Revolution is being Kindled

Electronic books throw up a lot of questions.

Typical queries include,"Will this gadget replace all books?'', "How will I lend novels to my friends?'' and "What if it runs out of power as I reach the final chapter?''

But the main questions future e-book fans have been asking lately include ``How do I order one?'' and "When will it arrive?''

The Kindle with US and International Wireless landed in Australia last Thursday, amid both hype and concern.

Connect waited impatiently while Amazon's great book hope passed through Louisville, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Sydney before reaching Brisbane, and sprung it from its packaging to judge whether the hype is justified.

The first Kindle available outside the US certainly looks like a piece of the future. It's a sleek, flat, sliver of a gadget that is easy to hold thanks to a 91mm profile, rounded edges and brushed stainless steel back.

It comes with just one cord -- a USB connection for charging -- and an instruction booklet, but it's unlikely that you'll need to read it. All controls but its power switch lie on its face and are straightforward. A manual also comes preloaded.

The Kindle's right side hosts a Home button to deliver you to its table of contents, Menu and Back buttons, and a joystick that lets you navigate around the screen and make selections.

Readers navigate books with large Next Page buttons on either side of this gadget's 15cm screen. A smaller Previous Page button sits on its left.

The Kindle arrives tied to your Amazon account so it's ready to use out of the box.

Accessing the online Kindle Store is a matter of pressing the Menu button and selecting it. The Kindle has all-you-can-eat mobile internet access for the life of the gadget, so there's no need for a WiFi hotspot each time you want a new book.

It works on the mobile phone network, so if you're within reach of a phone tower you can access book downloads.

Amazon won't disclose its Australian internet provider but the freedom this allows is one of the gadget's greatest assets. Its other major drawcard is its massive range of books, papers and magazines.

Amazon has filed more than 288,000 Kindle books into 24 sections such as Fiction, Nonfiction, Biographies, Fantasy, History, Travel, Sports and Humour.

If you have a specific title or author in mind, you can search for it directly. The keyboard at the bottom of the screen lets you access the Store's search function instantly. Key in a term, press Enter, and results will appear in seconds.

Readers can download a free sample of a book before handing over $US11.99 ($A13) for a bestseller, and the title arrives on the device in less than a minute.

Also available from the Kindle Store are 54 newspapers categorised by country. Subscriptions to UK papers such as the Daily Mail and The Times cost $US22.99 per month.

Similarly, 33 magazines are on board the Kindle bandwagon, including Time, Newsweek, PC Magazine and Forbes. Subscriptions are much cheaper than their paper counterparts at $US2.99 per month.

Keen users can also add free classic books to the device from the Project Gutenberg website in PDF form, or email Word, RTF, HTML or MOBI files to their Kindle email address at additional cost.

But are these publications comfortable to read on the Kindle? Happily, yes. Its E Ink screen is pleasant on the eye.

This black-and-white technology has no backlighting like a computer or phone screen, which makes it easy to see even in direct sunlight. The only downside is that you'll need a well-lit environment to read, as you would with any book.

Unlike other books, however, readers can choose from six text sizes, and can even engage the gadget's Text-to-Speech feature to have a book read to them.

Another benefit is the built-in Oxford dictionary, although it does feature US spelling. Saving bookmarks, underlining passages and making annotations is also simple using the keyboard.

While surfing its menus, keen Kindle users will notice the device's Experimental option. This includes a feature called Basic Web where a number of links are stored. Sadly, this has been disabled for Australia.

The Kindle is imperfect in other ways too. While its library is substantial, it's not comprehensive. Books from authors such as Dan Brown and John Grisham are not available yet, and many Aussie titles have yet to make it into the Kindle Store.

Also, the Kindle's buttons become a little unresponsive on low battery power, and that battery must be charged via a computer's USB port. USB power point adapters, like those used with iPods, will not charge its battery, despite appearances.

The Kindle's 2GB memory also cannot be expanded with a memory card, though it will hold 1500 books, and this device does not have a touchscreen like its upcoming Barnes & Noble rival. This inclusion would sap its battery, though, which currently offers four days of power with an internet connection or up to two weeks without.