Pre-order Kindle – check

Amazon serves the reader. That’s why I just pre-ordered the new Amazon Kindle. I just bought a Kindle last year, and I have a personal policy that I skip a generation of hardware, which I vehemently broke just minutes ago. I couldn’t stop myself, I heard about the Kindle very early yesterday morning and immediately jumped on the Internet to check it out. It was beautiful and the pangs of desire set in.

I held off, and the pangs subsided a little, that is until I went back to the Kindle page and saw another picture of it. That was it, I had to have it. I clicked the “Pre-order” button and immediately walked up to my mom and told her what I had done. She, having been a terrible accountability partner has told me just to buy things I’ve wanted in the past, this time she told me not to. Then I showed it to her and we talked about a spending strategy.

When it comes to money and using credit cards, we are very strategic. It is all about your closing date. Buying things right after your closing date enables you to hold off payment for nearly 2 months! Because I didn’t have a balance on my Amazon card, I called them up and had them change my closing date to the 25th of August. The Kindle is released on August 27. This means it will show up on my September bill and I won’t have to pay it till the 23rd of October!! This gives me all of August, September and October to save up the $189.

There are 4 reasons why I chose to buy the latest generation Kindle.

1. Wi-Fi. The 2nd generation Kindle doesn’t have Wi-Fi and it’s a feature I frequently wish I had. Using Wi-Fi, over a 3G connection means battery life is greatly improved, providing 3 weeks of life versus 10 days with 3G.

2. New design. This design is amazing. It’s smaller, lighter and it comes in graphite which increases contrast. The part of the design I’m most looking forward to is the new 5 way controller. The one on the Kindle 2 just wasn’t as intuitive as I would have liked. The new controller looks like navigating pages, highlighting and make notations will be easier.

3. 50% better contrast. The Kindle 2 has decent contrast, but anything to make it easier to read is always a welcomed feature. Not only is the contrast supposed to be better than the Kindle 2, but Amazon also claims it’s 50% better than any other e-reader.

4. Native PDF support. PDF formating on the Kindle 2 was hit and miss and because of this I never took advantage of it. Now that the Kindle 3 has native PDF support there isn’t a reason why I I can’t read those books I have in PDF format.

Why the Kindle over other devices like the iPad or nook? I already mentioned the primary reason, Amazon serves the reader.

The iPad isn’t for the reader. It’s a device that does a lot of things, and reading is just one facet. It’s for media consumption and because of that it needs a screen that can handle much of what you throw at it. Sadly, reading on a screen that produces a fair amount of glare and is backlit is quite difficult, especially if you’re going to read for long periods of time or outside. If the goal is to read, the iPad should never be an option.

The nook is a nice e-reader, but is also not a device that I think serves the reader, it serves Barnes & Noble. The idea of the nook feels like it looked at what the Kindle didn’t have and they based all their design decisions on that. The Kindle doesn’t have a touch screen and doesn’t have a color display. The nook does, but it comes at the cost of the reader, with lower performance and battery life, not to mention the navigation is confusing and sluggish with the little amount of time I had with it.

There are still many other great features that make me want this new Kindle, including much longer battery life (up to 1 month), holds up to 3,500 books, new and improved fonts and faster page turns. There isn’t much about the Kindle that isn’t awesome. What do you think? Is Amazon’s new Kindle awesome?