The Cult of Kindle

DaMan writes "ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog is pondering the Kindle this week. There have been many attempts at an ebook reader in the past; why does Amazon think it can do any better? Given the high cost and DRM issues, will cachet be enough to win them financial success? Will the 'Cult of Kindle' help guarantee Amazon's success in the ebook reader market? 'A group of people willing to give it a five star rating just because someone else didn't, willing to back up every design, engineering and marketing decision that Amazon made, willing to defend the Kindle with their last dying breath. The Kindle doesn't cost money, it saves money. That 0.75 second flash as the pages turn isn't a downside because it gives you an opportunity to take in the previous page. It doesn't harm your eyes, in fact, it fixes them. Ergonomic issues that other reviewers have bought up are dismissed by the Cult of Kindle as flaws with the reviewer, not the device. The Kindle is perfect, and the Kindle 2.0 will be a little more perfect.'"

Comments

Article is Flamebait!

[explosivejared]

Pass on this one. This is about the worst article trolling I've seen. All it does is attack a particular set of supporters of the project. It is designed purely to incite flamage. It's disgusting. Zonk please think before approving this crap. The article doesn't want to start a debate at all. It's already made all the conclusions in an extremely prejudiced manner. I'm sure there are supporters of the kindle for legit reasons, and if I was one of them I would be horribly offended!

Disclaimer: I've never used the product in question or even amazon.com for that matter. This was just a particular revolting piece of garbage.

What it doesn't do:

[maynard]

- Doesn't display PDFs natively.
- Doesn't allow me to annotate on the page (or take pen input).
- Can show web pages like wikipedia, yet doesn't allow me to browse.
- Doesn't support WiFi hotspots.
- 600x800x1bit pixel resolution is terrible.

Though battery life does look good. Still, my Newton ten year old 2100 has the same resolution, the same battery life, and many of the same restrictions. Lame.

Re:What it doesn't do:

[w3woody]

I have both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.

1. The Sony Reader displays PDFs natively. The small screen makes this nearly useless except for especially formatted PDFs. PDFs can be converted for the Amazon Kindle and the results are generally not all that bad, except for complex formatted PDFs. (But most PDFs are formatted as 8 1/2x11 inch paper; to read that properly you'd need a 14" diagonal screen--and instead of a handheld device the size of a small book, you'd need something the size of a laptop.

And guess what? A cheap laptop fits that bill perfectly.

2. The Amazon Kindle in fact does allow you to annotate a page. Select the line using the menu scroll wheel, then select "Add Note". You can then enter a note that then stays associated with the line. On the main page a small 'note' icon shows up on the page. You can also browse your notes by selecting "Menu" at the bottom of the page, then select "My Notes & Marks"; this shows a list of all the notes that you've taken. Selecting the note allows you to go directly to the page where the note was set; you can then read your note. (The Sony Reader doesn't allow you to do this because it has no keyboard.) Both devices allow you to bookmark a page.

3. You can browse web pages; use the menu wheel to select the line where the link is on, then select the line. A pop-up menu will then show a list of the links on that line, as well as give you the option to look up the meaning of any of the words on that line. Not exactly as elegant as using a pen or mouse input device to click on the line, but it does work.

4. Sprint EVDO is more than fast enough and has wider coverage than a hodge-podge of WiFi hotspots. The price to surf using the Sprint cell network is built into the device--meaning that it is effectively "free."

5. The resolution is 600x800x2bits/pixel, for 4 levels of gray, which is the current limitation of e-Paper. What makes e-Paper cool is that in direct sunlight or in a bright room, the e-Paper is extremely easy to ready. The downside is that it is unusable without a nightlight in the dark, and it is much lower resolution (and has no color resolution) compared to LCD.

The Newton (which I also had) had a smaller screen, shorter battery life, did not have the ability to surf the 'net and had no content.

(As a footnote, this is the thing that fascinates me about Slashdot: if a post sounds informative, it gets marked informative--even if the content was clearly pulled out of the poster's ass...)

Lol, I bought the Sony ebook reader

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Sony isn't any better than the rest when it comes to DRM/keep the customer tight/buy, it's all we care.

