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Amazon's Ebook The Future of Reading?
theodp writes "With a seven-page cover story on The Future of Reading, Newsweek confirms all those rumors of Amazon's imminent introduction an affordable ebook. Kindle, which is named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, has the dimensions of a paperback, weighs 10.3 oz., and uses E Ink technology on a 6-inch screen powered by a battery that gets up to 30 hours from a 2-hour charge. Kindle's real breakthrough is its EVDO-like wireless connectivity, which allows it to work anywhere, not just at Wi-Fi hotspots. More than 88,000 titles will be on sale at the Kindle store at launch, with NYT best sellers priced at $9.99."
Basically zero. They generally don't change reflectivity/brightness very fast, on purpose. A static electrical charge will keep them in a particular display state, at least the ones I've read about. Saves energy. A good thing for these designs.
However, at $400 a pop, I think this is another "Segway" of e-books. Sell the reader for $9.99 and make up the cost on the media, then you've got something. $400? Heck, I could drop $400 on one just because I wanted to, but I won't. Doesn't feel like I'm doing anything to do with books at $400. I like books, anyway. They're tough, you own them, you can do the usual things as compared to any physical possession, and they have a delightful physicality to them.
The experience of an e-book is no foreign thing, either; I've got numerous volumes in PDF on my laptop, full color illustrations, etc... just isn't the same.
I will own up to being a book freak, though. The next generation may completely lack my preference for the real thing. We'll see.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They're probably afraid the hideous fugliness of the thing will make potential ad-clickers run
Some (alledged) pics here:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/
"Posted Sep 11th 2006"
From a year and 2 months ago. Knowing that, can we really rely on that picture?
I bought a Sony Reader here are the bullet points-
1. Great to have hundreds of books at the press of a button.
2. Easily navigatable.
3. The 6 inch screen is a bit too small for reading technical pdfs (long equations, detailed graphs etc) even in landscape, if you really have to have that you want an Irex Iliad $650 (£468 in the UK)
4. Can be read in direct sunlight, great for beach reading.
5. Contrast is not fantastic, reading black on light grey not white, there is a tool on MobileRead called RasterFarian that helps with pdfs, but I've found the best solution to copy the text of pdfs out of Adobe Reader into Open Office Reader, reformat the page to 9cm x 12 cm and change the font to Arial Black 11 or 12, the formating might be a bit messy but I can read it low light conditions easily and it only takes about a minute to convert a whole book.
6. Overall I'm glad I got the Reader, if the Iliad was cheaper or I could have expensed one I would have prefered it for technical pdfs.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God