I’m what you call an “early adopter.”  This means that if a new gadget or technology comes to the market, I have to be one of the first ones to have it.  I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how I roll.  I was one of the first to own an Amazon Kindle, an iPad, a Macintosh clone even!  Being an early adopter is risky.  Not only will you pay a premium price for something new, but you run the possibility of getting a lemon technology.  What’s worse is when you paid all this money and a year later the company closes or decides to no longer support the device.  That really hurts…

Anyhow, sometimes you pick a winner, and the original Amazon Kindle, or Generation 1, is still a winner.  Not only does it still work, but it’s still compatible with Amazon’s Whispernet download service.  I even think it has a leg up on the next generation of Kindles because the user can change the battery.  In the grand scheme of things, that might not sound like much, but I always like electronic devices where you can replace a failing battery without having to ship the unit off to the manufacturer.  Cough, cough, Apple…

I also like the fact that on the original Amazon Kindle you can switch out SD memory cards.  This means that if you have enough SD cards, you can carry with you an unlimited supply of books.  The new Kindles do not have the SD card expansion capability, they are stuck with the internal memory.  That’s a real shame in my opinion.

That’s not to say that the new generation of Kindles are bad.  They are slimmer, faster, and have some new improvements like the ability to read Adobe Acrobat .PDF files, and a long battery life.  No, the new Kindles are wonderful, it’s just that the original Kindle is still so good, I feel no need to upgrade.  Sometimes an early adopter picks a winner.