Of course I have no GSM in the reader, but I don't need it, do I ?

and you have a plethora of tools working under linux to make your books and mangas compatible.

300US $. and then you take the books wherever you want, even on Sony's book library (bastards offer you "free" books from their "classical collection", everything you can get for free on Gutemberg...).

So, Kindle was a miss for me. I don't need a gadget that makes me pay through the nose AGAIN for everything.

(btw, if you have way more money than me, have a look at Irex second iteration of their epaper. A4 format, tablet functions, wifi..700 or 800 US$)

Re:Lol, I bought the Sony ebook reader

[PopeRatzo]

(btw, if you have way more money than me, have a look at Irex second iteration of their epaper. A4 format, tablet functions, wifi..700 or 800 US$)

I bought an iLiad with some unexpected income. It's the most wonderful device, and if iRex can survive the almost certain efforts of Apple or Sony to "acquire" the company, I can see this being one of the most popular bits of personal technology. I'm hoping that future versions have some slightly more advanced editing ability, which would make marking up manuscripts a breeze.

If you haven't seen this baby you really should take a look, and be sure to click through to some of the photographs of it with the link at the bottom.

I absolutely will not, under any circumstances, willingly purchase a device that uses DRM or locks me into using one vendor to buy books the way Amazon's Kindle does. Not when it's so easy to make a device that does what I want it to do instead of what the vendor wants to be done to me.

Have used Kindle for 48 hours

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not own it, but I was able to borrow it for 48 hours.

In reading other reviews, I think most of the reviews I have read are talking about the "eBook" concept in general. That, to me, is separate from a review of the Kindle. I have no idea of "eBooks" will catch on, or if people will generally like them. If you like the idea of an eBook, I thought the Kindle implemented the eBook concept quite nicely.

I thought the platform was very nice. This is not a laptop, it is a book. And, for reading books, I thought it did a great job. I liked the the form factor for reading. It was comfortable to hold and comfortable for reading. I really liked the ability to "impulse buy" books. I only downloaded samples (as it wasn't my Kindle or Amazon account), but it was fast and enjoyable. I also liked the ability to change the font size. It allowed me to place the Kindle in a position that was comfortable on my arms and comfortable for my eyes. I really can't say I cared if it did PDF natively or not. I read PDF's on my laptop. I'm not sure why this has become some huge deal. I didn't feel Kindle was trying to replace all things paper.

Re:They're called fanboys

[Nalanthi]

The feature you are looking for are iPod Notes. The only problem is that they are rather text limited. There are programs out there that will split your text document into correctly sized chunks and embed hotlinks to the next and previous notes at the bottom of the note. For a bare bones online converter, look here: http://www.ipod-notes.com/

PDF won't happen for a while

[jmorris42]

> To me, the inability to function as a printer and the utter incompetence on displaying PDFs renders both the Kindle
> and Sony's offerings more or less useless.

Two factors prevent this in the current generation. The e-ink screens are SLOW. Not lcd slow, but hundreds of milliseconds slow. Panning and scrolling around a PDF would be a nightmare and the current generation is orders of magnitude to low in both the resolution and size departments to present an 8.5x11" page in a readable form.

Then there is the total lack of CPU power that dealing with PDF needs for a good user experience. The Kindle is essentially a cell phone (and not a smartphone with a fast CPU) with an oversized epaper display and a keyboard. Most of the other e-book readers currently offered are underpowered as well and for the same reason, battery life and form factor. In the small thin form factor there isn't much room for a battery and to get long life they depend on a slow energy effecient CPU that can be powered off almost all the time.

Give Moore's Law some time and we will see exactly what you describe appear. And it will totally RULE.

Re:What about PDAs?

[Abreu]

Try reading an entire novel on your PDA. The battery won't last through the entire book yet it will with one of these. Ever since I got my Palm Zire (Im on my second now), my "books read per year" has improved greatly.

Grant you, the small screen and 320x320 resolution takes time to get used to, but I can read almost any format (some need converting, but that's quite easy), but its cheaper than the Kindle and I can read any book I want, not only those that Amazon wants to sell me at a paperback price.