Where the previous Kindle models had the tacky white casing of the lower priced MacBooks, the third generation sports a stylish graphite chassis less than a centimetre in width. Amazon have packed the keyboard and navigation buttons closer together to accommodate this sleeker casing. The page-turn buttons have been placed on either side of the Kindle’s 6-inch eInk screen, with the page-forward buttons are considerably larger than the page-back buttons, on the basis that you’ll use them more because you still read in an old-fashioned, linear fashion, you Luddite! The back-cover is a rather plain affair, but houses two speaker grilles at the top for when you’re using the text-to-speech function, because you’re too cheap to buy an audiobook. Underneath, you’ll uncover standard 3.5mm headphone jack, USB port, volume rocker and standby switch.

The new Kindle comes with Wi-Fi built in, and on the slightly pricier model comes with 3G as well. This is a major draw for bibliophiles and technophiles alike as it’s a free, contract-less, data connection that allows you to download eBooks from Amazon’s prolific store on a whim. Notably, the Kindle doesn’t support the open eBook format ePub, so you are mostly tied down to the Amazon store for getting your Tolstoy on. The Kindle also allows web browsing, but on an eInk screen this is tricky as most websites weren’t designed with greyscale in mind. Though it’s specially-adapted Wikipedia site does give the Kindle a delightful Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy feel, for general web browsing its poorly equipped. Predictably, the web browser is hidden behind a menu labelled “Experimental” which makes us think that if Amazon’s data bill racks up too much they may decide to pull the web-browsing feature from the Kindle altogether. The Kindle can also be linked to your Facebook and Twitter profiles and you can share passages and notes on a book, though you may lose all your friends as a result because you’ll look like a pretentious prick.

The biggest difference between eBook Readers of this ilk and their sometimes competitor, the iPad, is the eInk screen. These screens essentially burn an image onto a screen by applying a charge to negatively and positively charged particles. These displays are beautifully crisp and clear, almost as though you’re looking at a perfectly printed page, in fact you more or less are. The main benefit of this feature is that you can read for long periods of time without getting the eye-strain you’d get from perusing an LCD screen. It’s black-and-white, but, on a device that’s primary purpose is reading books, colour seems a little redundant. Secondly, the screen only draws power from the battery when the display changes and is otherwise practically off; Amazon boasts that this allows a battery life of up to a month even with frequent use. In our testing, we found the battery drained quicker when the Kindle’s on-board Wi-Fi or 3G connections are put through their paces, but otherwise the battery life was pretty good. The Kindle lacks a backlight, another battery-saving measure, but this isn’t really a drawback because neither do books; if you’re really that bothered about reading in the dark, you probably can’t read anyway, buy some crayons and a colouring book instead.

As with any massive paradigm-shift, reading the device as you would a book takes a little getting used to. It’s definitely off-putting at first to have to focus on a screen, a specific area on the device, rather than scan the whole frame as you would a book. It’s a new sensation to be looking at one page at a time rather than having two pages visible at a time, but dual-screen would’ve looked odd and been rather unnecessary on the Kindle. Oddly, when you’re reading a book, a progress bar runs along the bottom of the display and shows what percentage through the title you’ve gone; suddenly, reading has become a numbers game. All these peculiarities were easy to become accustomed to, however, and after that it felt perfectly natural to read this way, as though you’re reading a small, changeable, piece of paper rather than a hefty book. The Kindle reading experience also comes with full control over text-size and screen orientation, in case you feel like reading upside-down, and full text-to-speech functionality, in case you ever feel like being read to by the speaking clock and, let’s face it, we all have at some time.

Will the Amazon Kindle’s new incarnation write the final chapter for the printed word? No. Books are one of the oldest medium we have, and they’ve become so engrained on our culture that thinking that a single device can obliterate them in one fell swoop would be ludicrous. But could this undermine their place in our culture, usurped in the home and force them to retreat back to their secure sanctuaries: the libraries? Or will such a massive change turn out to simply be a gimmick, a niche idea that entertains the few but fails to take hold of the many? At this early stage in the life of the eBook Reader it’s very difficult to say; in fact, it’s not even worth making a prediction, time will tell.

The Amazon Kindle is available from Amazon.com, and is around £111 for the Wi-Fi only model and around £152 for the 3G and Wi-Fi model.

