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Reading the New York Times On a Kindle 2

Posted by kdawson on from the all-the-news-that's-fit-to-squint dept.

reifman links to his thorough and thoughtful review of the experience of reading a newspaper on the Kindle 2. "I've been eager to try The New York Times on the Kindle 2; here's my review with a basic video walk-through and screenshots. I give the Kindle 2 version of The Times a B. Software updates could bring it up to an A-. Kindle designers should have learned more from the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, my Kindle display scratched less than 24 hours after it arrived. As I detail in the review, Amazon customer service was not very accommodating. Is it my fault — or will Kindle 2 evolve into an Apple 1G Nano-like $22.5M settlement? You can read about Hearst's e-reader for newspapers from earlier today on Slashdot."

11 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. I actually just tried the Kindle II... by solder_fox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A friend of mine bought one for reading in the subway. He finds it great, and he points out correctly that for avid readers it's wonderful just from the standpoint of space conservation. For Manhattan-dwellers especially, that's a major selling point.

    It's a pretty good product--the only bad thing about it is from the publisher's standpoint, since IIRC it requires you to prepare your books in a new format (which is a not-insignificant undertaking) and Amazon has near-complete control over the pricing structure. (The pricing structure thing hurts authors, too.)

    Countering that is that it will make some books more accessible. It doesn't take much work to get books now, but the ability to have them in front of you and easily readable right away combined with sample chapters gives you at least part of the convenience of actually walking into a bookstore, only you get it anyplace you can get the data connection.

    I can't speak to the durability, though, because it's still a new toy. Give it a year and see how it holds up in different conditions. But overall, this is definitely a shiny product, in the good sense as opposed to the coefficient-of-specular-reflection-is-too-high sense. It'll probably really help Amazon once the economy picks back up, since more people will have the income to spend on a Kindle and they'll have had a chance to improve it.

    --
    --- Thousands are enslaved every day.
    1. Re:I actually just tried the Kindle II... by value_added · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So it can't read PDFs. Big negative IMHO - I wouldn't mind having something like this (at $150 max) to stash dozens of technical references and white papers on. But I'm not going to go through the hassle of converting every PDF I'd want to store.

      Nice to someone draw attention to the fact that paperback novels aren't the sum total of everything people spend their time reading. Given that popular fiction seem to be Kindle's focus, the rest of the world will have to wait for something else altogether.

      Which is a shame, really. The ideal reading device should accommodate anything and everything in written form. That would include technical papers, manuals, textbooks, and newspapers, among others, in addition to what's currently being read by airline passengers trying to pass the time with their Kindles.

    2. Re:I actually just tried the Kindle II... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I thought we were waiting for the Linux-based firmware that would let you run arbitrary programs so you can read all the formats they don't support.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:I actually just tried the Kindle II... by Kooonsty · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're forced to create an account and then send pdfs and text files to an email associated with the account for a fee ($0.20 per file or something like that). It's difficult, and Amazon has everything locked down.

      .

      You obviously never even looked at the website, let alone read a review of the thing.

      I think they're kind of lame(no removeable storage, non-removable battery), but my wife recently got one, so I know that:

      A)You can(not must) send PDFs to an account for translation. It costs $.10 if you send it via the cell network(duh, that costs money). If you transfer them by computer, it costs $0.00 My wife, being an artsy type, has the Adobe suite, so she just converts them herself if they aren't just used as an image container.

      B)You can just plug it in a USB port and copy plain text to it like a thumb drive, albeit with no meaningful folder managment. She has loaded it up with a bunch of ebooks she already had in plain text, plus the aforementioned converted PDFs.

      Something seems very wrong with the fact that a whole novel can be sent over a cell network for $0.10, but a text message of under 200 characters cost double that.

    4. Re:I actually just tried the Kindle II... by Brandee07 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I honestly got used to the black flash really quickly. That said, it would be nicer to turn pages faster. The K2 reportedly turns faster than my Kindle 1, so they are making progress.

      I do want to point out that if you hit Page Forward 5 times really fast, it flashes once and you're now 5 pages ahead.

    5. Re:I actually just tried the Kindle II... by Kismet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I got my Kindle 2 last week. I never tried the original Kindle, nor any other ebook reader. I did read a lot of the forum chatter about issues such as no SD slot and only 1.4GB storage.

      So far, I've been really happy with it, other than the brief panic over my credit card company shutting down my account after the dozens of ebook downloads tripped their fraud sniffer.

      I'm not concerned about expandability. I've downloaded mostly the classics in literature and philosophy, including more than several entire collections of works from authors like Twain, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Verne, Dostoevsky, Locke, and many others. I currently have more reading material stored on it than I might hope to enjoy in a lifetime. So far, it all occupies a few hundred megabytes. It must be pretty sparse on pictures. ;)

      I won't use the device for file storage, photos, music, or audiobooks. A smartphone, PDA, laptop, or MP3 player is better suited to those formats. Some people might prefer an all-in-one device, which the Kindle is not.

      Some other criticisms of the Kindle include worries over the DRM, file organization, and the inconvenience of converting personal and other documents for use with the device. These are things to keep in mind, although they are all software issues that could conceivable by fixed with a simple update. I don't think the Kindle truly replaces the hardcopies that I value the most, but it is very handy to be able to tote them around in an electronic format.

      Another great benefit, for me, is that the Kindle saves me from scribbling and marking my books. I can make annotations on the Kindle which are saved in a file. I can then easily search my annotations or download and organize them however I like. That is a great study help.

      The Kindle is designed to mimic the simple readability of a book. It does that much fairly well.

  2. Re:FTA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I can't share my Kindle newspapers with my cow-orkers. I buy the physical paper, but once I read through it I'm done - so other people in my office get to read it.

    Also, I can cut out articles from the physical paper.

  3. Re:Good idea, but I still have hesitation re Kindl by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Amazon does have an awesome MP3 store that is DRM-free

    Some of that might be true, but...

    I am a longstanding customer of Amazon, and I have bought dozens of CDs through them. But the other day when I thought to buy a few tracks as MP3s, I was disappointed to get a message that the service is only available to US customers. (I am in Australia.) I can't think of a single good reason why they would need to pursue that strategy other than to enforce DRM in some way. They were happy to sell me a CD of the same thing, but they had made me grumpy, so I took my business elsewhere.

  4. Propietary Format by cervo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What if amazon goes under? All those ebooks that I may have bought will be gone. If you look at some of the music DRM services, what happens when Amazon decides not to support the format anymore?

    I want an e reader because my books are piling up. But I want the same rights I get for paper books and until I get that I will not buy one. I have some books that are older than me. Now I see people with this e-reader or that e-reader and then a year or two later they have a new one and re-buy all their books.

    I want all the benefits of paper books but without wasting all the space on books. Also as a society, what happens if in years people dig up our society and just find these e-readers with a proprietary format? All of our knowledge will be lost whereas with books/tablets at least they can get something to try to translate.

  5. Some questions from a non-Kindle user. by ClemensW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was looking into buying a Kindle as soon as it becomes available here (Rightpondia), but after reading the license agreement on Amazon, I'm not sure anymore.

    Do I understand it correctly, that..
    - in case the Kindle should be lost/broken or I buy a newer model, then all books are lost, too?
    - in case I switch to a different brand of ebook reader, I'm stuck with a load of unreadable books?
    - I cannot loan a book to a friend, except by giving him the whole device?
    - I cannot try to remove the DRM, otherwise Amazon will kill my service?
    - Amazon is snooping what documents I have on my reader?

    If that's correct, then - sorry to say that - it looks like Amazon is telling me: "HA! WE SCREWED YOU!"

  6. Scratched screen or review? by mr_da3m0n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This reviews reads a bit like "Misdeeds of the tobacco", by Anton Tchekov.

    We are promised a review of how well the Kindle is suited to read the new york times on a daily basis, but the author spends a few paragraphs right off the bat informing us that he shoved his kindle in a bag with other junk (candy bars?) and scratched the screen, and then is surprised Amazon will not outright send him a new one to compensate. He even repeats it in the "the screen" section.

    I don't know, but I spent a while thinking "yeah that's good to know and all, but where's the New York Times in there? Why is he trying so hard to justify how he scratched the screen?