Amazon Kindle Review

So I decided to break down and purchase an Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is an electronic book reader where you download books to it and read them directly from the Kindle.

I have been using my Kindle for about 2 weeks so I thought I would take the time to write a review. I must say that it took me only a few hours to totally fall in love with it.

The size is very appropriate for reading and I can read with only one hand since I use a thumb to press the next page button. It is so compact that I can take it anywhere I think I may have some free time to read, like when waiting for a hair cut, or on the train on the way to work.

The books can be wirelessly downloaded. You pay for the cost of the book, but there are no cellular/wireless fees. The Kindle uses current cell phone technology for free. You just simply look up the name of the book that you want, and click buy. Your amazon account is automatically charged for the price of the book. The majority of the books, including New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are $9.99 or less. So this is still competitive as a regular paper back book, but the kindle can hold many of them at a time. and you can bookmark the page on each book, so that you always know where you left off. No more searching through chapters trying to find where you stopped.

In terms of actually reading off the Kindle, the one-handed reading, the overall size of the reader, the sharp text and the variable font size all work together to make the experience while reading just as easy as with a book. I used the largest font size when I had the reader propped up on the treadmill. I was never able to read a book while on the treadmill since page turning was always an issue, but I have seemed to solve that problem. When you are looking at the screen, it doesn’t feel like the normal computer screen, it was very cleverly designed to make it feel like a book page with text on it. So you don’t feel that eystrain that you do when using your PC for 4 hours.

The battery life is very good. I am able to go several days without needing to charge. Charge time is very fast, in an hour or two the Kindle gets a full charge but I can still read for an entire evening on a very low indicator.

The Kindle also plays MP3’s, so if you take your Kindle everywhere then you also have an MP3 player. There are not many playback features yet as you can only play your MP3s randomly, but I hear those are in the works on a software update.

There are also other features where you can jot notes down, sign up for subscription content such as newspapers and magazines, etc. There is one very cool feature that I found myself using quite a bit, which is called Kindle NowNow. With NowNow uou pose a question and hit submit, similiar to a google search. Within a few minutes, you start to receive responses on the Kindle. This is very cool since you can be anywhere and ask a question and get many answers all for free.

Other than the NowNow feature, I currently only use it for book reading, which is what it really was designed for. There are some differences for example if you subscribe to a newspaper, you don’t see the images or any graphics, so if are a visual person the Kindle may not be for you, but in terms of book reading, I love it.

Ok, so the Amazon Kindle is somewhat of a luxury purchase as it is close to $400, but look at it this way, I am saving money on books as some of the selections come in under what the current prices are. I am also saving storage space, since my book collection is no longer requiring more book cases to stock it. And in the end, I guess I am saving some trees right?

Make Money on Your Tax Rebate Stimulus Check II

Adding to my earlier post about retailers that are giving you a bonus to spend your tax rebate check with them, here are a few more:

Supervalue Inc – Bonus Information
Supervalue is giving a 10% bonus on top of your rebate amount if you exchange your rebate for gift cards to their following stores: Acme, Albertsons, bigg’s, Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher’s, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw’s/Star Market, Shop ‘n Save and Shoppers Food & Pharmacy.

Radio Shack – Bonus Information
Radio Shack is giving 10% off of a $50 purchase when you use your rebate check to pay for your purchase.

I imagine we are going to see more of these pop up as time goes on, but can someone answer my only question? How about us folks that are getting the rebate check direct deposited? Any bonus love for us?

Another $50 Free From Sharebuilder

Sharebuilder (now owned by INGDirect) has another $50 promo available for signing up for a new account. You need to deposit money into your account and make a stock purchase to get the $50 bonus.

To sign up for the promotion, go to the Sharebuilder Application Page and check the box “I’m responding to a Promotion”. In the “Promotion Code” box, enter the following code: 50GO28
After you purchase your first stock the $50 bonus should be paid out in 4-6 weeks.

I personally use Sharebuilder. I mainly use it for a long term investing account. I buy partial shares of 10 ETF’s four times a week. My goal with this account is to dollar cost average while the market is correcting itself. I just set this and forget it. I consider this nest egg fund to use later, possible for kid’s college education. Their setup makes it very easy to invest and not have to think about it. I definetly recommend it if you are just a begining investor!!

