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Amazon Debuts Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Fire HD In 2 Sizes
Nerval's Lobster writes "Amazon used a Sept. 6 event in California to debut a range of products, including a front-lit [not back-lit, as originally reported] Kindle e-reader with a higher-resolution screen, an updated Kindle Fire, and the new Kindle Fire HD in two screen sizes. First, Bezos showed off a new version of the Kindle e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, complete with a front-lit, higher-resolution screen (221 pixels-per-inch and 25 percent more contrast, according to Amazon). The device weighs 7.5 ounces and is 9.1mm thin; battery life is rated at eight weeks, and the screen brightness is adjustable. He then showed off the updated Kindle Fire, before moving to the Kindle Fire HD, which features a choice of 7-inch or 8.9-inch screens, dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus, two antennas for better Wi-Fi pickup, and a Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 processor (which Bezos claimed could out-perform the Tegra 3). The Kindle Fire HD's 7-inch version will retail for $199 and ship Sept. 14, while the 8.9-inch version will cost $299 and ship Nov. 20. An 8.9-inch, 4G LTE-enabled version with 32GB storage will be available starting Nov. 20 for $499, paired with a $49.99-a-year data plan."
Kindle has a nice idea of how the device can be used in a family, where the parents can control time spent by kids.
It'll be interesting to see if Apple has anything up and comping to address this same problem, until now they have kind of ignore this.
I think Amazon could do very well with the new Fire, and also the new PaperWhite kindle - that's the first e-ink Kindle that appeals to me, the others were just too low contrast for me. And even iPad owners could easily be enticed to buy a cheaper e-ink Kindle... that could well help cement them as the leader in e-Books (not that they were not already pretty cemented).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
250MB per month before you have to pay more
I want to feel warm and fuzzy and covered in the goodness of complete googleness
I picked up a Fire as a cheap 'Android' tablet while visiting the US. Once I got it back to the UK, it was pretty hopeless. No Amazon Marketplace over here and the odd hardware profile means most apps turn up their nose at it, even with sideloaded Google Market. I will be looking at the Nexus 7 or similar when I come to replace it. Sorry Amazon, nice try, but your walled garden isn't for me.
I saw paperwhite and was hoping this was a resurgence for E-Ink. Sadly no, it's not.
It's e-Ink, at least according to http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/06/kindle-paperwhite/. It would have to be, to have an 8 week runtime.
geek. lawyer.
It's NOT BACKLIT. Submitter wasn't paying attention. It's an illuminated display, you can turn it off.
They made a big deal in a comparison slide about how the data plan was just $50 for a year of 256mb/month data. I believe that was even global!
That's a pretty impressive arrangement.
I do wonder if it will be undercut a bit by shared data plans the carriers are just starting to offer. Bringing a 4G iPad into a home that already has two iPhones means only $10/month extra device fee... that's still $120 though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it's e-ink with a "fiber optic" layer that lights from above.
I think the terms you are looking for are frontlit and thick. Still, I'm a bit disappointed that the DX is such an ugly stepchild. Certainly there's a market for a reasonably priced larger format e-reader.
I'm thinking about returning my recently acquired kindle gen 4 since I may not get to use it much in the next month, and a built in light is a major feature.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Does Google include 10-20 dollar books that can be borrowed for free? Or Fantasy & Science magazine for a mere $12/year? Or e-ink that is easy on the eyes? Or free 3G web surfing? My kindle has all of that.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Was e-ink ever gone ? No LCD beats it for long reading sessions.
I didn't find that to be the case for previous e-ink kindles, the lower contrast was like looking at dirty paper and bothered me enough I preferred LCD's for hours of reading.
The new Paperwhite display looks like a winner to me though, finally realizing the full potential of electronic paper along with a great lighting solution. I think it could be the first e-ink I really do find preferable to an LCD, and it has a decent PPI for rendering text.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I read "Paperweight" instead of "Paperwhite"
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Sales tax is not state by state, it is county by county or in some states town by town.
I have been involved in projects to do this and it is a huge PITA. State sales tax is easy, town or county are hard since zip codes and other such normal address data do not tell you if they are within a town/county or not.
and a nice horribly slow refresh rate, no games, no netflix, or any other useful application.
