Kindle – the future of books?

My professor Chris Delboni showed me her Kindle after class last week. She wrote a detailed post about her experience with it in her blog months ago and has mentioned it in class, but I did not appreciate it until I saw it.

Kindle, a product developed and sold by Amazon, is basically the iPod of books.

As a book lover, I was skeptical about the Kindle’s ability to provide an enjoyable reading experience. But Kindle is surprisingly easy to read (something about it not being back-lit allows you to read it without hurting your eyes the same way staring at a computer monitor does)

After playing with it for awhile, I am now convinced that the Kindle or a product very similar to it will be the future of books. I imagine students no longer being weighed down by heavy textbooks but being able to have them all loaded into a single lightweight device. The current Kindle holds up to 1,500 books and even lets you save your page, highlight, and take notes.

Rather than discouraging book sales and hurting the future of reading, I think it has the potential to revive it. And Amazon has just launched a wider version which makes newspaper and magazine reading easier with Kindle.

I really think this is the future of books, and I can’t wait to get one!