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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.
I wonder how many units were made available.
I somehow doubt it is a case of 'we made lots, but demand outstripped supply'. More likely this was a limited production run to test the waters.
The Sony reader had a long latency to flip a page, as well as some stuff going on with the ink rearranging itself. If one could just flip fast without any image artifacts, it would be great. Most people will want color, but I think this is more important.
If the first buyers are big fans of Amazon, then they probably will soon leave reviews on the product page, giving us some descriptions of the product that aren't tarred by marketing hype. However, at the moment the reviews that are up are by people connected to Amazon, or those who haven't even used the product.
Let the Early Adopters try it out and send in the bug reports. In a year or so, there'll be a version 1.1 that doesn't have as many annoying misfeatures as 1.0.
There's an old rule in the computer biz: Don't ever buy anything whose version number ends with an even digit.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
1. There are always a number of people with "state-of-the-art-addiction" who must have the hot new gadget.
2. There are always people looking to profit from the above people, who jump on these product launches to then turn around and sell the product on Ebay.
Beyond that I wouldn't read too much into this just yet. The Kindle may be a success, or a flop. All we know is that it a newly hyped gadget that sold out at launch, like most new hot gadgets.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well yeah it was the front page of amazon, yeah the entire front page.
Basically the best advertising that any device could have.
You don't have to. It's an option. You don't need a computer, but if you have one you can use it to put files on it. It comes with a usb cable.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Kill it. Now.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
1. Market new product & advertize initial sale date
2. Do not reveal how many (hand fulls) of product units are available
3. On day of initial sale, reveal that product was sold out in 4 hours!!!!
4. Let lame media pick up stories
5. Enjoy free advertizement & viral marketing
6. Pick another date to release a few more units
7. PROFIT!!!!
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
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.
~ roscivs
first consumer device from this company, and the first generation of it. It's often the case that these releases are approached carefully to work out the kinks in the supply and distribution chain. I've dealt with products where the first 200 from China had to be reworked when we got them here, if you make too many of them you end up with more than you can really handle on a first release.
Amazon is not (yet) like Apple, Sony, etc where they can just push a button and have 100,000 devices made and shipped.
I think you're reading way too much into it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Looks good, but it's way overpriced.
Either have cheap books or a cheap gadget, not both.
No sig today...
I have to say I am impressed with their selection, which can get downright esoteric. Sony's selection(which has gotten better recently) has always left me wanting. I would watch Jon Stewart interview some author and then I would go see if I could find their book only to find out it's either not there or too expensive.
One of the things that really showed promise was having comic books delivered to the device. However, it never really panned out for Sony, one year on and there are only 14 items in the manga section, and Kindle isn't looking much better. The sample they gave with the Sony eReader actually looked pretty good in terms of readability, shame there isn't much content that I want on it though(I suppose I could go track down pdfs, but too much of a pain)
Monstar L
A lifetime of free wireless access to Wikipedia for $399 - that's a pretty good deal.
I'm surprised it doesn't include "amazon email".
No sig today...
Everyone is bashing this product, and either I'm confusing my acronyms or people here don't realize this things greatest feature. The PCWorld article says it has EvDO, which I thought was a cellular technology, it lists that as the way to get more content on the thing. AND there is no usage charge for that, the PCWorld article says they take care of that in the background, so the price you see listed for the content you can browse is EXACTLY what you pay(OK maybe taxes or something)
So, either I need to cut back on the beers and pay attention to which letters mean what, or this thing is actually kinda cool, not that I'm buying one this year. If I'm way wrong, mod me to nothing, but otherwise, man do people complain about anything here!
Those who can, do.
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
So... you're saying that a book has all the advantages of an abacus?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
At first I was ready to buy the thing. It seemed wonderful with a long battery life, the ability to purchase books right from the device, and Wikipedia all the time. Then I noticed the price...what a shock.
I think I would have paid up to $125, as I still need to actually buy books to read on it. But $400? Either the device is expensive to make or the market researchers grossly over estimated the publics need for such a device. $400 buys some really nice toys, much nicer than a e-book reader. I think I'm going to spend my money elsewhere this holiday season.
What a shame, too. I would really like to own one when they become reasonably priced.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Anyone who buys one of these things now deservers to have "sucker" tattooed on their forehead -- these things look like they're made to rip people off with continual "upgrades" as they gradually turn into something useable.
The e-paper displays sound interesting, I suppose, but if I'm going to spend $800 on a linux gadget I'd want it to have the full functionality of a laptop... paying that much for a crippled laptop doesn't make a lot of sense to me...
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.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
What's with these companies and "special" lockins? Why do they crave control over items they sell so much?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It Has DRM
Has nobody been paying attention to the many and various articles in recent years about "some random company" who decided to revoke their DRM product (new DRM, dropped product, company died, etc) and totally screw all their customers who had paid license fees to use this DRM functionality?
VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS people.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Actually, they are charging money for connecting you to those blogs, since the net connection doesnt require any sort of login. It makes sense to let me browse their store for free, but to pay the data fees (even big discount fees) for me to read a blog and not charge anything is just stupid. I wouldn't expect that of any company. Does apple give free internet service with their handhelds? Does anyone?
Too rich for their own good, money to burn, since to own this device, you would already have a laptop, an ipod, a cell phone, digital camera, etc. etc. If you have the money to fork over $400 for a device less useful than just about everything else on the market, you probably own a Segway.
Not to say that its not nice being rich, but you're also an idiot since this overpriced, semi-useful device is full of DRM and all your books will likely be gone as soon as amazon decides to discontinue it or not to support the old form of DRM with their new model.
But hey, if you're both rich and dumb, its perfect for you. Maybe someone will invent a clip to attach it to your Segway so you can read while you ride.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Twenty to thirty dollar NYT hardcover bestsellers cost $9.95. Other book prices can range all of the way down to $1.99.
Then again, in the future I expect things like textbooks may be more than that. 'Course, on the other foot, one reason textbooks are supposed to be expensive are their relatively limited production runs. Not a problem with ebooks.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Actually it only has something like 2.5 stars on Amazon. Not a good sign.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
When you manufacture a mass market item, you're not in a position to say, "Let's just make 100 of them for our first manufacturing run, so we can boast that it sold out in a few hours." There's a fixed cost to starting up and shutting down a manufacturing line, and that means there's a minimum number of items you have to make if you want to make them at a reasonable cost. If you shut down the run before you reach that point, you end up saving little or no money.
So what you do is make some kind of estimate as to how many you're likely to sell during an initial period. (Obviously, if that estimate is lower than the manufacturing minimum, you've got another Foleo on your hands.) That estimate has to be be pretty low for a new e-book reader, a product with a really dismal track record. It's probably not much more than the minimum manufacturing run.
This device has some features that may or may not cause it to break away from the pack. The big one is that you don't need any kind of network access to download content; it has a built-in EVDO device that you can use without a monthly fee — network charges are included in the cost of the stuff you buy. (That's the main reason I considered buying one.) On the negative side, the thing's pretty expensive (the main reason I'm didn't) and a little bulky. In that kind of situation, the smart thing to do is do a short initial manufacturing run and see if the product develops a following. And in this case it has. Standard business practice, no Machiavellian scheming required.
I have to say it again: we're all hi-tech geeks here, and hi-tech doesn't work without economies of scale. Yet nobody on Slashdot seems to grasp the concept. Pretty sad.
More versatile, has a camera, reads a wider variety of formats. It's a (funny little, purpose-built, not-your-ordinary) *laptop*, but it has a book-reading mode and a 200dpi screen (in monochrome mode).
:)
A bit bigger than the Kindle, sure, but sure seems like the one I'd rather have in my backpack / fallout shelter / carry-on bag. After all, does the Kindle have a game pad?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
dude, every single review of this device on the Amazon website (famous for nuking bad reviews) has someone saying "the DRM sucks". Probably half the people who bought it are warezing their books and using the unofficial converters to load em onto the device by USB. Early adopters are notorious hackers.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What a mess. I ordered one. They shipped me two. (only billed for one). The one I opened died after about 3 hours. Unit still worked but the eInk screen was dead. Sent that one back for a refund. In my opinion the build quality sucks and there isn't really any good place to hold the unit where you aren't accidentally pressing some button. I still have my free unit new in the box. I'm so un-impressed I may just send it back to Amazon for some other dumb bastard to buy it. I hope this endeavor dies in a big way to warn others.
Yeah, but damn near every review on the Amazon site is written by someone who doesn't own one and thinks the review system is good for expressing an opinion about something they know nothing more about than I do. It's hard to find reviews from actual owners, but the ones I've found are mostly positive.
/. culture, but I would accept DRM as a trade-off if it were just a bit less expensive, came with an integrated book light, and wasn't so goddamn ugly.
I know it's counter to
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
If it was less expensive (say, $100) and actually worked in my country (Australia) I'd buy one.. I'd fill it with book warez I converted into their format with bootleg tools, but I'd buy one. I'd take advantage of the free access to Wikipedia, and maybe I'd pay the $1/month to get Slashdot on it, but they can keep their $9.99 NYT bestsellers (and the associated DRM).
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm sorry. I'm not usually one to complain about these types of things, but this is so ugly it'll probably get you beat up - even if you aren't still in high school.
