My MacBook turned 1 yesterday!

Time truly flies! It’s 1 year since I migrated to a Mac from a PC and it’s been a well deserving switch! Apple has since introduced some revolutionary new products in the form of it’s iPhone 3G-S, the new iPod range with video, the new range of Macbook Whites with the unibody enclosure and a new lineup on the iMac’s for the holiday season, and of course, the return of the iconic Steve Jobs! Windows 7 is yet to launch here in India for me to move my desktop – a DELL Vostro – from Vista Ultimate to it’s successor – Windows 7 Ultimate.

Coincidentally, last week, Fortune magazine named Steve Jobs as the CEO of the decade!

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/04/technology/steve_jobs_ceo_decade.fortune/index.htm

Patagonia kindle2 case procured!

My Patagonia kindle2 case arrived today from amazon.com and must say it was quick and efficient – it took 4-days for it to reach me from the USA. I am impressed by the DHL service. My Blackberry Bold case which was shipped by USPS a week before this has still not reached me and even their status tracker using the infamous “track and confirm” is pretty average and does not reflect it’s current status.

Here is a picture of my Patagonia cover for my kindle2 and it’s cute and fits my kindle that sits snugly inside this case.

My kindle2 Patagonia case

My kindle2 now supports Wikipedia!

How cool is this? I came across this on some blog and decided to check it out. It works – flawlessly! The first word I searched for on my kindle was, well, you guessed it, “kindle”! The web browser functionality of the kindle is still disabled as it’s not enabled for International editions of the kindle anyway – this is a known point.

Meanwhile I had some issues downloading a book and called amazon.com kindle support and they immediately reversed the charges on that book because it showed the wireless download status on their systems as “pending” as well. For some reason the book just did not download despite all my tries!

Zagg/Patagonia cover/case for my kindle2

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Patagonia-Kindle-Display-Latest-Generation/dp/B001GVIUMW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1257156589&sr=8-1

Source: https://www.zagg.com/invisibleshield/amazon-kindle-2-cases-screen-protectors-covers-skins-shields.php

I had to take this decision to buy something worthwhile. The regular amazon.com kindle2 case had mixed reviews, the Belkin’s case was also not great so I went for the Patagonia case.

The Zagg case is an invisible film for my kindle2 device.

amazon.com kindle2 International – review from India

Naveen's kindle2 just arrived from the US

For starters, I am instantly blown away by my kindle2. I am even more blown away by the amazon.com Whispernet service that worked out of the box. I am also instantly blown away by the e-ink (technology developed by MIT and used by all e-book reader manufacturers) display on my kindle2. Best of all, what amazes me is my first book download from the kindle store was effortless and got downloaded in less than 5 minutes (which, given India uses EDGE, and not 3G, is pretty decent).

Otterbox Defender series – Blackberry

I have been fairly satisfied with my first purchase of this Defender series case for my Blackberry (http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/my-blackberry-bold-with-the-otterbox-defender-series/) – my usage of my Blackberry is almost 18*7 and it’s pretty rough. So, I obviously need a case that protects my Blackberry at all times.

http://www.otterbox.com/blackberry-cases/blackberry-bold/blackberry-bold-defender-case/

Barnes and Noble nook

The nook - Barnes and Noble e-book reader

Source: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp

Just read on the launch of the awaited Barnes and Noble e-book reader. This is touted as the closest in competition to the amazon.com kindle2 with similar features and characteristics including the e-ink technology but the B&N reader also comes with some snappy features such as LendMe (TM) technology and the ability to use a touchscreen at the bottom to get the coverflow. I looked up the reviews of this reader and it clearly has what it takes to take on the kindle2 though a lot of the reviewers claimed they had not got to feel the device yet.

The amazon kindle 2 now available for the Indian market – I am going for it!

amazon.com kindle2 (India)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/amazon-kindle-2-review/

amazon.com listened to me as I prayed for an International version of the kindle as Jeff Bezos wrote what sounded like music to my ears (rather what looked like a treat to my eye – since I was looking at the screen as I read it!)

This is not the first time that such customer centric companies such as Google, Apple, amazon.com have listened to our concerns and addressed them!

I had blogged earlier here, here and here on how and why the amazon.com kindle is not available for purchase in India and who it’s competitors were and what were the tricks of the trade one had to adopt to lay one’s hands on one of them albeit with access to less than half the features. Now we have ALL the features PLUS an affordable kindle almost at our fingertips! How cool can it get?

I did some quick checks and here are some bare facts before we start counting the chicken before they hatch:

Procured my Rolodex 240 business card holder/networking is the ultimate guru!

My newly acquired Rolodex business car holder from US

I got this for the original sticker price of $25 USD plus Rs. 150 for logistics cost. Not bad, given just a week back, I had all sorts of crazy experiences in trying to procure such a harmless stationary for my business cards! I was even prepared to pay 4X the cost of the Rolodex and at that price point, I could have bought 4 more such to gift to someone! I have to personally thank my peer for this – he lives in San Diego and had a colleague who was traveling back to India over the weekend. This reached me today morning! This is the power of execution – convert a thought into action at the lowest possible cost!

Product review

The Rolodex 240 business card holder is pure leather, the casing is smooth, there are a lot of jackets to keep other stuff on the left fold, the plastic thicker than the Staples plastic I had bought a fortnight ago. I will have one to spare to gift to someone in case I need to. I personally believe a lot in the power of networking and have experienced this as well.

amazon.com kindle almost impossible to procure/use efficiently outside USA

Source: amazon.com

I have tried every which way to procure this but finally gave up on my search on this. I was even prepared to splurge a royal $495 for an amazon.com kindle DX but realized it’s just not worth the e-ink it will be written on!

For starters, I tried ordering the kindle last week from amazon.com and while credit card etc. gets taken in easily, the kindle dx will not be shipped even to a US address with a billing address that is outside of USA. This means amazon.com has a stated policy of validating both shipping and billing to be a US address.

Furthermore, the whispernet and kindle books download features that are a key to any kindle device are not available. This makes the $495 pretty Royal indeed for a PDF reader alone and even that has mixed reviews. I read up almost every major review of the kindle dx and found it to be a mixed bag.

I finally canceled my order!