Ford have the same voice.) I think I will hold out a bit longer and hope that the text-to-speech feature will be added to the iPad, but if it is not, it is worth the $140 for a Kindle just for that one feature.

My finale thoughts on the Kindle are less about the Kindle itself and more about Digital Rights Management. With books quickly moving from physical paper to digital downloads, the publishing industry is trying very hard not to become the music industry.

15 years ago, people started “ripping” there digital CDs to MP3s and as the Internet bandwidth increased, people found that they could pass copies of these MP3s around the net. It took the music industry 5 years to even acknowledge that this was happening, then they spent 10 useless years, and untold billions of dollars, trying to make world “forget” about digital music before finally accepting reality and offering a legitimate easy to use method for people to buy music online. However, in those 15 years, the worlds music industry faltered, and was forever stripped of any control it ever had. The publish world does not want to end up the same way.

Up until now there has not been an easy way to convert physical books to into digital form like we had in the dates of the CDs for Music and currently with DVDs for video. But when most books are going to be sold digitally (we have already hit the high water mark for physical books sales, sales will only decline in the future) there is now a large collection of digital books in the publics hands, and that public is going to want to share and trade those books. However, if the publishing industry does not create some easy and unobtrusive method for allowing people to use their digital books in the same way they used their physical books, then the power of public desire will simply overwhelm the demands of the publishing companies, and this has already started to happen.

Case in point: My wife, in her capacity with the local Library, started a project to allow library patrons to “check out” digital books from our Libraries website and put those digital books on a portable e-reader such as the Kindle. Like most governmental insinuations, our local library did not create their own  digital book library website, but rather contracted with an outside company. This company claimed to allow these digital books to be placed on a Kindle. However after 6 hours of wrestling with this website, Adobe, desktop software, and the Kindle, my wife was unable to “check out” a single book from her own library’s website. Just as a test however, she Googled the name of the book she was trying to check out, and within 4 minutes had a “pirated” copy on her Kindle.

This is in no way meant to condone depriving authors of their right to make a living from their work. It is however meant to be an indictment of the publishing industry for falling into the same trap as the music industry did back in 2001. Digital goods are not the same as analog goods, they flow differently and people treat them differently. Trying to artificially place restrictions on digital goods so as to make them behave like analog goods will only result in people bypassing these restrictions. While the vast majority of the people bypassing the resections will not engage in behavior with will violate copyright, the fact that these restrictions have been bypassed will enable piracy on the part of less ethical people. When you have a critical mass of people who see nothing wrong with piracy, your industry collapses. When that happens no law, lobbyist, lawsuit, or international treaty will put the gene back in his bottle.

I have carried a 2 cell AA Mini-Maglite for 20+ years. It is the perfect flashlight to have on your belt for all those times when you need a quick light. In fact, I use it at home quite regularly when I need to pick something up in a dark room, and don’t feel like hitting the light switch.

While the MagLite is tough, they do were out, get lost, or dropped down a 100+ chasm in a cave system. (I could still see the light, but I wasn’t repelling down to get it.). About 4 years ago I switched to an after market LED system for my MagLite. Just by chance I needed another light for an employee, so I decided to put the converted MagLite head to head with a factory LED MagLite.

Cost. A factory LED MagLite was $21.24 from my local Lowes Home Improvement Store. My Converted MagLite was $8.77 for the regular incandescent body and $9.50 for a Nite Ize 3-bulb LED converter kit, for a total of $18.27. There were a few different options for converting to LED, I just happened to pick the 3-bulb Nite Ize.

Size/Configuration/Weight. The factory LED MagLite is about a half an inch longer, but still in the same diameter. The extra length also does not come from a single larger part of the light. Every aspect from the body, grip, and head are just a touch longer. To compensate the nylon belt holder is also just a touch longer, but I found that the factory light fit well into a standard pouch. The factory LED MagLite is 4oz, while the converted one is 3.75oz. Externally, the only real difference is the loss of the mounting/attachment hole at the end of the standard light. I never used this hole to attach thing to my light, but I have used it for prying or scrapping something in a pinch. The factory LED light also has white etched serial number of the side above the grip and bellow the head, something not on the standard body.

