Happy Birthday to Me. Ordered on Sunday and arrived on Tuesday, one Kindle Paperwhite (w/ Special Offers) and a trick Fake Leather/Plastic Cover.
When I opened the box from Amazon there were two boxes inside and some bubble wrap. The Kindle box was so much larger than the one for the cover, that I first thought the cover was folded somehow. But when I opened it up it wasn’t folded, it couldn’t have been, it was made of thin hard plastic. The Kindle could have fit in the cover box, but the box it was in was made for a nice presentation of the device, so there was a lot of dead space.
I was originally thinking of getting the base $69 dollar Kindle, then graduated to the $89 no ads version because although the ads are described as unobtrusive, I rather liked the random authors that showed with BIL Paul’s Kindle 2. After more consideration I then settled on the Paperwhite for the touch screen interface and the backlit screen allowing for nighttime reading. I went with the Special Offers version to save the $20 (that’ll buy a quartet of average priced eBooks) and if the ads do get bothersome, I found instructions on the web on how jailbreak the device and load your own screensaver images instead.
Right now I haven’t gotten any special offers displayed, no authors either, just random images. I wonder if they are going to be like commercials on the evening news or basic cable movies in that there are none for a big chunk of time to get you hooked and then they come hot and heavy to the point of frustration?