Eink is not a tablet replacement.
OMAP 4470 "Can outperform the Tegra 3"? The Tegra 3 has 1.2-1.7 GHz QUAD CORE ARM Cortex-A9 application-optimized cores with NEON. The OMAP 4470 has 1.5-1.8GHz DUAL CORE ARM Cortex-A9 application optimized cores with NEON. You know that means the slowest Tegra has 1/3 more processing power available than the fastest OMAP 4470, and its single-core speed is 2/3 that of the OMAP? If you went with the Tegra 3 T33 used in the Asus T700 at 1.7GHz, you'd have 95% of the single core speed and 90% more total processing power available.
There is no way you can outperform the Tegra 3.
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Interesting change in wording. That means 56 days of reading 1-hour per day instead of 62 days. Meanwhile Barnes advertises "over 2 months" for their nooks.
Are you quite sure?
Barnes on Nook Glowlight:
Read for over 1 month on a single charge with GlowLight on (based on a half hour of daily reading time)1 Read for over 2 months with GlowLight off (based on a half hour of daily reading time)1
Amazon on Kindle Paperwhite:
"So we worked on our power management — Kindle paperwhite can get eight weeks of battery life even with the light on.
It is what it is.
Steve jobs would never have allowed this to happen
He would have had bezos killed by his secret ninja assassins a long time ago
Nor is a tablet a suitable replacement for an Eink reader.
The Kindle app is in the Google Play marketplace. I don't know what this has to do with anything.
That is just a bizarre comparison. BBC is paid for by the *government*, Amazon is a private company. I don't see why a Kindle couldn't work perfectly outside the US.
It is fronlit, like the Nook Glow. http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/amazon-officially-announces-the-new-kindle-paperwhite-paperwhite-display-frontlighting-and-212-ppi/
8MB of bandwidth per day ought to be enough for anybody. ;)
You pay $20 per year to get 2GB of data each month?
It is absolutely trivial to transform a Kindle Fire into a regular Android tablet. My mom did it. I got a refurb one specifically for that purpose. It is currently running Jelly Bean pretty smoothly.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
In other words that's about twice as expensive as $20 for 2GB that I pay to my cell phone company.
Your calculation is wrong, but even if your calculation was right, it would certainly not be the case. People don't use up to their limit all the time. $20 for 2GB, $10 for 1GB or $5 for 500MB or $1 for 100MB are certainly not the same plan. I would be super happy to have a $1 for 100MB, pretty upset with $10 for 1GB and feel ripped off with $100 for 10GB.
I watched the live presentation. It is a front lit display using a new technology to light the front of the display using nanoimprinted light channels in the glass. It acts like ambient light but it is not a backlight in any way shape or form. It also claims 8 weeks of battery life with the light on. I guess the closest thing you could call it is redirected side lighting? The live blog from gizmodo has a picture of the tech as it was show on the bigscreen. http://live.gizmodo.com/page5.html.
Why why why Amazon? Pretty much everything about the new Kindle sounds great except for the lack of page turn buttons. I'm still using my 3rd generation Kindle and I'd love to upgrade it to a higher contrast screen with built in lighting, but touchscreen-only navigation is a killer. It makes one handed reading more difficult and uncomfortable, will cause screen smudges, and will be nearly impossible to operate with gloves.
"My kindle has all of that."
Mine too. I own all the models but the touch has a problem in country life.
Each time a fly lands on it, there's a page change, back or forward, depending on the landing zone.
Sometimes the fly also looks-up a word in the dictionary.
Actually it is. I use one in that fashion regularly.
Amazon's walled garden is the #1 strength of the Nexus 7. Also, the latest Android is nice. I have the Amazon Kindle app, the B&N Nook app, Google's Play Books app, and of course an audio-book player which is what I use most often. I was wondering what Amazon could offer that would make me wish I had a Kindle Fire HD. Looks like nothing.