The Factory light on top is just a bit longer

The extra length is accommodated for by a longer case

The Factory MagLite on the left lacks the attachment hole

Candle Mode. I’m never sure if this is an approve method of using a MagLite, but serval times over the past two decades I have had need to remove the head of the light, place it on the bottom of the body, and use it like a candle. Admittedly I have done this less with the converted LED light, as the light dispersal pattern was not as effective as the incandescent bulb. The factory LED MagLite however has returned much of this lost light when in candle mode.

Factory MagLite on the Left is much brighter

Bulb. LED bulbs pretty much have 50,000 hour life spans. In fact the electronics package driving the light has less life span then the diodes themselves. To put 50,000 hours into perspective in a flashlight. If left on 24/7/365, an LED would burn out in 5.5 years. For my use pattern of an average of 5 minutes per day, the life expectancy of the LED would be 1,644 years . Of course, turning it off and on so much might half that life span, but still, in a flashlight, you can expect the LED to outlive the body. The converted flashlight uses a cluster of 3 diodes to emit light. The factory light has a single high power surface mount LED. By the very nature of the part, you can replace the bulb in the conversion light, I saw no way to replace the bulb in the factory light, but again, the bulb and electronics should last as long as the body.

The LED on the Factory MagLite does not stand off of the body.

In contrast the Conversion light has a large electronics and bulb package.

Light. The light patterns and color where very different between the factory and converted MagLites. The converted light has a softer bluer light, while the factory light was sharper and more white. I would almost say the factory light has a yellow ting to it, but that may be just me being used to 4 years of the converted light. The pattern on the converted light is a wider more nebulous field, giving light pretty much equally to all aspects of where the pattern hits.  In contrast the factory light has an intense center of light, with a uniform surround of softer light. The “range” of light from the factory model is greater, given this high intensity center.

The light patter on the left is from the factory light. It shows a MUCH brighter field with a sharp center. The conversion light has a softer and smaller pattern.

These two pictures show the light dispersal when in candle mode between the factory light on the left/top and the conversion light on the right/bottom. They are of the same thing with the same camera settings. To stop glare, the MagLite itself in sanding upright just out of frame to the right in both images.

Carrying. I have noticed no difference between carrying the factory light and the converted light. While the factory light is longer and heavier, it is not noticeable so on the belt.

Battery life. I’ve not have the factory life long enough to test. In my use pattern of less than 5 minutes per day, I replaced my AA batteries only twice in the last 4 years. This was in contrast to replacing them every 6 or 9 months with the incandescent. There is also a sharper decline with the LED light over incandescent. The LED seems to simple stop working one day, and I have to replace the batteries. With the incandescents, I remember this getting dimmer and dimmer over several week until I replaced the batteries, then was amazed at how bright it was again. LEDs work of a constant voltage, so once the batteries fall out of that range, the light goes out. We’ll see how well the factory light handles batteries.

Conclusion. What first put me off the factory light was the larger size. I like things to be smaller and compact. While I’m not sure of the technical reasons for the extra length, it really isn’t a big deal. I have to admit after a week of caring the factory light, I think it’s better overall than the converted one I had for the last 4 four years. The main reason for having the conversion was that in 2006 I needed a new bulb, and decided to buy the $10 conversion rather than the $2 incandescent bulb. If you already have a 2xAA incandescent Mini-MagLite, then I think the conversation is worth it just in battery savings alone. However, if you’re thinking about buying a new MagLite for whatever reason, spend the extra $10 and get a factory light. Of course you could do what I did and give your old light to someone and get a new factory LED for yourself .

]]> http://www.taborcg.com/2010/02/03/ipad-rant-1-in-picture/feed/ 0 http://www.taborcg.com/2008/10/21/my-first-full-day-with-the-android-t-mobile-g1/ http://www.taborcg.com/2008/10/21/my-first-full-day-with-the-android-t-mobile-g1/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:12:32 +0000 mckinleytabor http://www.taborcg.com/?p=102 As I write this, I am ending my first full days worth of use with my Android Phone. I actually received the unit yesterday afternoon, and after about 90 minutes I had gone over every feature and all the current apps in the apps store.

