Some thoughts:

• Very smooth and quiet ride, fast acceleration, and the A/C motors are quieter than most A/C-powered trains I’ve heard—a good thing since most of the ‘L’ is elevated.
• The exterior looks nearly identical, and so does the interior. The problem is that it’s already kind of dated looking and not very interesting. The interior is especially disappointing. The seats look pretty bad in their arrangement. They need to ditch the ugly beige color on the plastic molding and seats. The passengers I saw took a while to notice that something was even different.
• NYC abandoned the bucket seats and Chicago should too. They just don’t fit, for better or worse, many American figures these days. I like the aesthetic of the new metal seats in the newer articulated buses, maybe they could develop that.
• The giant LED signs on the inside are fantastic. But, the service messages should be repeated. For instance, it will scroll only once messages like, “Transfer to Brown Line trains at Fullerton.” This could be truncated to “Transfer to Brown Line” and repeatedly scrolled.
• Speaking of the giant LED signs, now that the Train Tracker is (hopefully) (finally) coming online, those signs would be great to one day show transfer trains’ arrival times—or even nearby buses.
• I like the new door closing warning sound that sounds as the doors are physically closing. Sounds like the trains in London. However, they can probably ditch the loud doorbell sound before the “Doors Closing” announcement now.
• The map that shows where the train is is useful. But, it’s located above the destination sign when it should be above the doors—it’s going to be too difficult to get to the middle of the car to read it when it is crowded. NYC got the sequencing better, too. All of the following stations the train will stop at should be lit. The current station should blink, and prior stations should be dark. That gives more information to passengers that are wondering where the train will stop.
• A little light above the door illuminates as the door opens at the station. I would think it should illuminate when the “next stop” announcement is first played to show which side the doors open on.
• The monochrome exterior LEDs are very readable, but I am wondering how they will handle trains where the destination is “Loop.” Given that 5 different lines go around The Loop. I am guessing it will alternate, e.g., “Purple” then “Loop” or use a smaller font “Purple/Loop.”

Here are some pics I managed to take. A CBS reporter was also on board for part of the trip.

And a video I shot:

One of my favorite features is that it automatically synchronizes the last page read with all your devices you have the Kindle app installed on. So if I am going somewhere and don’t want to bring my Kindle along, I can pull out my iPhone, open the Kindle app, and pick up right where I left off. Another great feature is that you can scroll to any word for an instant dictionary look-up that appears on the bottom of the screen.

And the thing I miss the most about real books is to be able to thumb through to figure out approximately how you are progressing. The Kindle does have a progress bar at the bottom, but sometimes the appendices are so long it is not a good reflection of progress. I wish it was also easier to highlight and bookmark pages.

Overall, the Kindle is great at replacing paperbacks. But the difficulty in highlighting and note-taking makes it a tough sell for textbooks, and the black and white screen and poky screen refresh rate means it can’t touch newspapers or magazines. Even the formatting and navigation for newspapers and magazines leaves a ton to be desired.

So, of course I, like many, am intrigued about what Apple is planning. Everyone pretty much agrees they are releasing some sort of tablet aimed at revolutionizing print media. And I can imagine a 9″ or so tablet with a full-color screen and 3G and Apple’s usability pretty much taking over the newspaper, magazine, and maybe textbook industry. It’s books that I’m having a hard time envisioning, at least without an e-ink display. I don’t mind reading a small part of a book on my iPhone, but the backlit display is tiresome and consumes battery life quickly. The Kindle, meanwhile, chugs along for a couple weeks happily and is easy on the user’s eyes. I am fascinated to see how Apple intends to overcome this obstacle, or whether they will avoid it entirely by placing their tablet in a different market segment.

Nobody really knows exactly what to expect, but Amazon is already bracing itself with two announcements this week: one, that they are moving to Apple’s App Store pricing model, and two, they are giving an SDK to third-party developers. Whatever happens, on January 27, it’s about to get really interesting.

I have long believed that smaller charitable donations can add up as long as the means to do so is easy and understandable by the public. Text message donations for disaster relief funds are proving to be effective, largely because people can do something easily, and at the risk of sounding cynical, without much effort. People are willing to act as long as they feel empowered to do so.

In a more personal note, I have friends who are in or are from Haiti. I implore anyone reading this to also donate as much as they can. Haiti is in complete catastrophe and needs all the help the world is willing to give them. Thanks to Christian for the photo.

Update: More than $10 million has been raised so far.

The 160-story Burj Dubai opened this week (despite some construction left to do), making it officially the tallest building in the world. The Chicago Tribune has an interesting piece on Chicago’s involvement and influence in the building. Now if they could only solve the Chicago Spire’s financial woes.