Amazon's Kindle Sells Out In 5.5 Hours

necro81 writes "As reported on Engadget, Amazon's Kindle e-book reader has sold out. Charlie Rose's interview with Jeff Bezos reveals that the Kindle sold out within just 5-1/2 hours of going on sale. Amazon hasn't revealed how many it had in stock at launch, so it may just be that they didn't anticipate early demand. A check of the Kindle's product page shows that more will be rolling out starting December 3rd." Wired also has a brief head-to-head of the more prominent ebook readers and PCWorld has a review of the new gadget from Amazon.

Comments

Re:Reading an LCD

[QuantumG]

it's not an LCD, it's e-paper or "electronic ink".

Yeah, they finally got that technology out of the lab about a couple of years ago.

DRM Suckage

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Kill it. Now.

Re:DRM Suckage

[Kadin2048]

"Current incarnations lack the resolution of a cheap laser printer..."

Heh so's your monitor. But that's despite the point: It's 150 DPI, that's definitely more than adequate for reading. Maybe you think so, but I don't find it particularly pleasant. I think this is fairly common, too; I know quite a few people who print off anything longer than a few pages because they detest reading on-screen so much.

An e-book can probably get away with a lower resolution than commercial or laser printing achieves through the use of anti-aliasing, but I think you're mistaken if you think most people can't tell the difference between 150 dpi and 1500 dpi offset, and won't immediately pick the high-dpi one as more pleasant to read (even if they can't identify the resolution as the cause for the pleasantness).

"I wouldn't ever want to have to read a book from a monitor" is one of the objections I've heard over and over regarding e-books, and I think the low resolution of most computer displays is a big contributor to that.

Kindle doesn't have an LCD

[corsec67]

Kindle doesn't have an LCD. There are no polarizers, liquid crystals, or bending of crystals to change the direction of the polarization.

Kindle has an e-paper display, which uses something resembling ink that can be turned black or white, or a few shades in between, and doesn't require any power to maintain that shade. It looks very similar to paper, and isn't color so the resolution is pretty good.

The Sony e-book reader also has an e-paper display, so LCDs aren't being used on new e-book readers.

Re:Kindle doesn't have an LCD

[MythMoth]

Wouldn't buy the Sony, not gonna buy the Kindle... Not interested in 'locked in' DRM from either, and the potential for 'interesting' spyware from either. I have the Sony Reader. There are a myriad of free texts for it. It can display TXT and RTF files just fine. The (unlocked) version of the LRF is well understood, so there are plenty of texts in that format and they work really well. It can display PDFs (but doesn't scale them well, so an A4 document will usually be unreadable).

I've never bought a DRM afflicted text and I never will. But the hardware's a different matter; the fact that it can display DRM doesn't preclude the device as long as it can display free texts.

Sony is kind of schizophrenic; their hardware is usually excellent but sometimes crippled by the media lobe of the company. In the case of the Sony Reader the hardware was left relatively unharmed, but the marketing of the device was absolutely crippled; they were so keen to push their online book store that most people don't realise it can display unencumbered texts just fine.

The Sony Reader is pretty damn good, though not perfect. For example, it doesn't have a page turn button on the right hand side more or less forcing you to hold it in your left hand or uncomfortably in your right. The iRex Iliad looks excellent, but it's pricier and the form-factor doesn't appeal to me.

Re:I was interested until

[roscivs]

It does play mp3s. And you can copy things via USB to avoid the fee. You can even have Amazon convert them to its special format for free, email the doc back to you instead of transferring it wirelessly, and avoid the fee.

nifty e-book reader comparison matrix

[Danny Rathjens]

Nice to see linux across the board for all of them - even running lots of proprietary stuff. :)
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

In theory the Sony reader is what I'd rather have

[blind biker]

The sony ebook reader has one great advantage over the kindle: it reads .pdf files directly, and you don't have to pay Amazon for the privilege to have the .pdf file converted to the Amazon DRMed ebook format. This is a crucial difference.

That said, I would need a device with larger screen than either the kindle or the Sony gadget.

Re:I'm I wrong or the only one to notice the EvDO

[painandgreed]

According to the video I watched on the Amazon site, it is indeed wireless and connects to "Amazon's whisper net" for free. Like WiFi but no need to log into anything as it does find service just like a cell phone. From there, you can look at the catalog of downloadable stuff and download for the presented price much like a downloadable Amazon website. You can email stuff to your Kindle, but that costs money. They never mention exactly what the whisper net is or how much coverage it has.

Amazon rating

[2.7182]

Actually it only has something like 2.5 stars on Amazon. Not a good sign.

Re:Amazon rating

[FleaPlus]

Actually it only has something like 2.5 stars on Amazon. Not a good sign.

In all fairness though, just about all of the 1-star ratings seem to be from people who haven't even used the product yet.

Re:Weird behavior between pages

[jmorris42]

The Sony 505 and the Kindle seem to have very similar screens.

Perhaps this might explain that:

http://www.e-ink.com/products/customers_type.html

Re:Low production run?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serif and san serif type faces have functional value and aren't just a matter of visual preference. It's a fact that serif typefaces are easier to read than san serif, however this is only true when there is sufficient resolution to render the "serifs" on each font. (such as printed material from a press or modern home printer) This is why any book, article or newspaper of length is written in a serif typeface (those little spikes lead your eyes to the next letter and help round out the white space around the word -- which is how you identify words and thus read.)

On a computer display san serif fonts are very hard to read because those little serifs need more resolution to be displayed clearly.. instead they just appear as blurry smatterings that get in the way of the letter shape. (This is why online newspapers and other longer-web based articles are almost always written in a san-serif typeface.)

Microsoft Windows' method of font rendering is particular harmful to serif typefaces, making many of them very difficult to read.

Re:Low production run?

[ucblockhead]

The important metric for readability is not resolution, it is pixel density. Kindle has a pixel density of 167 ppi, which is higher than most LCD screens, which these days tend to run around 100 ppi, and is slightly better than the iPhone, which has 160 ppi.

I haven't used the Kindle, but I have used the Sony eReader, which has a similar resolution, and it is *much* easier on the eyes than an LCD.

Re:Who here bought one?

[bhodikhan]

I ordered ONE! And Amazon shipped me TWO! Since the first one broke in a matter of hours I guess the second one was their quality assurance program in action. Idiots.

I've been buying e-books for years

[alizard]

and running them on my ~$100 Palm Zire 31. In fact, that's how I usually buy fiction. And since most of my leisure reading is SF, I get DRM-free downloads from Baen Books. I can also convert documents most major formats into something readable via Palm.

Re:But then again...

[lightversusdark]

I'm surprised it doesn't include "amazon email".

It does. Every Kindle has a unique email address.

Re:I was interested until

[TheRaven64]

PDF to mobi converters destroy the layout. My publisher sells (some DRM'd, some DRM-free) PDFs. If you have to convert these to .mobi to use them, you are destroying a lot of the value.