The first thing to mention is that battery life is not so good. The phone came off its charger at 6:55 AM, and by 4:30 PM it had to go back on to charger. It takes about 30 minutes to get a full charge. Now my days use today was pretty typical for me, I spent 78 minutes on the phone, 54 of those minutes on speaker phone. No bluetooth. I did have the GPS turned on all day, and I used WIFI for about 20 minutes. The phone is set to auto sync with my Google Apps account. I did travel about 75 miles today, crossing some areas where I lose cell signal for about 15 minutes. I can only use edge, because there is no T-mobile 3G in Crossville, or all of Tennessee for that matter.

Oddly, the phone is crashing my 10.5 Macbook when I try to plug it into the USB port to charge. It does this both with USB storage turned on or off. I don’t think it’s my G1, because it plugs in fine to my 10.4 eMac at home to charge. So I think it might be my Macbook, it has some other issues anyway.

The interface is kind of kludgy, but I’m warming up to it pretty quick.

I use my own domain with Google Apps, and the Phone had NO PROBLEM syncing up and keeping me up-to-date with Emails and Calendar reminders. My Google Calendar has a couple of sub calendars on it, Business, Personal, Public, etc. I can only add stuff to ONE of those calendars, but the UI seems to have a spot where I could select another one, but no other one shows up. I’m guessing that it picked the default one for me to enter stuff in on. Entering an appointment is a little awkward, the UI for selecting time seems a bit inconsistent.

Email, I can read and reply to my messages, however, when I went to put in a signature, I could only “see” a couple of lines, but it seemed like I could enter more. Looks like a UI bug.

Contacts. BAD BUG!!! My contacts pulled down from Google, images and all. However, those contacts which are only a company name, are not showing up in the Android Contact list by the Company name, but rather by the phone number. (or just by the address for one contact that is only a company name and mailing address). There seems to be no way to adjust the view or sorting of contacts, they come up alphabetically by last name. I fear that contact feature on the phone is as bad as the contact feature on G-Mail.

Voice Dialing. Having been spoiled on Microsoft Voice Command, this feature seems very lacking. However, the voice recognition did work rather well, and was quiet accurate. However, you still have a UI button to confirm the call, so it’s not quite as nice as you think it should be. Also, no bluetooth activation of the feature. The good news is that the hard part of voice dialing is the accuracy of recognition, and android seems to have that licked, so if that polish up the apps functionality it might be a fair competitor to MS Voice Command. Also, Company Names do not work here, only first and last name, and the tag line “on mobile” or “at home” only changes the ORDER in which the number confirmation UI is given to you.

On a funny side note, the “flick to scroll” feature of the phone is messing with my head. My multi-touch Macbook has a feature to scroll pages. However the interface for scrolling “up” and “down” is exactly reversed between my G1 and my Macbook. On the Macbook the multi-touch gesture is designed to emulate the mouse wheel. To move down a scrollable page, your fingers move down the trackpad. But on the G1, it designed to emulate moving a peace of paper, which is the exact opposite motion. To move down a scrollable page, your finger moved “up” the screen.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a phone that had a movable screen, and even then I used my bluetooth headset 90% of the time. Now, when holding the G1 o my ear, my fingers feel the slide-out screen move ever so little, and it just feels odd.

All in all, it was a good day. In the world I am in now, with Google Apps and Macintosh, the phone made me feel more productive than my t-mobile Dash. However, it still did not have the same feeling of productivity as my T-mobile Dash did when I was in the Windows, Outlook, and Exchange world.

What will make or break this phone will be third party apps. As a phone by itself, it’s ok, but without the additional functionality of apps, it would not be worth it.

If you look at the iPhone, it survived the first year without third party apps, because it had the iTunes integration to fall back on, and a great web browser. Android does not have that “fall back” position of a media infrastructure. (yes, it did come with the Amazon MP3 store, but the lack of a headphone jack and/or bluetooth stereo, and NO video player, makes this phone a non-starter for a Portable Media Player.) So the only thing it can rely on would be awesome third party apps.

So comparing Android to iPhone on the merits of third party apps, I think Android has the greater potential. Yes, at this moment, there are tons of apps for the iPhone, but as a third party platform the iPhone biggest problem is Apple’s obsessive need to control it. Android has no such road block, it is free and open, and yes that will lead to chaos and we will see apps that can brick phones, but from that will emerge better applications that push the envelope. The four strongest advantages that Android has are, off web application installs, background processes, an open source os, and tight integration with Google, thus giving us “free” push email. If the iPhone had these, then there would be no market for Android. That is a danger, because there is no technical barrier to Apple doing these things, only artificial contractual issues.

