Travelling with your Kindle

I recently got a Kindle and I have heard a lot of good and bad press and comments about whether a Kindle is a good device to go travelling with (as a guidebook substitute) or not. On a recent trip to Malta, I decided to use my Kindle, rather than buy a paperback to see for myself. I bought Malta chapters from Lonely Planet and downloaded them to my Kindle for use on the trip. 

On the plus side –

•  I found it great being able to store my reading books and guidebooks on one small device instead of lugging around 3 or 4 books with me.
• I also felt safe carrying my kindle around, it doesn’t look big or too expensive so I was not worried about it being stolen. 

On the negative side - 

•  The writing and maps were extremely small so I had to squint to be able to see anything. The maps were so small that they were basically unusable, not great since I use maps all the time when I’m travelling.
• The maps took 5 minutes or more to load and I found myself thinking that it would have been much quicker to just look on a paper map.
• There is no index with the kindle guides so finding the page you want quickly can be a bit of challenge.
• Don’t try and use your kindle to access the Internet while away, it will be much quicker to find an Internet cafe. The kindle can’t click on certain buttons and won’t let you click send when writing e-mails. 

Overall, I think that Kindles are good travelling devices for reading books. They may be OK for certain guidebooks, as long as you had separate maps. I think though, that I will stick to paperbacks for my guidebooks until I can get an iPad or another device that works even better.