Last week I ordered a Kindle 2 international edition.
Four days ago, when I just received it, the first impression was: it is better than I expected. The display has a high resolution, small font look sharp, and the technical sketches in the “Kindle User’s Guide” look crisp too. The e-paper looks so good under strong light. Graphic files are displayed in 16-level gray scales, for most documents, it is just good enough. The Text-to-Speech reading sounds a lot better than Microsoft’s Windows reading. Its small and thin figure is one of my favourite attributes, it fits in my small handbags. The keyboard is easy to use, I prefer it to touch screen. My HP Pavilion Tx 2560 has a screen that embeds a Wacom tablet behind it. I seldom use the Wacom tablet and the touch screen layer does create readability problem for the screen under even modestly strong light. That’s why I turned to Kindle when saw Sony’s same-sized ebook reader has a touch screen under its e-paper display.
Having used it for several days, I’m loving Kindle more and more.
Dirk was worried when he saw my Kindle days ago. One of the biggest worries was that since it is so easy to shop books with the Kindle machine, he thought I was going to waste a lot of money on stuff that I would never have time to read. Women in pregnancy have very strong shopping impulse and very weak self-control. 
But it turned out he has been wrong on this point. I have loads of pdf technical books, converted the ones I look up frequently into the mobi book format using the free MobiPocket Creator and loaded them into Kindle. Voila! And there is a plethora of classic novels in electronic format that are freely available, I wanted to read them for improving English but always did something else when I was sitting in front of my tower or notebook. Just converted them for Kindle without spending a cent, now I have a plethora of novels to be read all my life, in waiting rooms, in planes, in trains…Any where, any time is possible.
I did spent some money on Kindle content. Bought a sample copy of Shanghai Daily for 0.50 dollars and Frankfurt Allgemein for 2.50 dollars. The wireless delivery happened in no time. I was so amazed. Actually both newspapers looked good on Kindle. Wanted to subscribe to Shanghai Daily, because its “Business” section does contain important information that a investor must follow. The price is no problem ( like 9.99 dollars for a year? ), but I’m afraid at the moment, having a baby in my belly and the CFA curriculum at my hand, I won’t have enough time to read it every day. Well, I’ll see later.
I take notes using LaTeX while studying for the CFA exam. The curriculum books weigh a ton and my laptop, though not really bulky, weighs half ton and lasts only about 3 hours per charge. Now I can convert my pdf notes into the mobi format and load it to Kindle. I can review my notes any time, any where. Oh yeeeee! Another great thing, although the internet access with Kindle is restricted in German, Wikipedia is made available, with all text, graphics and authentic, Tex-like rendering of math equations. Is there anything sweeter than that? Every student should have a Kindle, the embedded dictionary, the always-available Wikipedia, etc. are just too great a studying assistance. Better than laptops. Many students play computer games in classrooms.
Like said earlier, Dirk was not happy with my purchase of Kindle. I converted his doctoral thesis into mobi format and loaded it into my Kindle, hoping he could somehow become more friendly. Well, he was really surprised that Kindle’s robot Text-to-Speech reader knows how to speak “MPEG-4″ correctly. 
As lovely as Kindle 2 already is, it is not without imperfection. Here is my wish list:
* The math equations in my study notes and Dirk’s thesis did not get converted decently and they rendered horribly on Kindle. Certainly it is not Kindle’s fault, however I really hope Kindle’s develop team could release a TeX source parser and get the math equations expressed in LaTeX syntax converted to something that Kindle could correctly handle. If there is something like this, I am even willing to pay for it.
* Some good resources/content are only available in U.S. I wanted to buy the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, alas, Amazon says it cannot be delivered to Europe. 
* There are too few German contents available. I’d really like to buy a Kindle version of Langenscheidt’s German-English dictionary, indexed, could be set as Kindle’s default dictionary. And I do purchase German magazines and newspapers now and then. I’d love to see the newspaper “Die Zeit” and the magazines “Ökotest” and “Finanztest” releasing for Kindle in the near future.
greetings. i also love my kindle..
im studying for cfa l2 and looking for some notes for my kindle. any chance you would be willing to share?
-m
Hi Michael,
I’m on CFA L1 but you are on L2, I’m not sure whether my notes would be useful to you. My son Kai was born in November 2009 and I find the parenting job is more important than anything else at the moment. It’s really challenging to study for the CFA exam while Kai has to be fed 10+ times a day and has to be walked and rocked all the time when he is awake. I’m not sure whether I could pass the L1 exam this time. If not, I’ll do it again some time later.