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Amazon Japan's Manga-Ready Kindle Has 8 Times the Storage (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the affinity-for-manga dept.

Amazon Japan has an unusual challenge with the Kindle: it not only has to cater to your typical bookworm, but to a local fondness for image-heavy (and thus storage-intensive) manga books. What it's going to do? Release a special model just for those readers, apparently. Engadget reports: The company has introduced a manga version of the Kindle Paperwhite with 32GB of storage, or eight times as much space as the run-of-the-mill 4GB model. You could cram every single volume of Asari-chan, Kochikame and Naruto into this e-reader, Amazon says. The manga Kindle is available for pre-order now, with pricing commanding a slight premium over the usual Paperwhite. You're spending about $157 or $118.

38 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. I really don't understand by aslagle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why wouldn't Amazon market this internationally? It's not like no one outside of Japan likes manga...

    I've had to banish my manga collection from my Kindle Voyage because one relatively short manga can take up the space of 100 other books. I'd love to be able to fit them all on my Kindle.

    1. Re:I really don't understand by ninthbit · · Score: 1

      And there is your answer... Because you have the pressure of ebooks to weigh against your manga, Amazon can get away with selling a small capacity system, and make you the fringe user who needs to buy the more expensive models.

      In japan, the market force for high capacity storage is large enough that a low capacity model won't do well, and they then have to offer something in between.

    2. Re:I really don't understand by Shrubbman · · Score: 1

      Uhh, Kindle devices have an SD slot.

      https://www.google.com/search?...

      Try again when you have even the most basic understanding of the hardware, you shill.

      Those are Kindle Fire tablets, try again when you have even the most basic understanding of the difference between general purpose tablets and the e-ink ereaders both the article and the op were referring to.

    3. Re:I really don't understand by GyroDragona · · Score: 2

      Uhh, Kindle devices have an SD slot.

      https://www.google.com/search?...

      Try again when you have even the most basic understanding of the hardware, you shill.

      Most of the fire tablets do have an SD card slot. None of the e-ink display having kindles do though. The article was talking about one of the e-ink models.

    4. Re:I really don't understand by chmod+a+x+mojo · · Score: 2

      Yep, the original kindle V.1 is both modern and still being sold.... oh wait, you still can't read, dumbass with the UID that signed up in the same month that I did.

      --
      To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
    5. Re:I really don't understand by Aboroth · · Score: 2

      You're still using an ancient Kindle yet everyone ELSE is a "fucking moron". Got it.

      Replacing a device that works for its intended purpose with one that doesn't, simply because one wants something newer, is what I would call a "fucking moron."

    6. Re:I really don't understand by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      Considering how small they can make large MicroSD cards, why is 32 GB in a device the zies oe a tablet or e-reader considered "large" anymore?

    7. Re:I really don't understand by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      they'll have to pry my DX from my cold, lifeless hands.

      5 dollar trade in value amazon? i thinks not.

    8. Re:I really don't understand by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Because they're selling the Kindle at a loss, and hoping to make it up in book sales (though they probably aren't). That's my guess why.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re:I really don't understand by chmod+a+x+mojo · · Score: 1

      Funny, even using my paperwhite for several hours a day I only have to charge somewhere between three weeks and monthly... damn that short battery life.

      But do keep digging yourself deeper, it is quite amusing.

      --
      To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
    10. Re:I really don't understand by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

      For the same reason they are still selling PCs with 5400 RPM HDs as system mounts...

    11. Re:I really don't understand by mattmarlowe · · Score: 1

      The Kindle DX was awesome....Whoever discontinued it in order to promote Amazon's tablets instead made a huge mistake - A high end modern Kindle DX could easily justify a very high price. My DX lasted 4+ years in which time I read a few thousand books...but eventually the keys stopped working (I even used crazy glue for a bit to keep it working).

  2. They need it by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    The amount of manga published is incredible... They have fortnightly and monthly anthologies running to 700+ pages covering every genera. People often only read a subset of the stories, but I guess for contract reasons Amazon probably can't unbundle them.

    I read that it's been causing Amazon problems with data consumption too. If you subscribe to regular publications they send them over the cell network for free to your device. No problem when it's 100k for some magazine articles and the odd small photo, but a bit of an issue when it's 750 pages of drawings.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. MicroSD slot you stupid bitches! by Nyder · · Score: 1

    While I don't actually need to have all my books on my kindle, it would be really fucking nice if I could put all my books on my kindle and get it ordered how I like. A microSD slot would do that for me. But whatever. It's not like I actually buy ebooks thru Amazon anyways.

    --
    Be seeing you...
    1. Re:MicroSD slot you stupid bitches! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They've done the math. The cost of offering an SDcard slot isn't worth it.

      It's more than the BOM cost of the parts - Software support, customer support, etc - It's just more things to go wrong.

      Amazon is on the hook for support and customer complaints when a bad SDcard causes problems in the device. That isn't free.

