Some people complain but everybody reads a lot of text on computer screens. In my particular case, I think I read more text in computer screens than in printed paper and I´m not doing it alone. The press industry has been scared about the end of printed media. Many small newspapers have closed their doors and big newspapers have substantially reduced their staff, due to the fact that the internet has become a rich source of reliable information.

The light emitted by the screen may bring some fatigue to the eyes, but I’ve learned since my childhood that plenty of light is needed when reading to avoid any damage to the eyes. So, if I need light in every reading circumstance, maybe the fatigue comes from other reasons, such as a boring story, excess of reading, small font, low contrast colors and so on.


Therefore, for those who don’t believe that iPad is a good book reader because of the light emission, they are wrong. iPad is not a good book reader for other reasons. The battery lasts for 10 hours maximum. The last thing a good reader thinks about is charging the battery. After all, books and newspapers do not run on battery. Users will probably forget to recharge it before they continue reading that intriguing story. As any personal computer, an iPad will take too much of your attention. Instead of reading, you will actually spend more time playing with apps, reading emails and twitting than reading interesting content.

Then I bought a Kindle. Wow! The good thing about book readers, like the Kindle, is not its ink-screen. A black and white screen is actually boring. It is the battery power that this technology saves. A single charge lasts for 2 weeks (when wireless is off because you don’t need it all the time). A Kindle doesn’t offer any other utility, but to read texts. It enhances features that we always miss in paperback: font resizing, searching and dictionary. Can’t you see the tiny text? Just increase the font. You can find words and sentences in one book or in all books in your library. It works better than the search on your desktop PDF reader. We can see the meaning of every single word in the text thanks to a built-in dictionary. The fact that it was made exclusively for reading purposes, we keep focused on what we are doing instead of losing the focus with other apps. If you need apps, you have your iPhone or Android in your pocket anyway.

Besides all these advantages, the Kindle also saves a lot of physical space and contributes to the reduction of carbon emission, which makes me quite happy. You might think that I’m not so impartial this time, promoting a product, but I should say that the Kindle really got me and I’m reading a lot more because of it.