I'm headed for Honolulu this weekend and am trying out my two newest tech toys. The first is the Kindle 2 from Amazon. I didn't buy the first version because I'd tried too many earlier ebooks and thought they all sucked. But everyone I know who has a Kindle raves about it, so I have to give it a go.
It looks like a giant iPhone, only much slimmer and lighter. The hardware buttons and keyboard have some irritating flaws (whoever came up with the idea for a white keyboard with pale gray letters has not flown on many planes--at least not in coach), but the screen is very readable and that's the key performance variable for reading digital books.
My second toy is a $429 PC from Acer. That's no typo--the fully powered laptop, an Aspire 5155, has all the gigahertz and gigabytes you need, a 15" screen, built-in wifi and webcam and runs Microsoft Vista. I'm still stunned that it cost less than my iPhone (and probably answers calls better as well).
With these two in tow, I will be in instruction manual mode for 5 hours while flying over the Pacific, but nothing calms me quicker than the silent hum of new microprocessors.
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