Can I Use My Amazon Kindle in Egypt?

Yes! And that was a sure thing and was the reason that we bought one. (Bonus: it even works in northwest Wisconsin - you can hardly find a cellphone that will do that!)

Just buy the 3G model. Turn it on in Egypt and you can visit the Amazon Store and download new books with no problem. Amazon describes it here with this phrase: 3G Works Globally

Here Linda is holding her Kindle in the sunlight out on the back balcony.


While the advertising notes that the Kindle works Globally, and it does, there is some fine print that you might miss. While you can access the Amazon store and download books for free, just as in the U.S., there is a charge for periodicals. Your subscriptions to magazines and newspapers will require an additional $5 weekly charge. Still, this seems like a pretty good deal. We now have a Kindle subscription to the Wall Street Journal and to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. At around 1 o'clock, local time here, they appear at the top of the content screen and push the previous day's papers off into the "Periodicals - Back Issues" entry at the end of the contents.


The Kindle 3G screen is very readable, even in bright sunlight. This gives it a real advantage over the iPad in spite of its very "klunky" user interface. Linda keeps it in "large print" mode when she reads.


I should add that bringing one small Kindle versus a suitcase of books is another big advantage. We'll probably make fewer trips over to the bookstore at AUC now.