If Apple opened up, just a bit, I fear that it will kill Android a borning.

However market dominance in third party add-ons is not the only reasons to pick a device. So let me compare the two devices on a one-two-one scale.

Both devices play DRM free MP3s, and nether play open source OGG file. Both devices require trans-coding of Video to play it on the device, Apple uses MP4/H.264 while Zune uses the Windows Media format. The trans-coded files are roughly the same size and quality once finished, both can be played back on their respective platforms (Mac/Windows for the iPod and just Windows for the Zune), and both can be played via the “extension” options for the Desktop, (Apple TV for iPod, Xbox 360 for Zune).

The Zune has a larger screen, which makes viewing video much easier. I watched most of the first season of House MD while on the plain to Africa last fall on my Zune. The video screen on the iPod is more like an afterthought, or perhaps it was kept small to keep continuity with the earlier non-video iPods.

The Zune also has Wi-Fi, but that Wi-Fi is COMPLETELLY useless. You can use Wi-Fi to “Sync” your Zune, or to “Squirt” crippled music files to another Zune User, and that is all, nothing more. The Zune has an FM radio. The iPod is completely without any wireless connectively, in or out.

Real World battery life on both devices is about comparable. 2 to 3 hours of Video, 4 to 6 hours of Music. Both devices can store and show resized images synced for the desktop. This is where I was caught of guard with both units. I have 100,000+ images socked away on my systems. This amount of pictures can easily fit on the available memory of both devices, but both iTunes and Zune Desktop “resize” an image to make it fit on your device’s screen (which makes the image smaller in both pixels and bytes). However the resizing/coping process takes a few moments per image, and with the amount of images I have, the process took most of a day.

The Desktop Software is where the two devices really diverge. Both iTunes and the Zune Desktop take an “all your media are belong to us” approach to your music and video libraries. It’s more fare to compare Zune Desktop 2 to iTunes rather than Zune Desktop 1. ZD1 was a joke, ZD2 is more like a farce.

iTunes benefits from it’s long standing install base, so the software guys at Apple have some experience, feedback, etc, on what iTunes needs to be. Microsoft’s ZD2 chose to live in a cave and ignore the lessons learned by Apple.

<aside> To be fair to Microsoft, a cooperate lawyer was most likely standing over the shoulder of each programmer, everyday, to make sure that ZD did not look or act like iTunes, just to avoid a lawsuit. A note to Microsoft, patent law in this country needs serious reform, and that will only happen when a) congress does something (unlikely) or b) corporate titans fight it out to prove that software and basic concepts are not patentable. Microsoft, take the hit in the court room, your save money in the long run, have a better product, and we just may have a better society. </aside>

ZD2 just seems so illogical to me, and they also have made it Pink. Now I’m not opposed to the color Pink, I have a seven year old daughter, so most of my house is Pink. However I do want my Windows apps to look like Windows apps. ZD2 goes out of its way to look “cool”, but in reality it’s user interface is just annoying.

In the end it was the uselessness of the wifi, and the sad shape of the Zune Desktop which made me chose to use my iPod as my daily PMP. Ironically the Zune has the greater potential, so if the hacking community will rewrite the Zune OS I could very will see myself switching back to the Zune hardware (less the Zune Hardware).

With just some very basic software changes the downsides of the Zune could be over shadowed by the additional benefits. With full and complete Wi-Fi the Zune could easily become a Wireless Streaming Content receiver. The Zune could also have some basic information apps like weather, stocks, traffic, etc. While the physical interface is somewhat limited, Microsoft could do an online system very much like they used for their SPOT technology. A user could, from their desktop, go to MSN and select the content and apps they would want to use from their Wi-Fi Zune. Then when connecting from the Zune the user would have a more limited, but completely mobile, access to those previously selected items.

With better Wi-Fi access the Zune could become a great and easy Wi-Fi Network Attached Storage. All of the hardware and processing power are there, this is just simple software changes.

The Wi-Fi angle on the Zune still bugs me. Why not have used Bluetooth? You could accomplish the same limited “Syncing” and “Squirting” but also have added Bluetooth Stereo headset support. While this article has been limited to the Zune G1 vs. the iPod G5 Video, the same question hold true for the newer iPod Touch.