Like it or totally indifferent to it, tablet computers, that were first demonstrated by the greasy showmen at CES 2010 in January, have arrived in earnest. Leading the foray, as ever, was Apple’s take on how they think a tablet computer should be and, as ever, the device has been ejaculated on by fanboys and had the piss ripped out of it by everyone else. Other tablet’s are coming up to their release dates, a preview of which can be read at my CES 2010 post. The most vocal competitor to Apple’s iPhone Jumbo at the time of writing is HP with their “Slate”, due for release very soon – this post is not to discuss the various merits of either device, which will come as soon as both are released and sufficientely reliable reviews have been written and/or I somehow manage to get hold of a review model.

I am writing to consider one major aspect of technology, having been interesting in consumer electronics for so long, and having only recentely turned that interest into a creative outlet, such as this blog, I found myself ferventely reviewing every minor detail, every review and everything possible about the iPad and the Slate to decide which one I would buy. I found myself going through the normal motions that one does before a significant purchase, including considering the price and even checking my own bank account to see how it would fair £500ish lighter. It wasn’t until I had thoroughly considered it that I remembered that I have absolutely no intention of buying a tablet computer either way, indeed I had absolutely no clear use for a tablet computer whatsoever. So why was I so meticulous in my scrounge for every last detail………journalistic thoroughness? Perhaps, if I am going to advise people on the best gadgets I better know my friggin facts – but I couldn’t shake the idea that it went deeper than that, hence the inception of my ‘Need It’ Theory.

I am not, despite how it may sound, awarding myself some sort of intelligent credence for voicing something so painfully obvious, but as far as I know there’s no eloquentely put description of this tendency. Newton’s Laws were, however, known in every long-lived human in a practical sense, everyone took care when disembarking a boat lest the opposite push of the boat leave them falling in the drink. However, Newton’s Third Law, and all his other laws for that matter, took what was noticed in humans and explained them using the science – which has been tremendous in the advancement of the human species. On a mediocre, nobody really gives a fuck, level this is what I am doing – taking something noticable and known and doing my level-best, albeit probably failing, to explain this articulately.

The ‘Need It’ Theory is simply that people who are technology enthusiasts, writers or magpies (like shiny things) spend so much time following the releases of new products onto the gadget market, observing their competitors and in some way expressing opinions, at least for the writers, tend to make the assumption that they need this product. Founded, perhaps, on the idea that if one was to advise somebody on the best product in a certain field, for the sake of arguement let’s say tablet computers, they should put themselves in their shoes. However, the effect, subconciously, overreaches itself and the subjects come to believe that they need to buy these products. The effect is horribly visible, a lot of tech shows I watch have had their (apparentely well-paid) presenters asking one another which tablet computer they’re going to buy, forgoing the normal procedure of deciding if you need a type of product before deciding which specific product to buy.

Of course, for companies selling these products, that’s the entire point. Apple, in a show of balls-out ‘Need It’-ness, have developed their entire following around the central idea that theirs are products you need to have, that somehow this is the product you never knew you wanted, until you buy it and, having dropped anywhere between five-hundred to several thousand pounds, realise that you don’t need it. It’s easy for Apple, they have such a cult following and fanboys who, before I quote the Kevin Rose survey for the billionth time, would buy this product regardless of….well….anything. For Apple, it is quite literally a case of, to paraphrase ‘Field of Dreams’, “if you build it, they will come”.

Going back to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and that’s certainly observable here as well. As loud and obsessive as the Apple fanboy crowd are, there’s an equally as vehement, though significantly smaller, anti-Apple crowd who will do literally anything to avoid buying an Apple product and, for no discernible reason, omit the half-eaten fruit logo option of anything in their search when looking for a type of gadget. These people would buy something that isn’t Apple simply as an act of defiant AT Apple, something which their competitors know all to well – they leave Apple to get people talking about a type of product and leisurely bring out their rivals, *insert Apple product name*-killers, to stand as the “Apple-alternative” which people will also buy in droves, believing that this is a product they need, but not wanting to buy into an Apple product.

I have written, often, about the long-standing rumours of Apple’s tablet computer and, as an outside observer, it hinders on conspiracy. Collectively, every tech company with tablet aspirations, noticed these frequent rumours and began developing, in full public view, i.e. CES, their own tablets, Apple – possibly fearing someone was going to get their first – sent out their press invitations, at rather short notice I might add, and unveiled the iPad. Now that Apple had people sufficientely talking about the iPad, they can finish up their competitors and release them to market; safe in the knowledge that, though a match for Apple they may not be, they at least have a chance to claim those buyers who would rather do squats on a pinecone than buy Apple, all of whom believe that this type of product is a type of product that they NEED to buy.

Make of that what you will.

So big it takes up an entire wall.

Ignoring the name that sounds like the most technologically advanced sanitary towel, this new product from, soon to be religious cult, Apple no longer seem content with branding everything they create with a half-eaten fruit and feel the need to make everything look like an iPhone. The iPad is the latest in an explosion of new Tablet PCs – devices which blur the line between netbook and smartphone as they boast the convenience of the latter with the performance of the former. Apple, as expected, declined to unveil this at CES in front of their undoubtedly jealous rivals and staged yet another overhyped product launch in which Steve Jobs walked the huddled masses through the device.

The iPad is, of course, a touchscreen tablet computer that runs Apple’s 1GHz “A4” processor, the first device to do so and, indeed, the first time in recent years Apple have developed a processor rather than sliding between AMD and Intel like an overexcited horse on ice-skates. 1024×786 resolution screen means good video playback but not full HD (or 3D, they’ve missed a trick). It also comes with a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB flash memory capacity and a battery claiming up to 10 hours of use time and more than a month in standby time. Now, I don’t know a lot about batteries, but that’s quite a discrepancy.

Under the hard stuff, we have the OS which appears to be simply a variation on the iPhone OS – similar icons and support for iPhone apps, upscaled to fit the larger screen, and a choice of buying it with or without 3G and needing a data plan. I suppose not including the same OS you would get on a computer presents this more as a leisure device, which is at odds with the unwritten apparent application of tablets which is to replace netbooks as a portable, work device (illustrated helpfully by Steve Jobs and some handy graphics involving a middleground and falling words at the keynote speech, the netbook was crushed by the mere name iPad).

One of the biggest problems I see with the iPad, is the lack of Flash support in-browser, which absolutely fucks the idea of this being used as either a leisure device OR a work device. Using it as a leisure device, in this age of the internet, means web browsing, and that’s made a whole lot harder when the platform that a big chunk of the web is built on isn’t supported. This will also affect is as a business device given that any company worth it’s bisto does publicity and presentations in big shiny flash videos. Sure, Apple were kind enough to offer us a scraping of flash in the stuff we do most (namely BBC iPlayer and YouTube) but this device absolutely needs Flash support or it’s going to have problems; other tablets support flash, within months (if not weeks) Adobe will release their mobile flash plugin and I’ll be able to view Flash content on my Palm Pre, but the iPhone won’t support this. Apple, stop being petty, get your shit together, let Adobe pass it’s mobile flash for the iPhone and please your obsessive, salavating hounds of fanboydom or……well nothing. Admitedly, nothing will happen to damage the sales of the iPhone, or even the iPad, without Flash because most don’t understand it. While people see and know the term “Flash Player” bandied around on the web, usually in those few seconds before it kicks in on a YouTube video, but few understand what it is or understand when you mention it doesn’t support it. Someone I know, on mentioning that there’s no Flash support, replied knowingly ‘Oh that’s ok, I always take photos in the day’. Typical.

Typing, of course, is handled by an onscreen keyboard and this, I feel, is where the iPad, and indeed the whole tablet concept, falls down. At the keynote speech Jobs demonstrated it by resting the device flat on his lap and typed facing straight down. This is one of the major flaws I see with tablets, in that, to do anything worthwhile involving typing you need to suffer excruciating neckstrain and it just isn’t worth it when you can have a netbook. Laptops were designed with hinges below the screen for a reason. It’s not all bad, however, because in a very Apple-like move, Jobs announced a keyboard that can dock with the tablet making it, that’s right children, a sodding computer. If I were to own one, I wager it’d spend a lot of time sitting docked (and plugged in) on my desk and be used as a second computer.

