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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."

4 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 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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!"