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Hands-On With The Kindle
Amazon's Kindle e-book may have sold out in record time, but there's still a lot of discussion about the device's merits. Neil Gaiman likes it well enough, but it's sent Robert Scoble into a fit of apoplectic rage. For a real, meaty, hands-on look at the way the device operates in everyday life, Gamers With Jobs writer Julian Murdoch has a slice of life with the Kindle. He takes us through his Thanksgiving holiday weekend with the device, noting the quirks (good and bad) that cropped up with Amazon's new toy. "Short of reading in the tub, the Kindle is easier to read in more places, positions, and situations than a physical book ... But it's far from perfect. It is expensive. The cover, which I find completely necessary, is in desperate need of more secure attachment (Velcro works great). The book selection is less-than-perfect, although I imagine this will improve with every passing day. And Amazon needs marketing help. The Kindle's launch reeked of 'get it out fast.' The big-picture marketing efforts (like video demonstrations and blurbs from authors) were great, but simple things like communicating how freakin' easy it is to get non-Amazon content on to the device, for free, remain horribly misunderstood."
It uses e-ink, not LCD for the display. This means it's easier to read in bright light (and conversely impossible to read in total darkness.)
I would guess looking at the specs it's lighter than most books, water issues are exactly what the reviewer is talking about.
I read that the thing does not handle PDFs. Is this true?
If it doesn't, why would anyone buy it?
RTFA, one of the author's complaints is that Amazon's hype made people think it only handled DRM'd content. But it does seem to handle PDF and some other formats just fine.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
"Hypothetical" competitor to the kindle? There already are such devices which predate Amazon's own release as well. This one looks good. Again, a highish price but it looks better than Amazon's own (Linux support being one of, though not the top, reason for that). Sadly, like the Kindle, it has also sold out completely, but I'm seriously thinking of putting one on order.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
How about free? Provided, of course, that you provide your own Blackberry, Palm, Smarter-Than-Thou-Phone, PC or other geek-faux-wang. If you don't already have one you can probably find something acceptable at or near your $100 price point. It won't have the big e-Paper screen that the Kindle does, but I have no troubles using a smaller display.
e-Book pricing is all over the place right now, with titles ranging anywhere from free, free, or free, all the way to about the same as printed books. As the market grows expect to see more pressure on prices which should force things down a bit, but don't hold your breath.
Some books ship with bullshit included while others come pas-des-merde-des-vasche. With a good reader you can feed it anything from flat ASCII text, HTML or PDF files through to insanely encrypted tracts of bull and have something readable come out the other end. The choice is yours.
Yes, you can absolutely resell the hardware that you read books on just like you resell a used book. Reselling _data_ is a trickier problem, as it is nothing like a used book. Besides, the only way for second hand ebooks to have any value would be if they included "Bullshit DRM". Which do you want, resale or steerpoopage?
The Palm T|X sells for around $150 these days.
:)
I've been using one for over 2 years as my eBook reader of choice, and almost never open a regular book now. Toss PalmFiction on it, and you have a top notch e-book reader that can read HTML, MS Word, RTF, Text, PalmDoc and a number of other DRM-unencumbered formats.
Want a more integrated experience? There are over 10 other e-book readers for the PalmOS, some which have their own DRM-encumbered formats, some where you can purchase directly from the eBook app, etc.
Project Gutenberg encodes their documents in Plucker format, which has a native PalmOS reader.
The T|X has WiFi and Bluetooth support, and can connect to the internet via cellphone BT link, WiFi router, USB uplink with a computer, or even IrDA.
It has a 320x480 (2.5" x 3.5") screen, which might seem small, but works really well for reading text. Text can be displayed at any size and be linked to dictionary lookup/wikipedia/etc. Plus, the device fits in my pocket, so I'm actually likely to have it when I want to read a book.
Apart from the eBook features, the device can link to common calendaring and address book apps, browse the web, etc., act as a VoIP phone if you install a microphone, be used to watch movies, listen to music, CREATE content and take advantage of the thousands of software applications written for the PalmOS platform.
Oh, and it can run Linux too
The Kindle might make it. That's a very convincing review.
.LIT, Adobe eBook Reader, and Gemstar--no format had more than three of the books available.
It's not a hardware problem; it's never been a hardware problem. My year-2000 Rocket eBook is more than good enough to read books for pleasure. Seven years of progress is seven years; all they needed to do was not screw up, and it sounds as if they didn't.
The biggest problem by far with previous efforts was title availability. Sure, they would have an eBookstore with "thousands" of titles, and if you asked the question "is there anything there I want to read?" the answer would be "sure."
But ask the question the other way around, as someone who buys books rather than someone who is sold books. The question then becomes "is book XYZ, that I know I want to read, evenavailable?" The reviewer makes it clear that this is an important question for him, too, and that he thinks Amazon falls a little short. But only by comparison with the ideal. Comparison with earlier eBook efforts is like night and day.
Just before the "eBooks are dead" meme hit, i.e. at about the peak of the craze, I took a look at the book list for Oprah's book club. I thought that was a very fair test. They were scattered across publishers, they were not so old as to be out of print and mostly old enough to allow time for format conversion, and all of them were good books that some disinterested party thought were worth reading. I compared eBook formats and audiobook format, audiobook being an example of a non-print medium for which the conversion costs and distribution costs were far higher than for an eBook.