Prosper.com Experiment Update III

It’s been about a month and a half since my last Prosper experiment update so I thought I would share what is going on with it.

Well not much new to report, and that is good news! All 37 loans are still current, and I was able to pick up another $50 loan (Credit Rating: AA @ 11.00%) with payments from the outstanding loans. This puts me now at 38 loans with an average interest rate of 13.01% One of my loans is also being paid off, so should have enough in my account to pick up another $50 loan. I think I am going to go a little riskier this time to increase my overall loan percentage. One of the loans went late last week, but then was paid up in a few days, so I received a late payment fee of $.03. That loan was an AA Credit Rating, so I assume he just forgot to pay it. I’ll definitely take the late payment!!

One thing to remember is that if you decided to get involved in lending on Prosper, make sure as soon as your account reaches $50 (minimum loan amount) you bid on another loan as the prosper account does not pay interest on the cash balance in your account. To keep that loan interest rate up there you need to keep all your money into loans.

So far things are going well and I hope it continues this way. Only time will tell what a possible recession my do to my loans, but as I said before this was throw away money for me, as had I invested it the stock market, I would have lost it all!

Tax Rebates to Arrive Sooner Than Planned

According to the IRS, after implementing a special software program that updates records faster, they will start distributing tax rebates via direct deposit on Monday April 28th – five days earlier than expected. They didn’t say that if it is only the rebates that were supposed to be sent on May 2nd will be sent early, or if is shifts the whole Rebate Payout Schedule up a week.

Rebates to taxpayers slated to get paper checks will start to go out on May 9 – one week earlier than originally planned. Again, I am not sure if this is just those rebates from May 16th that will go out early, or if everything will be a week earlier than planned.

The IRS has not updated its Rebate Payout Schedule on their site to reflect this news, so don’t get too excited yet. I just thought I would relay this info so that for you guys getting the rebate via direct deposit, you may see a large deposit sooner than expected. So keep an eye out for it.

Leave it to the government to make last minute changes and not fully explain how it is going to work!

Make Money on Your Tax Rebate Stimulus Check

Eager to take your rebate money from you, there are a few retailers willing to give you a percentage bonus if you trade in your rebate at their store for gift cards.

Here are the few I know so far:

Sears will give you a 10% bonus on your rebate if you trade in your tax stimulus check for a Sears gift card. This includes KMart and Lands Ends stores as well. So for example if you have a $1200 check, if you would get a total of $1320 on a Sears Gift card. ($1200 rebate + $120 10% bonus). Definitely a good deal if you are going to by appliances or a large ticket item

According to this Press Release you just need to take your rebate check to a Sears or KMart cash register to redeem the rebate check for a gift card. You must redeem the entire amount of the rebate check into a gift card to get the 10% bonus. This promotion lasts from May 14 to July 19, 2008

The Kroger Grocery Store Chain is also giving customers a 10% bonus for redeeming their tax rebate for gift cards. The program allows Kroger customers to exchange their tax refund or economic stimulus checks for a Kroger gift card with an extra $30.00, $60.00 or $120.00 added to it. Here is how they are dealing with the issue if your rebate check is not in a $300, $600, or $1200 increment.

Amounts that differ from those outlined above will be turned into gift cards in $300.00, $600.00 or $1,200.00 increments with the bonus amounts added on and the remainder returned to the customer. For example, if a customer has a tax refund or stimulus check of $415.50, the customer will receive a Kroger gift card valued at $330.00 and the remaining $115.50 will be returned to the customer.

Kroger customers who are interested in exchanging their refunds or economic stimulus checks should present their check and customer loyalty card at their local store’s Customer Service center from May 2, 2008 through July 31, 2008. The program is limited to one offer per household with a limit of $1,200.00.See Kroger’s Press Release for more info.

So if you were planning on spending that rebate check anyway, this might be an option if you are willing to spend it all at one store, cause hey, in the end this is free money on top of free money!!! Please beware of the gift card polices in your area as some may expire or lose vale over time. I imagine that many other stores will be offering something like this as many do for tax refunds in April every year. I will try to update as I find more. Please leave a comment if you know of any large retailers that are offering this bonus for your tax rebate check.

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