Dear God,
Its been close to a fortnight since K3 walked into my life. Many a long-winding & worrying nights, endless calls to the call center and frustrating follow-ups later, she was vanquished. Like for a true conquest, I battled hard. In retrospect, it was a mutiny worth the fight.
She got introduced to folks that matter the most in my life – Mom and Dad. It took me a while to start operations – maybe it was overwhelming work pressure or maybe I just wanted to let her be for some time. Nevertheless, a fortnight into the household, I decided to explore the beauty.
I’d picked the Black variant. The palmtop comes matt-finished with blunt curves on the sides. The Amazon logo atop her is almost inconspicuous until under light. The inaugural page is an illusion of sorts; you can never tell that that’s the screen. It carried an image of a boy sitting under a tree, seeming to read. At first glance, it appeared to be a sticker that needed to be peeled off to reveal the screen. I immediately realized that the screen protection was already on and there was no need for a sticker.
So I picked up the manual to take the first steps. The power-on switch slides to boot the K3 and Lo! & Behold! the screen lights up displaying the beautiful inaugural screen content. Black & White has its own charm, doesn’t it? A peer noted, “arrey, black and white hai?” As a strong comeback, I retorted, “Monochrome”! Not that it made a difference but I hated his tone.
I didn’t want to go any further than appreciating her. The dimly lit screen, monochrome, content etc all had the makings of an actual book. “Abbey, touch screen nahi hai kya?” the dude concluded after exploring the K3 on the screen. Thank God for the screen protection or I would have reduced him to pulp for having touched my K3. “Nahin re, why even touch her?” said I. What the heck is it with this Touch-Generation? I’d prefer giving my K3 her space. No touch!
The manual on the K3 is exhaustive enough, may not exploring the book that came along with her. Besides, for starters, I think reading the instructions on the K3 helps you maneuver and know her quickly. How I wish you'd made women with that provision! :-))
I browsed some of the pages to get hands-on. I was in for a rude shock when I tried using the Wi-Fi option. It just wouldn’t recognize the router at home. Every attempt returned a "Unable to connect to wi-fi network. Your Kindle is unable to connect to the Wi-Fi network "NETGEAR" (my wireless router). Would you like to try again or manually set up this network?" This was painful. The option of ‘Set up a network’ also wouldn’t yield any results. I logged a complaint at the Call center (they don’t have a local number, alas!). Within hours, I had a response from them. On a Sunday, that was exemplary customer service, I thought. Not that their response was anything besides what I knew already. It didn’t help. In the meantime, I wrote to a couple of friends to see if they could shed some light.
I packed her back into the sloppy package she came with. When tried at a friend’s place later that evening, she worked. BRILLIANT! I was able to connect to the web. I ensured that by looking a few books up on Amazon. She did bring some bit of latency, understandable. I dashed out of there to take my next step in the review – reading.
It is easy to download a book from the virtually zillion free titles (of renowned authors, mind you) available on the Internet. So I chose a collection of short stories for the laptop and therefore onto the K3 using the USB she came with. No hiccups there either. PDF is the best version to view books in.
I started out by operating the keys on the book. It is difficult to move from one page to another, with several in between. Let me demonstrate why so. To be able to go from Page 1 to Page 30, you need to:
Press Menu
Select Go To
Press Sym to bring up the Number pad.
Select 3 and then move 6 places to 0.
Press Sym to close the Number pad.
Select Page and then you are in Page 30
Now this is definitely harrowing especially after having worked on and gotten used to several user-friendly applications/software. The feeling is akin to telling time off a Binary watch!! Tedious, to say the least.
I moved on to exploring the pages. To change settings, for example, the view:
Press Aa to bring up the view settings.
The existing setting is unreadable by naked eye and has to be set to ‘Fit to screen’.
Move the cursor using the arrow keys until you reach the desired option.
Select the option.
There is hardly any difference between the Lightest and the darkest options. They yielded the same results.
While visibility improves with increase in font size, sentences spill over. The Right arrow key needs to be engaged to move to Page 2. If you let this process get the better of you, wait till you lose track of the start and end of the sentences.
Maybe ‘Portrait’ works, I thought. So I tried the Axes of rotation. The only difference that brought about was it accommodated longer sentences but bits still spilled over.
So far, I have gotten a feeling that the K3 was built on process maps, you know, the kinds with Steps 1 through 100 to perform one mental action! I must admit, though, that reading minus the aforesaid is a true pleasure, nevertheless. The texture of the fonts, the ‘dim-clarity’ and of course, the Monochrome gives you the feeling of holding an actual book. While the page flip and the fragrance of a new book are missing, what the heck?! I am contributing to ‘Go-Green’, aren’t I?
In the interim, I gathered that the net connectivity issue may be attributed to an ‘IP-conflict’. You see, the router was external and settings were changed when installed. For now, I am going to leave it at that and enjoy reading the 350 pages to make more review notes.
Like the domestic spars that add the spice to life, I know these little challenges are okay with me. This love affair will bash on regardless…..
More later…
