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Amazon's Android Tablet Expected This Fall
According to the New York Post — among many others — Amazon is expected to launch its long-anticipated color tablet in late September or October, and the device is slated to sell for 'hundreds less' than the iPad, which implies a price of $300 or less. MSNBC says much the same, but adds some (their words) "generic looking mockups" to illustrate. I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it's good to have options.
Thsi is great. I was considering buying a Kindle because now I read Kindle books on my Android phone. I'm also in the market for a tablet, which I would like to be android. So, this is perfect for me.
I'm not sure why I'd specifically get an Android tablet from Amazon, given that there's already an official Kindle app for Android which makes it so you can read your Kindle books on whatever Android tablet / phone you want. Well, unless this new Amazon tablet also comes with a lifetime unlimited wireless Internet connection, I suppose - but somehow I anticipate some limits... :)
It really doesn't matter if the tablet is any good or Not. In fact it could be a total piece of crap and the millions of hipster Amazon disciples will empty their wallets for it.
The Kindle, along with the Nook and every other e-reader out there is distinctly different from a tablet, because they have one goal, make it easy to read on a screen. With e-ink, it looks just like paper and doesn't give you the eyestrain that an LCD or CRT does after reading for a few hours on it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Improving colored Kindles? Amazon seems to be doing fine with progressing with the E-ink in their Kindles, why on earth would they want to try to compete with Apple? They should try to complement Apple. This Android Tablet will be yet another HP Touchpad boondoggle. As everyone knows, Apple has the supply chain fixed, no one can under price them. It just seems odd to me, that a wholesaler discounting website seems to think they can compete at Apple's bread and butter. Unless of course that it is not meant to really compete, just distract.
> I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight
> and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet,
I buy that the Kindle could have a less eye-strainy screen than an iPad, but how good ARE the batteries in these things? My iPad will a full day of use, and if I'm only using it casually, it goes a couple of weeks between charges.
As for weight, I always thought that was battery-related. The iPad, when put in a book-like case, feels a little denser than paper to me. Feather-light would be nice, but it's not like it weighs 15 lbs.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
if not go fuck yourselves I am not paying more for a weak ass toy tablet than a multicore HD laptop
end of story
As a Kindle owner, I can say that I bought it because the Kindle was a great eBook reader. I would not consider upgrading unless their Tablet was also very good, and not just good at being an electronic book reader, but a great tablet.
These folks aren't getting it. Bigger is better. I work with many businesses and they would all love a bigger tablet - the size of a piece of paper - like a 13" model. They'd snap those up so fast, it would make the HP fire sale look amateurish.
I have had such a great experience with Amazon and the Kindle that I'm really waiting for the Amazon's tablet to buy it!
The jury is out searching for more of those discounted hp touchpads. The jury don't give a tinkers cuss for open source, etc... they want something usable and inexpensive.
Shocking, I know, but you can't account for the behaviour of the commoners.
Does anyone make a tablet that allows you to create things like music/art/literature? It seems like the tablet's I've seen on the market are all designed to push their app store or media store or whatever the fuck else kind of store. Maybe everyone doesn't want to spend their free time buying things.
Like the Zune and others, domed to fail as they are not sold worldwide.
At least Amazon sells the Kindle outside N. America.
I have a kindle, and it's a fantastic device. I'm certainly not an "Amazon hipster" (I didn't even know there was such a thing) I don't buy anything from the amazon store, my kindle is rooted and I do with it as I please. It's best features are not found anywhere else: The screen is amazing and I charge it once a MONTH at most. I read every day and the kindle lets me blaze through books. I have it filled with automotive service manuals, emergency guides, maps, all of which combine make it perfect for emergencies in which the power could go out rendering all other devices useless.
I'm sure there are people out there that buy them just so they can sit in starbucks and look cool, but that's not the magic of the device. If they can improve the screen by adding color and improved refresh rates, add more tablet features like improved web browsing, some more basic applications like a calendar, calculator, maybe even GPS, while keeping the battery life significantly longer than other devices, I think they'll destroy the tablet market. All this superfluous stuff people are doing with tablets right now, like games, videos, etc, are just driving the market in the wrong direction. High power use, low battery life... Phones already do all that, we don't need a big cellphone. We need a computerize book/map/encyclopedia/notebook. THAT is where tablets will win big in the long run and the only company doing that right now is Amazon.
I have the B&N Nook Color. I have to say, it's brilliant. I've had it for 8 months now and my level of reading has increased significantly. I always thought I'd be a paper guy forever, and until recently, I owned hundreds of books, and over the years I've bought thousands. I received my NC as a gift and was given the leather cover/protector-thingy with it. I found this significantly added to the tactile experience...it made it much more like holding a book than a tablet. Also the 7" size is perfect...any larger and it would be cumbersome to hold in one hand, like a folded over paperback...I read when I'm doing other things...cooking, etc.
The processor is a bit slow, but if you look at it for usage...one is (mostly) apt to use a tablet for one of two things...gaming or reading. Angry Birds is probably a shedload better on an ipad or Galaxy 10", but it's usable on my NC. I've watched the Al Jazeera live feed app on it and it works pretty well. I've rooted it, installed Kindle for a couple of books. But for reading, especially with one hand, the 7" screen is the way to go.
I've also spent more on books in 8 months than the tablet cost. The e-ink idea is cute, but I can read in the dark...and often use the white on black text with the brightness turned all the way down. IMHO, eye strain is a myth....just turn the brightness down. I turn it all the way up for bright sunlight and that works great too. I don't charge it more than every 3 or 4 days....and I use it every day.
Okay, enough blah-blah-blah about the Nook Color. What I mean to say is that an Android tablet makes a fantastic reader, especially at 7" with some sort of cover to give it the tactile feel of a book.
I'd rather read a novel on Kindle with a battery life of 5 hours than an iPad with a battery life of 50 hours.
Once they get around to adding proper PDF handling (and maybe a table-sized screen) the tablets won't get a look-in for reading any books.
As apposed to their black and white tablet? or is this a racist remark?
For their 30% that take care of promotion, selling and collecting the money. Stuff I don't have either the time or the inclination to be bothered with.
I'm not a salesman or a marketeer. I'm a developer.
Oh, and I get regular payments from Apple.
Result?
One happy developer with $$$ in the bank that I wouldn't have otherwise. How can I begrudge Apple their slice of the pie?.
No one ever talks about why the Kindles are Amazon's secret weapon and how the color Kindle will be the beginning of a new generation. The Kindle, of course, is a book-selling machine. The color Kindle will be an Amazon Store selling machine. Yes, I predict, you or your compadre will soon be buying TVs and other commercial stuff from your Kindle.
A lower price is neither necessary nor sufficient to get me to buy.
I would love to be able to switch a lot of my book buying to digital. My house has as many paper books in it as it can comfortably hold, so when I get a new one, I have to throw out an old one. But two things are holding me back: (1) Formats like epub are basically html without support for mathml, which means that for math and science books, they're not an option. (2) Nobody has a large selection of DRM-free books. Historically, all DRM schemes have tended to exist for no more than about 3-5 years, after which the buyers have lost 100% of their investment. (I have ideological issues with DRM as well, but this purely economic and practical issue is enough make digital books a no-go for me.)
The price of the reader isn't a huge issue for me. If the DRM-free content was available, I'd be willing to pay $500 for a reading device. Since the DRM-free content doesn't exist, I wouldn't even be willing to take a reader if someone gave me one for free.
Find free books.
The sub-$200 Linux netbook market seems to have completely disappeared, killed by Microsoft. There's some MeeGo crap, but that's tethered to an "app store", so it's like buying a subsidized phone. ("Creates a direct connection between your wallet and our bank account.")
I do enough input that I want a keyboard. Tablets are for passive consumers; you know, TV watchers.
1)Get the free Calibre to remove amazon DRM, it also is a great ebook manager / backup. Seriously. You are whining for the sake of it. The Kindle reads most formats, DRM or not, books you buy can be de-drmed with ease, and you dont have to use the amazon store.
If you honestly want an ebook reader, DRM is not a good reason not to have one.
The average selling price for subnotebooks rose to $521 last july from $343 in July of 2010." The industry is desperately trying to stop generic $200 machines from taking over the industry.
If you buy Kindle books from Amazon, there's Calibre plugins that will automatically strip the DRM. All the O'Reilly books are available (directly from O'Reilly) DRM free. There's also other sources but, yes, there's no general DRM free store yet.
Hey Amazon!
No Android tablet has a VGA out and most installed conference room projectors still don't have HDMI! Id like to get an android tablet right now, but the ipad is the only one that you could actually do a presentation from.
From TFS:
I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it's good to have options.
That was just flamebait. A color book reader makes sense.
I have been reading ebooks for years on my old Palm TX PDA, but I finally bought a pair of actual ebook readers: a Nook Color and a Nook Simple Touch (a/k/a a Nook Second Edition).
I bought the Simple Touch for the crazy long battery life you get with e-ink, and the readability in bright sunlight, and I took it with me camping last week.
But most of the time I am not camping, and most of the time 8 hours of battery life is plenty, so the Nook Color is great. I got it for my wife, and she has been reading magazines on it. With a responsive multitouch high-resolution display, she can zoom in on the magazine and pan around; and each article has a GUI button that pops up just the text of the article in a convenient font in a popup box. So, one can see the magazine as the graphic designers intended, but one can also read a magazine article conveniently without needing to zoom and pan.
A Nook Color is a $250 Android tablet. The 7 inch display is a good size for my wife: small enough it is convenient to carry around, big enough to read conveniently. It doesn't have Bluetooth, GPS, a camera, etc. but her phone has all that and the Nook does what she wants. Not only is the Nook Color an Android tablet, it has good e-reading software built in. So it's going to attract customers who want to read things (such as magazines) in color, and it's going to attract people who want a $250 tablet device.
I have no plans to root the Nook Color and install a real Android ROM image. The Nook Android system works well, she can surf the web and watch Flash videos, and the special Nook app store has plenty of apps.
And, I'm hoping that the Nook DRM will make Netflix offer their streaming client app for the Nook Color sometime soon. (I already have Netflix streaming on my phone, with its tiny display, but I want it on a tablet device!) If Netflix came out with the streaming client for Nook color and it wasn't out for Galaxy Tab or Xoom, I might just buy another Nook Color, for me.
My wife has very little interest in my e-ink Nook. She really likes the bright, sharp screen of the Nook Color. If something happens to her Nook Color, she will want to immediately replace it, which is the test of a good gadget.
In short, there is a legitimate use case for a color ebook reader with "only" 8 hours of battery life.
Amazon, by not having a color ebook reader, is losing sales to the Nook Color and possibly to real tablets like the Galaxy Tab or Xoom. It absolutely makes sense for them to jump in to this market.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
... in the e-reader space. From a recent B&N mailer:
"Among the new features, NOOK Color v1.3 now offers access to special edition NOOK Magazines(tm) with enhanced interactivity and bonus features." Even without these special features, some magazines work very well indeed on the nook color -- I subscribe to national geographic, for example, and it is really quite nicely done. (I have one each of the other B&N readers, BTW, and the experience on the color version is vastly different than on the eInk ones.)
There are also interactive childrens ebooks that the color nook supports. Things like this give an opening for publishers and B&N to monetize content in a different way, and I think they may just be on to something.
Historically, all DRM schemes have tended to exist for no more than about 3-5 years, after which the buyers have lost 100% of their investment. (I have ideological issues with DRM as well, but this purely economic and practical issue is enough make digital books a no-go for me.)
Of course, to make that argument you have to ignore iTunes. Their music DRM scheme ended several years ago, yet you can either keep playing the DRM-ed files you originally bought or pay a fee to upgrade them to a higher bit rate, DRM-free version of the files.
I don't like DRM either, and I only buy DRM-ed files if I have the means to remove the DRM - but I had to point out a large exception exists to your "rule".
#DeleteChrome
I will continue with my current Kindle, or it's successors: e-paper, whether b/w or color. I prefer it to LCD's, and their power hungry, can't read in daylight issues. I suspect Amazon is just jumping on the bandwagon, so I do not hole out hope for anything more than a well designed LCD e-reader to compete with the NOOK LCD. What I am waiting for is color e-paper with a refresh rate fast enough for video, 60 cps or faster. Then add a flexible, wireless keyboard embedding in a cover, so I can replace my kindle, and I can replace my laptop. Maybe even flexible e-paper. The new Lenovo think tablet comes close as you can with current tech, with the optional hard portfolio case, but it still uses an LCD.
For a 10 inch tablet with quad core CPU and Android 4, I would pay $300 in a trice. I have some Kindle books, so integrated Kindle and Amazon Marketplace are fine.
Assuming there isn't something stupidly defective with it like coming with no real Android Market and not being able to add it.