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Amazon To Offer Ad-Supported Kindle
awyeah writes "Amazon will soon be offering a discounted, ad-supported Wi-Fi Kindle called 'Kindle with Special Offers.' The price will be $114, a $25 discount from the $139 wifi-only device. Note that the advertisements will not appear during reading, only on the screen saver and home page. Will that be enough of a discount to get readers to purchase an ad-supported device?"
"...Will that be enough of a discount to get readers to purchase an ad-supported device?"
Probably, but chances are most users, no matter how unobtrusive the ads may be, will likely regret not forking over the "extra" $25 to try and have at least ONE electronic experience that is ad-free, as one can hardly get away from advertising these days, no matter where you are.
At a hardware level, the e-ink screen is begging for this kind of treatment. When powered off, it's basically a coffee-table billboard waiting to happen, married to all the radios and spyware you need to profile the house its sitting in and deliver the ads.
I'm totally grossed out by this. For now it's opt in, but it won't be in the future. Expect this to show up on all kinds of crap as e-ink screen prices drop. Lunch boxes, refrigerators, etc.
Just another reason the $75 Kobo is the best e-reader on the market (I've owned a Nook, Kindle and Kobo).
...of having an ad on the cover of a device when it is turned off. Thank god your tablet, smartphone or laptop does not have a big logo on the cover, advertising its manufacturer.
I wouldn't mind getting a $25 discount for that. The two problems that I have with it are:
* Are the ads related to what I bought on Amazon? If I buy, say, a dozen dildos, do I have advertisments for sex toys on the cover of my kindle for the next two weeks (or until I buy something else)
* Is Amazon going to pull a bezos on me? After two months reverting and saying "you know what, we are going to insert advertisements inside your e-book on second thought. You know, a bit like "an e-book on the kindle is just like a real book. Except that we can yank it from your shelf if we decide that's a good idea".
Other than pinging the radio once in a while (which it could do while charging, if you wanted to be nice about it), putting ads on the e-ink screens do not draw extra power. The Kindle already flashes the screen once to show a "screen saver" image.
(you can't read an eBook from any vendor other than Amazon on a Kindle),
And where exactly did you come up with this? The main problem is that it can't read ePubs, but you can load anything in a format it supports (txt, mobi, html, pdf if you are masochistic, etc....) via USB, and with some (txt, mobi I think are the only two), you can even download them using the experimental web browser from any store or website.