I actually feel that this device is pretty under-spec, it’s supposedly a work-on-the-go device with all the things you’d need, yet it runs a measly 1GHz processor. Apple fanboys will tear the tape away from their mouths (I got pissed off with the 3GS and started kidnapping them, is anyone complaining?) to tell me that a slower processor doesn’t matter in an Apple environment because it the OS runs faster and more efficiently. Excuse me while I wipe yet another cliché that Jobs tries to sell from my ears and call bullshit on that. Sure, Windows is bloated but I cannot allow you to say that, even if that were true of Apple, a 1GHz processor would run at a bearable speed, it just doesn’t gel.

Obviously the rumours of this device have been around since Duke Nukem Forever was in pre-production but, for the most part, these have been dashed. The toenails of rumour-man were getting so long that it’s good Apple have decided to clip them (I’m not sure what made me think of that metaphor, I must cut my toenails), but it’s a shame because some of the aforementioned rumours, which is now relegated to rank of “made up bullshit”, were quite intriguing and would’ve made the device really stand out, like if it had run Mac OSX (which of course they couldn’t do otherwise it would be a Mac and have the price to show that). Instead of introducing an entirely new looking device, the “big iPhone” look makes sense I guess but putting it on a larger and definitely not pocket-sized device confuses the idea of a phone handset. It’s hardly surprising that Apple wanted to spread this form factor as a brand having managed to do so with every other possible aspect (even with music, going so far as to create their own DRM a few years back), but I think they needed a new look to set out this device as the laptop-smartphone ‘middle ground’ they’re so fond of and not merely an extension on the latter. The screen is laced with a black edge bigger than Steve Jobs’ piggy bank, so the whole things feels like they’ve compromised a lot of screen real-estate for the purposes of the iPhone-look. I would’ve gone with a screen touching the very edges of the device, but that’s merely to feed my uber sci-fi technolust.

What advantages does this tablet have over every other tablet that were announced at CES last year. Apple’s unsubtle timing with the Creation event clearly generated enough hype to overshadow the devices announced in Vegas so that anyone contemplating a tablet will automatically think of Apple. To be honest, there’s nothing that would feasibly set this apart, I was privy a little while ago to some of the visuals of the OS that made it onto the final unveiling and they did make me salivate, but unless it’s in practise I can’t say anything. The eBook reader interface was what I liked the most, but it’s worth mentioning us Bulldogs won’t get native eBook support, and bear in mind that it lacks the e-Ink screen. Maybe it’s because I’m a tech writer, but if I was going to buy a tablet I’d feasibly look at my options and include the iPad as a contender, but not automatically assume it was best and blindly buy it.

Scarily though, fanboys wouldn’t be quite so discerning, and it doesn’t really matter what this device does because there’s already a market who would’ve bought it a month ago. Creator of Digg and co-host of Revision3 show Diggnation, Kevin Rose did a survey a few weeks ago essentially saying that if Jobs said we have a tablet and told you nothing else about spec, features or price but just said that you can order it now, would you buy now? Shockingly, around 30% of the people who took the poll essentially said “Yes, I trust Steve Jobs and would buy right away”. Apple’s hold on these obsessive Apple fanboys is so absolute that regardless of how tablet computers fare in the future, Apple will always have customers.

I like this device, I have to confess, but I think the target of tablet computers in general need changing, and will probably do so organically as these devices become commercially available. These devices are being touted as a replacement for netbooks, as a portable yet functional device, but they won’t work like that; a functional device needs a keyboard that you can use without breaking your neck. I think that these devices will become perfect gadgets, not for “on the go”, but for “around the house”. I can picture myself sitting down on a sofa in the morning with a coffee to read some news, read a book, check my email – but not work.

Though I lose any future Apple-bruising points for saying this, and risk being called an Apple-polisher, but I may actually buy this, or I may buy some other tablet if it’s got a better spec, but this is pretty good. It’s being sold in the US for $500, which equates to around £300ish in the UK, so it’s a relatively cheap device for Apple. However, for the reasons I mentioned above I’d only go for the WiFi one rather than shelling out for another data plan.

But I’m not using that fucking onscreen keyboard…

P.S. I apologise for the lateness of this post, I’ve been quite ill this week and had to wait for my thumping headache and nausea to subside momentarily so I could read the keynote coverage. Night.