Day two of Kindle DX ownership - and I love it! Let me qualify that; it is a fantastic e-reader (what it was designed for). Using the largest font size, I can read as a passenger in a car WITHOUT reading glasses. That's a big deal for me because I usually get car sick after 5 minutes while reading in motion in anything but an airplane (riddle me that). I can read in bed in low light conditions (need the 'cheaters' for that mission). I could go on but let's just leave it at "I'm never buying another hardback book" (bought my first book for $8 that would have cost me $20+ at the bookstore).

Kindle DX as approach plate reader -

Everyone has their own approach plate management style and mine heavily influences my impression of the Kindle. My new daily driver has an EFB but I can still print paper plates and use my old habit pattern, whether it be a good habit pattern or a bad one. I like having the arrival plate, expected runway approach plate, and taxi diagram clipped to the yoke directly in front of me (anyone can fly a big airplane, taxiing the beast is another matter). I fold them in half (sometimes with the top and bottom folded under) with the most critical or appropriate area displayed. I can easily flip through 3 plates back and forth, or shuffle through 3 so that the one in use is always on top. I hate looking sideways at a plate or thumbing through a book and looking for information. Other pilots have different methods that they are happy with, that's just my bias so keep that in mind.

I downloaded the entire state of Mississippi from www.pdfplates.com  The download for one state (252 pages) took about three minutes. Page one of the "book" is the index by airport ID and page number. Here's where it gets "tricky". You have to select by airport ID not ID and approach - not a biggie. What is a PITA is you have to hold down the ALT key and punch in the number. The keyboard on the Kindle is quite small. I can see this being an issue in turbulence or flying without an auto-pilot. That brings up the first page for a given airport and then you NEXT PAGE yourself to the plate you want. I've learned to count One-Potato, Two-Potato and at "Two" you get the next page. If you were at an airport with lots of approaches and you needed the last one, you'd have a whole sack of potatoes to deal with. Here's where the system get's ugly for me - I'm a long-term sufferer of "sumtimerz's" disease and like to flip forwards and backwards for that one small piece of information that didn't stick. Say you're on approach inside the marker and you want to review the taxiway you planned for - with paper I can quickly raise the paper plate and glance at the taxi diagram, snatch the info, and go back to the approach plate. With the Kindle it would be PREVIOUS PAGE, one-potato, two-potato, repeat as necessary, then NEXT PAGE, one-potato, two-potato .... you get the idea.