As I recall, of about forty-four books, something like thirty-eight of them were available as audiobooks, i.e. most of them. And a grand total of six were available in any eBook format at all. And of the three dominant eBook formats at the time--Microsoft
Now, the very first precondition of eBook success is that, darn it, the books you want need to be available. That's not sufficient, but it's necessary. The holes in title availability were huge. For example, to pick one of my favorites at random, there was nothing by Barbara Kingsolver available in any of the three formats.
On a very informal test recently in which I just listed ten books I had bought or was considering buying, I found that eight out of ten were available in Kindle format. Including nine books by Barbara Kingsolver, two of which I haven't read yet.
The second thing is price. By the way, Amazon is honest in saying most books are under $9.99. Many of them are priced a little lower, in fact. These days mass market paperbacks are costing $6.99, $7.99, $8.99 and trade paperbacks are mostly above $10. So it's fair to say Amazon is charging paperback prices, even for books that aren't out in paper. Do I think that's a good price? No, I think it's way too high. But it is much much much better than before. In the old eBook days, the uniform policy was that if the book wasn't out in paper yet, the eBook price matched the hardbound price.
I must have had a dozen conversations with strangers watching me read my Rocket eBook, and they all went the same way. Increasing interest. Not deterred by the $300 price of the device. But when they asked what the books cost and I said "Hardbound prices if the book isn't in paper," the conversation would stop dead right there and I could see their interest level plummet to zero. Maybe they didn't actually roll their eyes but it felt like it.
DRM is sucky. Half the fun of books is being able to lend them. Can you imagine not being able to lend a book to your wife even if you each had your own device? And I am stuck with DRMed Gemstar-format content that will die when my Rocket eBook dies (and its battery life, once 20 hours, is now down to about 2). Locked to a hardware serial number in a proprietary format, and the company is bust and their servers are shut down and no customer-service people to help. So d
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"what does this do that a tablet couldn't do?"
- Cheaper
- Lighter
- Smaller
- Doesn't overheat. (Sadly, TabletPCs aren't that friendly in that regard.)
- More battery friendly
- Easier on the eyes
- EV-DO syncing. (Wikipedia in places your Tablet PC would find challenging.)
It's a specialized device. It's not necessarily for you. I wouldn't say it's a total waste, either. If not for the early adopter price, I'd have one right now.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Moot point since Amazon "backs up" your books: you can re-download the books for free once you've bought them.
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
eh, Apple sells songs for $0.99 each which weigh in at about 3-4mb each.
A 50,000 word novel with an average word length of 5 characters (plus 1 for spaces or punctuation), is only 300k. Let's even up it to 150k word novel that's a bit wordy, maybe 9 characters a word (plus 1 for spaces or punctuation). That's still just 1.5mb, half the size of a song. As long as we're talking just plain text, it's pretty cheap. You could even compress it, and text compresses very well.
I can understand having to pay the people who write and maintain the software, the editors, authors, marketing people, possibly artists for cover art.. but bandwidth for the actual transport of the written text is so small that it really shouldn't have that much of an effect on the final price. I can't imagine that the bandwidth costs to transfer 1.5mb of text is greater than several hundred pages of paper, glue, ink, and physical transport to a store (and the store clerks, and all other costs associated with physical retail).
I think I qualify as a "younger person" and I like the library of books I've built up for myself. It has nothing to do with ego; I don't parade my shelves around in front of people or point it out. They're not prominently displayed. They're just there. I like them. I still have the first fantasy novel I ever read, over ten years ago. I haven't read it in a while, but I might someday.
;)
There's a sort of connection some of us have with books. We just like books. Some people collect stamps, or old computers. I collect books. It doesn't make me in any way superior to someone who collects funny looking rocks or slime. I just like 'em.
I also have a boatload of old video games. I don't use them to say "Look! I'm more gamer than you, I have more NES and Genesis games!"
Where did you get this mental image of people who keep books as some sort of demented supervillains who want their rings kissed?
Well...
Here we own a lot of books. We also have quite a few bookshelves around the house. We also have a splendid collection of vintage computers. We don't have them to impress people, although we love to invite our friends for dinner. What I like about having books around is the feeling it gives me when I pass by a shelf and grab some book I liked and re-read a couple pages on the couch. What I like about them is the fact I can pass by the shelf and pick one up at random and, when I am gone, my children and grandchildren will be able to both read them and enjoy them.
I like the eBook thing. I would love to have all my technical books in electronic, searchable, extremely portable form. I am considering either a Kindle or a Sony reader for that. It will not, however, capture the joy of opening a book given to me by my grandfather and telling those stories to my kids across, often, at least a century. It will never duplicate the experience. It's a new thing. It's practical, perhaps, and, in some measure, even a satisfying replacement. But not a complete one. Just not yet. I bet we will be around for the next decades and be able to see what happens.
I am sorry you consider the owners (I would rather use the term "keepers") of personal libraries are snobs, but I am sorry for you, not for us.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
What's given away can't be loaned to friends or passed on to the next generation...
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom