This is literally like comparing apples to oranges, but since people continue talking about the iPad as a "Kindle killer," this needs to be addressed.

I have both, now. I can compare them side to side. I’ve used the iPad to do some serious reading, and as slick and sexy as it is, my iPad is not as good a ebook reader as my Kindle.

Two main reasons:

1. Despite all its deficiencies, the Kindle’s screen is far easier on the eyes. The iPad’s screen, through a combination of being backlit and glare from the glossy surface, is harder to read — not at first blush, but after a few hours, yes. I noticed a big difference.
      
2. The iPad is much heavier. This makes a difference especially if you’re the type, like me, who prefers to hold the book instead of resting it. It’s like the difference between holding a paperback versus holding a big hardbound book.

Setting both these things aside, the iPad may still be the better choice for you if you are dead set against owning a device that has a single purpose. You can’t really think of the Kindle as a computer — it’s a book. Period. Now some detractors may say that an iPad isn’t a computer, either, but I’m sorry — it is. It’s a decent little word processor (I’m writing this on it) and it’s a communication device (Skype works great on it, by the way) and it’s a game machine, and it’s a great little music and video player.

It is also a pretty good ebook reader. Oddly enough so is the iPhone — truth be told I actually find the tiny iPhone screen easier on the eyes for reading than the iPad’s.

But which one would I pick up and take with me to the park so I can sit under a tree and get lost in a good novel?

My Kindle.

I keep reading articles like this one:  Kindle Apps Won’t Beat Tablets

…and I finally am fed up with it.

The Kindle is not competing with the iPad (or whatever Apple is going to call its supposed tablet computer).

The Kindle is not intended to be a computer.

It’s a book.  A book.  BOOK.  Read my lips: BOOOOK.

I didn’t buy a Kindle to read email, play games, mess with Facebook, or do my bank statements. I wanted a simple reliable device with which I use to disappear into novels. I do not want it to do 1000 other things.

Why is this so hard for tech journalists to understand?

I’m sure an Apple iPad (or whatever) is going to be uber cool and do a zillion things.  It will also be a device, no doubt, you can use for reading.  But if it’s going to cost more than a Kindle 2 and have a battery life of less than a day, it’s not worth it to me.  I have a desktop computer, I have a laptop, I have an iPhone.  AND I have a Kindle, and I don’t use the Kindle to do anything that the other three does, nor do I ever want to.

It’s the one device I have that removes me from all those other things.  The Kindle is my escape.  If it does start doing all those other things, it will be ruined.

Yes, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle.  I figured that I could keep it for a week and if I don’t like it, send it back within Amazon’s 30 day window.

I’m not sending it back.  I’m keeping it. 

It’s awesome. 

And not just because you can buy my novel on it – though you can, and of course I encourage you to do so – but because this has done for reading what the iPod has done for listening to music.

Reading on the device is not a superior experience to reading a traditional paper book.  The background of the screen is a grey that should actually be a brilliant white – technology is going to have to catch up here – but I did find I was able to read comfortably enough to forget I was holding a device instead of paper.

Where the device is superior is the fact that it’s connected, on demand and for free, to the Internet through a build-in cellular link.  And it’s not that surfing the Internet on it is wonderful (I’d much rather do that on my iPhone if I’m out and about) but it’s that you can peruse and read the first chapters of thousand upon thousands of books, at a whim, searching for something that grabs you enough to read the whole book.

That is the genius of this device.

It will never completely replace a paper book, just like a iPod never replaced something with external speakers.  It won’t kill book stores, especially places like Borders (my favorite) because people will always love to go and hang out there.

However, it may force them to evolve.  A book store ten years from now may be a completely different place than what you find today.  It may be more like a Starbucks, more like a hangout, where people who love to read come together and congregate, discuss, and fondle expensive collector’s editions with fancy binding and acid-free paper.

Perhaps customers will buy eBooks for their Kindle (or equivalent) on little cards that have codes on the back.  Or maybe there will be big wall-mounted touch screens where you scroll through them and press “Buy Now” – after which it gets downloaded immediately to your device.

One thing for sure, is that with the advent of the Kindle 2, the eBook reader has finally become a fixture instead of a curiosity.  One can only guess at the improvements on the Kindle 3, and also the rumors are flying that Apple will be coming out with something that, while not a dedicated eBook reader, can be used as one. 

Here’s a bit of irony.  High praise for the Kindle coming from none other than Bill Gates:  "Lately, Jeff’s [Bezos] pioneering spirit has taken him in some new directions. He would like nothing more than to be the first to provide a cheap and safe way for anyone to fly into space and started a company called Blue Origin to devise the technology. That’s pretty cool, but his biggest legacy of all might be more down to earth — a modest-looking white-and-silver digital device called the Kindle. This electronic book is Jeff’s brainchild and may well revolutionize not only how we acquire books and periodicals but also how bookworms like me actually read them. That would put him in the same ranks as Johannes Gutenberg."

Why is this ironic?  Because under the hood, the Kindle is running Linux.