Questions, I get questions... Now that I've had my Kindle DX for a couple weeks, what do I think of it? Am I using it?
The more I use it, the more I love it. And I'm using it a lot. I've got just over 150 books loaded onto it now, and about 135 of those were free (mostly from Project Gutenberg). I've read 3 books on it, and I'm nearly done with the fourth (Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe – last read when I was a kid, and much better even than my memory of it). I no longer even think about how to use it; it's become as intuitive as turning the pages in a book.
Last night, just for fun, I tried the text-to-speech feature that's built into the Kindle DX. I have heard computer-synthesized text many times, and had never been impressed with it, so my expectations were low – but I was pleasantly surprised by the Kindle's computerized reader. The male voice was clear, the speech had (mostly) appropriate inflection and pauses (like a human speaker would make), and it was perfectly understandable. I let it read an entire page of Robinson Crusoe, which included a dozen or so place names and other proper nouns that text-to-voice systems often screw up (because they're not in its internal dictionary). Everything was pronounced either perfectly or very close to it. I had no trouble whatsoever understanding the entire page. I could imagine listening to a book on my commute with this thing...
Debbie has been resisting even looking at the Kindle. Last night she borrowed it to check it out. I'm gonna hazard a guess here: we're likely going to be a two-Kindle family someday soon...
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