I returned home from an out-of-town business trip this evening, and found my Kindle machine (which I had just ordered yesterday, courtesy of Amazon’s one-click shopping mechanism) waiting for me. I’ve now had about two hours to play with it, which in today’s superficial world probably qualifies me as a veteran pundit; in any case, it’s enough to have formed a few initial impressions, which I hereby pass on to the blogosphere for whatever they’re worth.

Let me start by acknowledging that it’s not perfect, and that other industry analysts/bloggers have already begun listing the desired features of Kindle 2.0. But, hey, you could have said (and many people did say) the same thing about the iPhone. And though I can’t remember the details any longer, I suspect there was a similar amount of carping about the iPod when it first came out — “What?!? Steve Jobs wants $399 for that piece of junk? No way!” Of course, that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away — and most of us are blissfully happy with the 5th, 6th, or 7th generation of the little music boxes. Chances are we’ll feel the same way about the iPhone in another year or two; and I think there’s a reasonably good chance we’ll have similar opinions about Kindle.

Okay, so what reactions did I have? First, some simple things about the look and feel, and the overall ergonomics:

1. It’s not as ugly as I thought it might be, based on my initial impression from looking at pictures on the Internet yesterday and the day before. The white color is a little boring, and I have to assume that if Kindle succeeds in the marketplace, we’ll soon see all of the garish colors currently associated with iPods and Dell laptops. But for now, it’s fine.
2. The 10.3-ounce weight is fine. I’ve seen some complaints that it’s too heavy, and I don’t know what on earth people expected. It’s certainly lighter than a hardcover book, and lighter than many paperbooks I’ve bought in recent years. I suppose I might notice the weight if I had to hold it with two fingers for 27 consecutive hours … but for normal usage, it’s just fine.
3. The dimensions of the display screen — roughly 3 inches by 5 inches (I’m sure some anal personality will soon email me with the exact dimensions) — also seem fine. I suppose there are some who would like it to be larger or smaller, and may Kindle 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 will come in several different sizes — just like the iPod shuffle, the iPod, nano, and the iPod touch.
4. The “chiclet” keyboard looks and feels a little cheesy, but for me, the main thing is that the keys are spaced far enough apart that my fat fingers don’t accidentally hit two keys at the same time.
5. The control bars on the left side and right side of the device — which are used to advance to the next page, or go back to the previous page — feel natural, and seemed to be intuitively placed just where I would want them to be. There have been a couple of times when I inadvertently went forward when I meant to go backward (or vice-versa).
6. I’ve seen suggestions that a touch-sensitive screen would have simplified the operation of the device, and perhaps eliminated the need for the thumbwheel scrolling mechanism. Yeah, maybe so; but I assume there’s a cost associated with that technology, and so once again I’d expect to see it in version 2, 3, or 4 of the device rather than in this first release. Meanwhile, the thumbwheel works fine; anyone who has used a Blackberry will react to it instinctively.

Next, a couple of comments about the user interface, and overall functionality:

1. If you’re in the midst of a document, chances are that the next thing you want to do is to advance to the next page, or go back to the previous page; figuring out how to do that is perfectly obvious. But if instead you want to go back to the first page of the document, or to the Table of Contents, figuring out how to accomplish that was usually straightforward and obvious … but not always. But remember: this is based on an hour or two of playing around with the machine. By tomorrow morning, it will be second nature.
2. Similarly, the initial on-screen tutorial made it clear that I could look up the dictionary definition of any word or phrase, and that I could also search for a Wikipedia article based on any search term. Again, it was generally fairly straightforward to figure out how to use that functionality … but not always. Still, the very fact that such functionality exists at all — courtesy of a reasonably responsive wireless connection that worked right away, with no setup, registration, configuration, or work at all — is pretty amazing.
3. In general, the overall responsiveness to the various functions and commands seems pretty good. I read one blog whiner who complained that waiting for a full minute to download a book onto the Kindle machine is simply unacceptable. Jeez, Louise … how obnoxious can you get? I have to admit that I haven’t downloaded a full book yet, but I did download today’s copy of the New York Times — which took less than 30 seconds, and cost me a whopping $0.75 (compared to $1.25 for the hard-copy print edition out at the newstand).
4. Downloading/purchasing a newspaper issue, or a book, is a one-click operation if you’ve already got an Amazon account. Indeed, since you can only buy the Kindle from Amazon at this point, there’s a pretty good chance that you do have an Amazon account … in which case, the machine arrives at your house with all of your registration information already pre-entered. When I turned my machine on, it said (figuratively, in any case), “Hi, Ed!”, and made it just as easy to buy a book as Apple makes it easy to buy music via iTunes.
5. The user interface for buying a book is essentially the same as that for the Amazon on-line book store — i.e., you can see ratings and reviews, read a summary of the book, and even download (free) the first chapter. In any case, there’s nothing to learn; that’s how we’ve been interacting with Amazon for the past ten years.
6. I’ve read the manual on how to store bookmarks, clippings, and notes — and how I can upload them to my PC, or to the great Amazon server in the sky. It all seems to make sense, but I have to admit I haven’t actually tried it. I have a feeling I’ll want some utility programs to manage all of this stuff at some point in the future, once I’ve collected several hundred (or thousand) such items; and I’ll probably want to merge and integrate them with other notes, clippings, and bookmarks on my desktop/laptop computer. Without any real experience, I could conjure up some half-baked ideas about what would be useful and nice … but I think I’ll keep my mouth shut until I actually know what I’m talking about.
7. Similarly, the manual tells me that I can email Microsoft Word, TXT, and HTML documents to Amazon, as well as JPG images (why on earth I would want to transfer a JPG image to a black-and-white display device is a mystery to me at the moment); and I’ve read that Amazon will then transfer those documents or images (wirelessly) to my Kindle device. But I’m annoyed that PDF documents don’t seem to be on the list at the moment; I assume that limitation will disappear at some time in the future, and that Kindle may become a much more “universal” reading device for lots of documents that I currently read on my laptop during long plane rides…
8. I see that I can install an SD memory card in the back of the machine, but there are a couple of basic factoids that I’m missing at the moment: (a) how much internal memory is incorporated into the basic Kindle? (b) how much storage does a typical book, newspaper, or blog take up? (c) how can I figure out how much unused storage I’ve got? (d) how big an SD card will the Kindle machine accommodate, and how can I tell how much of that storage is used/available? (e) how do I move documents back and forth between the main storage and the SD card? None of these are earth-shaking questions, and the answers may be somewhere in the documentation … if not, I’m sure some geek is figuring this out right now, and the information will be available in the next day or two…

All in all, I’m very impressed with the device. Now all I have to do is figure out what books I really want to buy, and then download them and start reading them … Meanwhile, I’ll be back with some more comments once I’ve had a few more days to play with Kindle.