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: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

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.

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: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:But then again...

[lightversusdark]

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

It does. Every Kindle has a unique email address.