      The question you should ask is, will adding and SDcard slot increase the amount of money Amazon makes? Will it significantly increase sales of devices and purchase of content? - The answer is likely no.

    2. Re:MicroSD slot you stupid bitches! by Megol · · Score: 1

      Few lines of code? You have no idea what you are talking about, the short name generation code itself is more than a few lines of code.
      [Personally I both hate and admire the VFAT format, hate it because MS could have used a more modern filesystem instead the FAT32 one (which really isn't suited to any media) and admire that they actually made a format that have some form of backwards compatibility and still keep the general FAT design. The alternatives for long filename support in OS/2, GEOS (not the C64/Apple version) and other systems was to keep long filenames in a separate file requiring an indirection and making file name updates asynchronous with other file changes.]

      To continue it is possible to write FAT32 code without VFAT support, make a modification so that no short filename is generated etc. or just interpret the UEFI (? think that's it) standard document that describes the file format (and includes a licence and patent grant from MS) as making VFAT patent free.
      But then the SDXC standard requires exFAT support... That's a bit harder to handle.

  4. If only there was some possible way to ... by tazan · · Score: 3

    If only there was some possible way to add storage to a device. Maybe some kind of hole somewhere where you could plug in some kind of device that would expand memory. Maybe someone could invent that, and we wouldn't need a new model.

    1. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      They'd also have to invent a way to manage that storage so that pulling the card out would only remove the part of your library you expect, and not cause the damn thing to fail catastrophically. They'd also need a way to avoid hours and hours of manual user processes to delegate a storage location, or to migrate collections of books between locations.

      On the other hand, they could put like 1GB of storage in and sell the device cheap, thus lowering the price tag, even though you really need to spend $50 to add the right storage. That became unviable when 32GB of Flash fell below $10, though, since the difference is trivial. A 64GB microSD will cost you $30, whereas the branding, packaging, electronics, and shipping mark-up are built-in already for a phone or ebook reader and so 64GB would only bump the cost by $10 (since you need internal storage anyway, and the cheapest isn't scaled down linearly).

      Saving the market millions of units of $2 cost to run even 8GB instead of 4GB opens up purchasing of other goods. In 2013, a difference of $2 would be a maximum of 5,900 U.S. jobs, which is only .0035% unemployment. Adding $10 would lose at a maximum 23,600 jobs or .017% unemployment. That assumes only an insignificant number of purchasers actually use the space--that is, that we're selling them shit they're not going to use, and making them pay for the privilege.

      It's probably cheaper and better to just integrate more flash instead of an SD card controller (it's about $8 of ICs, discrete components, and the slot itself in wholesale bulk components for SD, versus about the same to just drop in 64GB). Either way, no one in the U.S. would max out storage with Kindle media.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by tazan · · Score: 1

      They'd also have to invent a way to manage that storage so that pulling the card out would only remove the part of your library you expect, and not cause the damn thing to fail catastrophically. They'd also need a way to avoid hours and hours of manual user processes to delegate a storage location, or to migrate collections of books between locations.

      And yet somehow my Nook manages it. I can have my books on my card, swap out the card and give to one of my kids and they magically have kids books.

    3. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      What if your card has a mixture of kids's books and pornography? How do you move the pornography onto your reader? Do you select everything in one go, or spend large amounts of time and effort hunting and pecking one book at a time? How are they sorted and grouped? How do you ensure only kids's books go on the kids's books card?

      This is why we have LVM and migrate data, instead of scattering it over 40 partitions and the odd external drive. Consolidated storage is easier to manage.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    4. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      Sounds like all the more reason to have SD cards. One for kids stuff, the other for porn. It's not rocket surgery....

    5. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      My point was having two SD cards is rocket surgery--or at least is often more-complex than would be obvious. The UX to easily know what data is on what is difficult. People who aren't obsessive nerds who organize their $HOME directories essentially want "Space": they want things to download and magically end up where they belong. They don't want to spend 40 minutes sorting through 6,000 files, picking out what's what, tagging them, inspecting them when they don't remember, and then individually setting each one's storage location.

      Almost 100% of people who put an SD card in a device are adding permanent storage. They put a card in their phone or tablet or whatever, and that's the end of that. It's not an organization tool to most people; it's a bulk commodity.

      That's why Android phones stopped having SD cards, and then started having them again, and then started letting users replace their internal storage with SD card (your photos get copied onto the card, and the internal storage space is replaced with the SD card entirely). People see two things with storage: "I can't install an app because my phone is full" or "Now I can take more pictures!" They don't know or even care where it goes.

      The solution, then, is more internal storage. External storage is an expensive added complexity that almost all users will use by putting exactly one card into the slot and never removing it unless, somehow, they have the phone 5 years later, the 32gb card is full, and new 1tb cards are available cheap--all the while wanting it to behave as more internal storage.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    6. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by MitchDev · · Score: 1

      Lazy stupid people deserve to be confused and lost. It's not that hard to to have folders and put things in them.

