I’ve had my Touch for almost a day now, and it’s pretty awesome. I’m not a big reviewer, but I figured several people may be in a similar position as I was yesterday, so here we go…

I’m definitely an avid reader. Actually, as I type this, I have roughly 1000 books sitting on a wall of shelves behind me. E-readers have always intrigued me, but I’ve never felt like they were worth $199 or more; however, when the Kindle Fire was announced, I thought they had released the Kindle for me.

I watched video reviews, “hands-on” videos, read numerous reviews, etc. I was pretty sure that I wanted a Fire, but as I thought about it, I wasn’t convinced that the Fire really provided me with access to anything that I couldn’t do on my phone (HTC Inspire 4g). Other than a bigger screen, the Fire was actually pretty limited (for my purposes). I mean, I would only be able to use the browser and watch videos in areas with WiFi (i.e. at home, at work, or at retail location with WiFi). If I’m at home, I’ll probably just watch videos on my tv and access the internet on my desktop or my laptop. At work I’m too busy for the Fire to get much use. And other than the occasional trip to Starbucks (and by occasional, I mean like once a month), I don’t really make use of hot spots.

SOO…I decided the Fire didn’t really justify the extra money for something I already have access to through my phone, laptop/desktop, or tv. This caused me to run the gambit of reviews for the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Keyboard. Best Buy was advertising the Kindle Keyboard 3G (with ads) for $89, so price wasn’t really a distinguishing feature for me. My thoughts:

Touch:
- Kindle Touch is full-on touchscreen, and based on video reviews, it looked a little laggy
- Kindle Touch will probably drive me nuts with fingerprints/smudges
- Kindle Touch seems like a digress in touchscreen technology (like using a late 90s ATM)
- Kindle Touch doesn’t have physical buttons for page turns, which seemed like it would be a negative
- The $99 doesn’t have 3G, so I’d be limited to Wifi
- Highlighting and note-taking seems like it would be difficult on a laggy screen
- Looking up words will probably be easier

Keyboard:
- Kindle Keyboard has a decent keyboard and physical page turn buttons
- Kindle Keyboard has strong support through reviews (not many people don’t love it)
- The Best Buy sale lets you have free 3G for cheap
- Fingerprints/smudges won’t be an issue

After considering all of this, I went to Best Buy absolutely intending on buying a Kindle Keyboard. I got there, and of course, they had demo models of both. I figured, “What the heck…might as well make sure I like the Keyboard more.”

I played with both for over an hour. I read books, made notes, made highlights, looked up words, went to the menu, back to a book, back to the menu. I went forward through a few pages. I went back through the same pages. I did everything I thought I would normally do while reading. My decision?
- The Kindle Touch touchscreen does have a slight delay, but it’s definitely not a late 90s ATM. It’s a delay, but just long enough for you to demonstrate a slight bit of patience (and to be honest, if you’re an avid reader, patience is probably a virtue you can easily put into practice. There’s a reason you’re reading a book and not watching a movie.)
- Highlighting/note-taking is actually much more convenient on the Touch. Just press where you want to start, wait a second, drag to where you want to stop, and click highlight. Much easier (in my opinion) than moving the cursor down to where you want to start with the d-pad, clicking enter, dragging the cursor to where you want to stop, and then clicking enter again.
- Note-taking is slightly more convenient on the Keyboard simply because you can just start typing (if you’re not overly concerned about the exact line the note is attached to). If you are concerned about the location of your notes, then using the d-pad to move the cursor was not only inconvenient but also uncomfortable (I have pretty big hands, so doing all of this one-handed required me to contort my thumb in a very odd way to use the d-pad).
- I didn’t really like the keyboard on the Keyboard. The buttons are very heavy, so you have to give them a decent push to register a keystroke. Also, the qwerty layout is not a true qwerty layout, so beware of that. I had to be very conscious of the keys I was pushing otherwise I ended up with notes like: “The Kimdle keynoard is very mice.” VERY ANNOYING (especially if you take a ton of notes…which I do).
- The page turn button on the Keyboard was very annoying. The page turn button on the demo model gave two very audible clicks when I pressed it. The clicks were distracting, taking me “out” of the book after every page.
- After thinking about it, the…

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