On the positive side, the $300 price point for the larger device is eye-opening, though I'm pretty happy with my 7". My family keeps stealing it, and my wife travels with it, even though she has an iPad. The Nexus 7 is simply a better e-book reader than any current iPad.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
What's really weird about your counterpoint is: There was a time in the 80's and 90's when the US donated launch vehicles to put up BBC's satelites over various tropical locations such as the Carribean, and the treaties that made this possible spelled out that US citizens who could get line of sight to those birds could legally access the programming. Living in Fla. at the time, I was one of the people who did it. Later, i was told by a US government source that they never meant to have that knowledge become generally public, and actually wrote the BBC to confirm it was as I remembered. BBC reps actually sent me a government address to contact if I wanted more information and confirmed that was their understanding as well, so I have no idea who the US government was acting on behalf of.
Who is John Cabal?
The new kindle paperwhite includes a page light, so this is no longer true.
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>>>Sorry Amazon, nice try, but your walled garden isn't for me.
One could say the same about the BBC and their "walled garden". Why on earth did you think you could use an amazon tablet outside of its home country? I certainly don't expect to be able to hear/watch BBC outside of the UK.
Because I paid for the tablet, but I don't pay for the BBC?
As has been reported recently on Slashdot (and known to people with circadian rhythm disorders for much longer) staring at a backlit screen at night can seriously screw up your sleep schedule. Not to mention many people have more eyestrain from backlit screens than non-emissive ones. For many people, a tablet is a terrible replacement for an eInk ereader. Does make me wonder if this Paperwhite will have the same problems though.
Hold long will the (hu)man hold down the proud black fly?
This really needs to be handled at the Federal government level. The way it's done right now is ludicrous. You have companies which purport to provide updated tax tables. They have to monitor every municipal government in the country for any new or changes to the sales taxes. Basically the equivalent of polling in CompSci. The thing is, none of them will indemnify you against errors they make. If they screw up and you've been charging the too little tax for a week, you have to pay for the shortfall, not them.
The Federal government should makes a sales tax website. States, counties, and cities report their sales/use tax rates to this website. Businesses can then download the latest tax tables from the site every day. If a local government fails to update their tax rate, then they're responsible for losing out on any uncollected taxes. If a business fails to update its tax tables, then it's responsible for any uncollected taxes. No shifting of liability, no stupid polling, no duplicated work.
That study did not seem very complete. I would bet on a strong placebo effect.
Eyestrain from backlit screens is another one of those bullshit conditions. People spend 8 hours looking into an LCD, then go home and spend another couple hours looking at a bigger LCD. No one ever complains about the monitor or the tv, but if its a book they say "oh noes lcd will burn the eyeballs out of your sockets!!".
Kindle DX2 please. 11 inch screen with this new screen tech please.. I know a LOT of people that would kill for an A4 size screen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Why would I give up one walled garden to go to another? With Android you have choice."
With the properly chosen android device you have choice. Please dont sugar coat it, the Kindle Fire is android and it has NO choice unless you hack it. In fact the only tablets I know of that give you freedom of choice is the nexus 7 from google. Unlocked bootloader and pure Jellybean os with no crap installed. Unlike the Xoom.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And if you like the eInk Kindle why would you not start to consider the Fire?
Because if I want an eye-searing backlit reader to use after the lights go out, I'll use my wife's iPad 3 which has a much better DPI than the Fire. Horses for courses, and for reading I'll use my e-ink Kindle whenever I can (and maybe I'll get the new Paperweight to solve the after-dark problem). When I want to use a tablet for tablety stuff, the Fire is not my first choice.
The tax rates available from the state generally is only updated once a year, and not at the same time as the county/town. This means you have to buy a subscription to a service to handle this, and they well may not be 100% up to date either. Then you have to check if the user in the county/town whatever, for practical reasons they means asking like you have seen.
Hard is the wrong word though, it is not a hard problem just one you have to solve over and over. The real problem is when you find out you did it wrong for a location, which will happen. Then your lawyer decides what you do about it.
I am not a homosexual, not sure why you would think I was. I have some gay friends I can introduce you to if you are looking for a date.
I own only 1 apple device, a macbook air running linux. I despise the iOS devices.
I have a nook, which has an lcd and it works great.
Wow, they can use the device to make sure kids read?
The parental controls could in theory, allocate the amount of time permitted between apps and books.
I have no idea if they do, but they could.
