---
title: "Kindle 3G 3.0.2 Experience"
url: "http://andrewbolster.info/2010/09/kindle-3g-3.0.2-experience/"
date: "2010-09-21T22:30:24Z"
tags: ["Books","Electronics","Innovation","Technology"]
---

Just under a month after ordering, with a shipping schedule fraught with manufacturing delays and pushed-back dispatch dates (Not complaining, I’m not the only one so everyone was shocked by the demand also) I recieved my new UK kindle 3g at 11 this morning.

Immediately I loaded some math-loaded PDF’s which the [free.amazon.com document converter](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200493090#email) handled with ease, then started going through my usual list of sites on the free 3G network, [Twitter](http://twitter.com/) (largley fine but sluggish), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/) (buggy with regards to javascript elements, occasionally freezing completely needing to be latched-off and on again) Google-Apps Mail(constantly refreshing and wouldn’t load stably), google reader (worked perfectly out of the box including keyboard shortcuts, which are awesome!) and my ToDo list of late, [TeuxDeux](http://teuxdeux.com/) (sluggish and slightly misaligned, but usable)

Then, lo’ and behold, this article appears in my Google Reader from the [KindleWorldBlog](http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2010/09/kindle-3-preview-release-of-software_18.html), indicating a new [pre-release update](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200529700&tag=kwab-20#preview).

In short, I have never had such an aptly timed update; Its as if Amazon have psychically heard me over the [Whispernet](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200375890) and fixed more or less everything (TeuxDeux is still a bit skew wiff, but liveable)

Oh, did I mention? The e-ink screen renders advanced latex-style math perfectly! This frankly amazed me. But the best thing I can say about the screen is the oft-proclaimed readability is, if anything, understated.

Even before the update, the screen refreshes were almost perfect, and definitely at least as fast as turning a page in deadtree  (as long as your going one page forward or back, the page-caching seemed to falter on significant page-jumps) but with the 3.0.2 update, many-dozen-page jumps are handled with relative ease.

While this may not be a life changing device, it is pretty darned close. The only thing stopping [Google Docs](http://docs.google.com/) from functioning is lack of  ‘one window’ support in Docs (which would be a perfect replacement for a native note-taker),  and I don’t blame Amazon for not going tabbed; The Kindle in my opinion is a focused device; there is no alt-tab, there (to my knowledge) is no copy/paste from browser to book (or back). But thats not a problem, in fact, its the point.

The iPad is a jack of all trades; ebooks, games, browsing, social media, media viewing and generation, and more stuff that I could never think of. The Kindle is an ebook reader, literally born and bred, with a infant browser incubating along side. When I’m reading something in an e-paper or an e-book that I have no idea about, I can pop over, spend 5 minutes familiarising myself with the wikipedia article, and go back. I can comfortably read google reader (save for the videos) at a bus stop or on the train. If I come across a truely inspiring piece of prose, I can [share it with my social network in situ](http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/kindle-facebook-twitter/).

If it wasn’t for the lack of native or google-docs text editing, (and the lack of SSH client), I would carry my laptop alot less than I do now.