Quite honestly, I'm underwhelmed. Maybe it's going to do a lot more than I think it will, but I'd really prefer something with a sizable reading page, and the absolute minimum bezel around the screen. I don't like to admit it, but Steve "I can't stand buttons" Jobs is on to something. Textual input and interaction is such a small part of the reading experience I really would rather have a less-useful touch screen than a device which is twice as big as it needs to be for it's primary function (i.e. reading).
I mean, hey, wouldn't you love to see the thing with an internal segmented case and the components on a flexible substrate which allowed the book to be flexible about the long axis (say, up to 20 degrees of arc)and rigid about the short axis. Then you could curl it a bit and it would slip into your pocket, just like a real paperback.
No, this is just another device which is trying to do too much, and the compromises made will doom it to eventual failure. Hell, at least make the keyboard a slide-out affair like the HTC phones to save some space. Besides, did I mention is was ugly? Two bagger, coyote ugly?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
It is however perfectly easy for a company to launch with a limited number of items received from the factory. This is a basic sales trick. Amazon ordered the production of the kindle, but that doesn't mean all the units arrive in one go, that itself would be extremely foolish, it would delay the launch and cost a lot of money to stock everything.
Say that a factory can produce 100 devices per day just as an example. You want to launch as soon as possible so you tell them, when you got 500 send them over, so I can launch. Then at launch those 500 are "sold out". Sure they are, but the factory has been busily producing so they in fact now got 700 more, but because sending small orders is uneconomical you told them to NOT send the daily production over, you told them to wait till they got a 1000.
Bam, you get a head line of being sold out while the factory has plenty.
The kindle ain't sold out because it is still in production. It is trivial to set this scenario up and Amazon should fire its marketting department if they hadn't set this up. It is a basic move. Make the item seem hot, so that people get the idea that they MUST buy it now or they may not have another chance.
Have you EVER sold anything? It doesn't matter what house you are looking at buying, they ALWAYS got an intrested party about to make a good offer, so if you are quick you might just beat them. Decide NOW!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I use Clie for several years to read books. Initially I used project Gutenberg books processed with plucker. Then I found that there are tons of books available on P2P. I tried to find books to purchase but most of them come in proprietary format and can't be used by my palm. I would never go back to paper book unless I have no choice. Here are advantages of e-book reader:
1. Backlight - you can use reader when it is dark without disturbing people around you, like your sleeping wife.
2. You can carry several books on business trips and on the plane. I can fit probably 20 books on my 16mb device or much more on 32mb memory stick. I can go on a month long business trip and never run out of reading material.
3. Small and light - fits in my shirt pocket and weights less than a book. Very important when traveling.
4. Remembers page where you left it - you can read while standing in line in the store or any other line.
5. Has unlimited bookmarks and you can take notes right on the device. I hated bending corners of book pages, never did that.
6. Accessible - anyone can read it and works anywhere. It does not need network connection ether and with universal charger works anywhere in the world. I never had a problem so far.
7. Keeps other records handy. I use it for keeping my car maintenance log and other info.
8. Robust if you are careful with it - so far I only had 2. First I bought refurbished for $69 and second some years later on craigslist for $25.
9. Long battery life - mine lasts for 2 weeks if backlight isn't used.
10. Has dictionary lookup handy.
Over all I think it beats paper book hands down but of course it has downsides - like you cant take it to the month long desert hike. But so far I never taken one of these.
I would want my next reader be:
* small - to fit in my shirt pocket
* light - no heavier than my clie S360
* have possibility of memory expansion using sd cards
* have e-inc black and white screen - readable like paper if possible
* support pdf - this is optional. I can convert pdf to html and import html.
* have a backlight so I can read it in the dark.
Just my 2 cents.
Add Linux e-reader software to a Linux-based Nokia N800 Internet Tablet and you're there, and if you insist on having access that isn't via WiFi, add a
Better performance, and no vendor lockin.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I'd like to point you to a post I made earlier.
Here's the meat:
1. Recovering your cost, and turning profit, after 2 years.
2. Carrying all your books around with you on one device (1000s of titles with a 2GB SD card, and you can carry multiple SD cards).
3. Free, wireless wikipedia.
4. Purchasing new books without having to travel to a book store, and with a 60-second delivery time.
5. Support for audio tracks and audio books.
6. Low/no publishing cost. $0.10 cents per file you transfer to your Kindle via EVDO, free transfers in Mobipocket, RTF, Doc, or Text format via USB, and integration with Amazon's Author-Self-Publishing service (ala Podcasts).
7. Support for Free Books, something which isn't possible on paperback (you pay for paper, ink, and printer maintenance. not to mention binding equipment).
There are all kinds of reasons why ebooks readers are cool, particularly one with a nifty new EVDO connection model.
Frankly, the free, wireless Wikipedia is worth $100, and the portability is worth at least another $100. I would love to be able to bring my library with me on a plane. Not just 2-3 books; the whole thing.
