Bedside delivery of the Wall Street Journal–sounds like something you get in five star hotels, right? It’s also something you can get now from Amazon.com in the form of an electronic book reader named Kindle. I got mine three weeks ago and so far I’m having a great experience with it. It cost $400.

Amazon claims the Kindle is an entirely new class of device—”a convenient, portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers.” They’re using the new electronic paper that was designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. The “paper” shows up as a dull gray and the “print” is a crisp black that is easy to see and read. The screen isn’t backlit so you can’t see it in a dark room, but you don’t get the same eye fatigue as with LCD computer screens.

Kindle is completely wireless and doesn’t need to be connected to anything unless you’re charging the battery. That’s really great for me, since my desk is already a complete clutter of electronic gadgets that need to be synced with my computer. The battery lasts about a day so I charge it on my nightstand overnight. Amazon claims the battery only needs to be recharged every other day, but that hasn’t been my experience. They also claim that it will last a week if you turn the wireless off; I’ve gone several days with the wireless off but a week may be optimistic.

Amazon pulls off the wireless trick using something they call Whispernet:

With Whispernet, you can be anywhere, think of a book, and get it in one minute. Similarly, your content automatically comes to you, wherever you are. Newspaper subscriptions are delivered wirelessly each morning. Most magazines arrive before they hit newsstands. Haven’t read the book for tomorrow night’s book club? Get it in a minute. Finished your book in the airport? Download the sequel while you board the plane. Whether you’re in the mood for something serious or hilarious, lighthearted or studious, Kindle delivers your spontaneous reading choices on demand.

Whispernet works great and there’s no extra charge for it. One of the neat things you can do is e-mail PDF and DOC files to a special address at Amazon and they’ll convert them and send them wirelessly to your Kindle. It takes about two minutes from the time you click “Send” to the time the document is available on your Kindle.

You shop the Kindle Store wirelessly right from the device, allowing you to click, buy, and start reading your books in about a minute. You can also go to Amazon.com and order things that will be sent to your Kindle. Amazon has a surprising number of Kindle books in their database, and I think on a going forward basis, all new books will also come in Kindle versions.

The Kindle has limited web surfing ability. You can subscribe to selected blogs for $2 a month, and click from those blogs into other web sites. It also has wireless access to Wikipedia, as well as a built-in dictionary. It has an “experimental” web browser that lets you Google, or type in a domain name to go right to the screen. As long as you only use it for text-based sites, it’s a decent experience.

All of these features are worthless if the Kindle isn’t easy to read. So is it easy to read? Yes it is. I’ve read three full books on it and several days worth of electronic newspapers. But its not as easy to read as a regular book for three reasons:

1. It only displays the equivalent of a half page of text at one time–and that’s with the font size turned to its smallest setting. I read very quickly and can absorb one Kindle-screen of information in about fifteen seconds.
2. It takes a second to “turn a page”. I’m assuming the lag is a technical issue with the new electronic paper. But combined with there only being a half-page of information on the screen, it gets annoying. With a regular book, you can turn the page as you’re reading so there’s no break in your thought process. With the Kindle it’s more like read-read-read-wait, read-read-read-wait…
3. My last complaint is the gray screen. It would be much nicer if it was black text on a white background, just like a normal printed page.

Despite all this, I use the Kindle every day. It’s really nice having a small lightweight device beside my bed so I can read the paper and political blogs in the morning. The small page size and lag when turning pages are annoying but I’ve been adjusting and don’t really notice it any more.

Another major attraction for me is travel–I love to read and always take a mountain of books with me when I fly. Now I can leave them all at home and just take this one small device. Plus I have access to Amazon.com and can download new books on the road, without access to a bookstore or computer. With my last trip, I downloaded about ten “free samples” from Amazon while I waited at the gate (each book has a free sample that contains the first few chapters). I skimmed them and purchased a full book after I boarded. I read it during the flight and the flight attendant never asked me to put the Kindle away during takeoff/landing because (I assume) the Kindle has a nice leather case that makes it look like a book.

So in conclusion, I think this is a breakthrough device and will be the first e-book reader that sees widespread adoption. Amazon literally can’t keep them stocked–did I mention I had to wait more than a month to get mine? The Kindle is the iPod of e-Books–a hundred years from now historians will look back at the Kindle’s launch as the beginning of the end for paper-bound books.

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You can see a demo of the Kindle here: