Kindle, initial impression

A coworker brought in his new Kindle. Here are my initial thoughts after a couple minutes of playing:

• Processor is dog slow (searches took way too long, menus take way too long)
• Refresh rate is annoyingly slow. Changing a page is still faster than changing a real paper page but not nearly as fast as you’ve gotten used to on your computer.
• I feel like I’m only looking at half a page at a time. There just aren’t enough words on the screen.
• Previous / next button placement is terrible. Both thumbs end up being over the next button.
• Previous / next buttons feel cheap.
• There’s nowhere to hold onto while typing so you feel afraid you’re going to drop it.
• It knows about tables of contents and you can jump to the chapters of the book listed there BUT there’s no way to jump to those chapters from anywhere else, not even the search page.
• The screen is very very readable. e-ink is a great technology.
• The Amazon.com store integration is quite nice.

Conclusion: wait a couple generations and this may be a really sweet device. I’m still annoyed about the DRM though. I don’t want to have the problem of buying all these books and then wanting to switch to another e-book device someday and having to re-buy them all over.