Any self-publishing through Amazon, something which will take some time to establish, seems ultra-cool. Not to mention that this device enables the possibility of other "online" book-like services in the same way that Wikipedia on a kindle is an "e-encyclopedia". Imagine text-books with interactivity, or the ability to submit homework and/or quiz answers directly through the device.
Hell, newspapers that update themselves are pretty cool, too. Not to mention that getting your books, news, and everything else electronically significantly reduces the amount of waste you discard.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Add to that all of the usual ebook advantages, like not having to lug around tons of books if you are taking a trip, or the ability to just download a book on a whim that suits your mood rather than haul your butt to the bookstore or library. It's rather like the difference between an iPod and a CD player.
That said, like an iPod I will not be taking an ebook to the beach anytime soon. (is that before or after sales taxes? I never groked the U.S. habit of *not* advertising the real price). Simple: they don't know if they are going to have to charge you sales tax, and if they do the percentage varies by state. Personally, I like being told exactly how much the government is taking from me every time I make a purchase.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My neighbor got one, and has had it for almost two days now. He let me play with it a few times.
The display is very crisp and clear and easy to read. It has a clear surface over the e-ink display... the effect is like reading a really, really flat piece of glossy paper. Yes, if you have very good vision you can see the pixels, but it's so very very high contrast that that's not a problem.
The unit is much more attractive in person than its photos make it look on the web. It's not beige, it's very white. It's slim, and the angularness of it is less obvious in person than on the web, unless you look at it from the end. It has a nice leather case that it goes in which makes it rather book-like in many respects. When you turn it off, it puts something interesting on the screen (remember, e-ink takes no power to display, only to change, so you can leave something on an "off" e-ink screen) and my friends quite like that. The UI is easy enough to use - a minute or two of poking at it and I'd figured it out more or less. The wireless connection works very well. He downloaded a sample chapter (yes, you can get free sample chapters) in mere seconds after he'd typed in the title.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with it, and immediately recommended it to my aunt, who has been searching for a good e-book reader for a few years.
Ok, I'll take a crack.
1. Convenience. You can do full text searches on every book in an eBook reader, an incredibly useful feature for anyone doing research or just looking up a particular term.
That's something computers are for - if I'm doing research, I'm not going to be doing it on a text reader.
2. Portability. You can carry a thousand books and also grab other content (newspapers, blogs, magazines, journals) in a unit the size of a paperback, which you can throw in a backpack, briefcase, etc.
Carrying around giant libraries of music (and video) makes sense, but people tend to read one book at a time.
3. Flexibility. You can download any document off the internet (PDF, DOC, TXT) and take it with you without having loose papers to worry about. Granted, the Kindle isn't well suited to this, but other eBook readers handle many formats natively.
This also tends to only make sense in the context of a portable computer of some kind (If I'm taking papers somewhere, I'm doing work; if I'm doing work, I want a computer, not a text reader).
4. Efficiency. It wastes a lot fewer resources to manufacture one eBook reader than to print, assemble, and ship hundreds or even thousands of physical books.
Could be. Although the vast majority of people seem to only buy a book or two a year, and gadgets like this get replaced every couple of years - could come out even in the end.
5. Turnaround. You can decide to purchase a new book whenever you like, without going to a store, waiting for a shipment, or printing a huge stack of paper on your laser printer. The Kindle even lets you buy a book from wherever you have mobile phone service, though I don't like their DRM model.
That is the only real, tangible advantage to these things that I can think of. (Of course the Kindle completely destroys it with the whole DRM business)
And even here, it's not like with music or movies - you'll be reading the book over a period of several days or weeks (or months), so being able to get one instantaneously isn't as big an advantage.
6. Usability. If you have poor eyesight you can adjust font sizes on the fly. If you're not in a position to read print you can play an audiobook.
Depends on the device, I suppose - when it comes down to plain comfort, real books have been pretty hard to beat for these things.
the paper book will become like the slide rule or the 35mm consumer camera: Still used and appreciated by some but more and more ignored by the masses.
I'm not buying it. Both of those examples are replaced by something that does the exact same function, but in a more powerful/easier to use manner; they have no intrinsic benefits over their replacements and the only reason to continue using them is nostalgia.
Whereas here, the new solution is not only searching for a problem in many situations, but is considerably worse in some. The main one being that it's very, very difficult to render a book unreadable, whereas these things have batteries and are very susceptible to physical damage or a splash of water; and people tend to read a lot away from home.
I do think these types of things will become a lot more popular, but not for all uses. For example, I can easily imagine most newspapers being delivered on such devices 10-15 years from now, but I can also easily see recreational reading sticking with actual books for some time. (Of course for all I know, all future exchange of information will go through Facebook, and this is all moot)
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
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