That doesn't technically make them read but reading on a tablet might be "cool" enough even a kid that did not otherwise want to read would do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Huh. I'm looking at Title 17 of the US Code, and nowhere among the exclusive rights of copyright holders is "export" listed. So, I'm thinking, some kind of evidence supporting this claim would be nice.
This would suggest that the UK doesn't allow imports of anything that could be subject to copyright unless it had a registered UK copyright. Aside from the fact that this would be impossible to enforce (given the scope of things that are subject to copyright protection and how impossible it would be to verify that for every import it would apply to), this is, like the last, a pretty extraordinary claim for which some evidence would be welcome.
LED screens don't have a backlight, so you can turn down the brightness and use dim white text on a pure black background. No e-ink required.
So, it has a light, but does it do PDF annotation? Can you zoom and navigate and crop PDFs easily? No.
The primary use for an e-ink reader is to read novels. PDF is not a suitable format for that. Although the Sony reader has the features you ask for, for those of us who don't read children's books they are not necessary. Technical reference works is not really what it's designed for either, but it's quite adequate, and far better than the tablet I left at home.
Look, if you don't read novels e-ink is not for you. Get a tablet for your games, browsing, magazines and illustrated PDFs. We who *do* read novels are quite happy with our readers. BTW, I also have a tiny clip-on reading light which works perfectly well, but I almost never bring it because I don't need it.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
"My kindle has all of that."
Mine too. I own all the models but the touch has a problem in country life.
Each time a fly lands on it, there's a page change, back or forward, depending on the landing zone.
Sometimes the fly also looks-up a word in the dictionary.
At one time an ant highlighted the words "advocate leniency" on a page in my Sony reader. Maybe those insects have more communication skills than we give them credit for :)
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I have the GlowLight model. B&N's hardware is nicer than Amazon's, as is their software, but their actual ebooks leave something to be desired. I've encountered a lot more formatting errors than I did on the Kindle, and even several books that didn't let me change the font. I actually had to resort to stripping the DRM from the EPUBs (or just downloading pirate copies of books I bought), unzipping them, and manually adding the font files and editing the manifest, CSS, etc. It's a damn pain, and the reason why I preordered the Paperwhite.
I bought the Nook in part because I wanted to support someone who wasn't Amazon, and I don't want this to become a market dominated by one player. Honestly, though, Amazon's doing a better job. This isn't even getting into the poor syncing between the Nook and the iOS app, or the fact that sideloading is more difficult than on the Kindle (no syncing there, and you can't sideload into the iOS app).
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Hah, where do you think I got the idea? Irony points: I read it via Kindle app on the iPad.
the UK government protects its local artists/authors by not allowing imports unless registered under UK copyrights.
What? What?
Bullshit.
I've exported plenty of books to the UK, (when I worked for a publisher) never heard of this requirement.
Maybe you're thinking of North Korea or wherever it is you live, because "copyright registration" is not a requirement" to sell books in any civilised country.
However, I'm sure publishers do want to restrict the marketing regions. They will have contractual arrangement with Amazon to do so. But that's nothing to do with either copyright or the UK government.
iPad 3 which has a much better DPI than the Fire
iPad 3rd Gen has a resolution of 2048×1536 on a 9.7" screen, giving it a DPI of 264.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9" has a resolution of 1920x1200 on a 8.9" screen, giving it a DPI of 254.
For all intents and purposes, the Kindle Fire HD has the same DPI as the latest iPad.
Why would you need to annotate a PDF when you're reading an epub? Why would you need to zoom and crop a novel that has been reflowed with whatever text size you have chosen?
the e-ink readers are designed for just that.. reading. Expecting one to be a PDF editor is pretty retarded.
The comment was about e-ink readers not being useful in the dark, that was what my reply was in response to. Moving the goalposts doesn't make you look smarter, it makes it clear you're not.
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Get back to me after you spend most of the 8 hours of your 10 hour flight reading... and then immediately get on a train for a 10 hour train trip. How's that tablet working now?
I like eink as I don't have to stare at a light bulb to read. Plus it has about a one month battery life.
I'm at the point in my life where I don't want to manage a shitload of different devices.
If you don't read books, then an ebook reader isn't for you. But if you do read books, what would you rather do? Manage a single device, or manage a shitload of different books?