      There's no user-friendly reason for the device to not be able to easily handle this basic concept either.

      Part of the point is that the storage has gotten so cheap there's no excuse, even if you seal the device and just permanently install a 128GB or larger microHD card in one of these devices. That eliminates the whole "external device/changing cards" "weakness" you describe.

      If folders are that hard for the device to be programmed for, then the maker is just trying to be an ass instead of making a user friendly device.

    7. Re:If only there was some possible way to ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Sure, in the same way it's not hard to just order the cheap dextromethorphin powder, measure it on a mg scale, and sift it into empty capsule shells. People still buy Robitussum.

      Part of the point is that the storage has gotten so cheap there's no excuse, even if you seal the device and just permanently install a 128GB or larger microHD card in one of these devices.

      So one of the things I argued was the control circuitry for a storage card costs about as much or more than a large (32GB+) amount of storage, if you use those NAND chips instead of (or in addition to) the NAND chips you used anyway. You just suggested a more-expensive way to achieve the same goal; and it's also slower than just integrating the storage directly.

      I also described that the "so cheap there's no excuse" part is essentially making you buy things you won't use if you don't have a use for it--essentially everybody these days, because the cost of adequate storage for near-100% of use cases is nearly-undifferentiated from the cost of smaller storage (i.e. the process for X gigabyte chips is so efficient it's no more costly than using the same package but only etching in less than X gigabytes, where the cost of more-than-X gigabytes is higher because it requires a more-expensive process or the same process with more chips). To be clear about this: wasting a few pennies that way can have disastrous impacts on the economy, making everyone strikingly poorer.

      In the case of fast food as an example, fast food joints serve 240 billion sales per year at an average $8 per sale. If we bump that to $8.14, who cares? Well, 14 cents times 240 billion is $33.6 billion. The money spent in a given year comes from incomes, which comes from revenues, which comes from sales: if you spend $8 more on some other thing, then that's $8 that isn't spent on a fast food value meal in that time frame. $33.6 billion translates to 2,371,241 full-time minimum wages--or a maximum of 2.37 million jobs lost. (The jobs are lost only if you remove their buying power--by taking a bigger corporate profit margin or raising wages so that the same money concentrates into fewer hands).

      What you're describing--putting something approximately-nobody needs into the product at an arbitrary "small" cost because the producer thinks it would be nice and is cheap--is technically called "gold plating". More importantly, it wastes labor time (purchasing power and the work done to make what is purchased) producing a thing that nobody is going to use, and thus prevents people from having what that labor time would have made instead. In this case, that's an estimated $10 times 43.7 million Kindles sold per year to equip them with additional storage approximately 0% of the population will actually use--or a waste of $437 million.

      That's fractionally-small compared to a few penny's increase in fast food costs. There are also cell phones, computers, watches, shoes, jackets, televisions, lamps, blenders, refrigerators, cars, keyboards, pens, tea pots, and all manner of things people buy which we could gold-plate for pennies on the dollar (because making a $120 device $130 is about 8 cents on the dollar). The end result would be a purchasing power 8% smaller--you might have the same income, but you'll buy 8% less stuff, mainly because all that stuff has a marketing bullet-point that sounds awesome but that you never use (but hey, your car DOES have a hardware Monkey's Audio decoder IC and can directly play .APE files from USB with hardware acceleration!).

      I actually used to argue the exact opposite, but then I sat down and reasoned it out trying to generate a supporting argument and shot myself straight in the foot. Attempting to use logic can backfire now and then. I had to change my stance to align with objective reality.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  5. Compression? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    You could cram every single volume of Asari-chan, Kochikame and Naruto into this e-reader, Amazon says.

    With DJVu, you can squeeze a page around 10K, often much less, sometimes more. 32 GB is well over a million pages. Just how many pages do those things have?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
    1. Re:Compression? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      You must not know shit about Naruto, which has been out for almost TWENTY YEARS.

      The detail in the manga vs anime easily justifies the space.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    2. Re:Compression? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      You must not know shit about Naruto, which has been out for almost TWENTY YEARS.

      You must not know shit about arithmetic, which says that, say, a two hundred thousand compressed pages over twenty years is still almost thirty pages per day. Did it publish thirty pages per day?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Compression? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Doesn't it depend on the result? The modern bitonal compression algorithms are very good. Of course, the size of the result reflects the visual complexity.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  6. Re:Amazon Japan's Manga-Ready Kindle by Tx · · Score: 2

    How could Amazon ensure that they can reach out and delete books from your Kindle if they are stored on a removable card?

    --
    Oh no... it's the future.
  7. Why is anyone making a 4GB device in 2016? by Solandri · · Score: 1

    Here are the spot prices for MLC NAND flash memory. There's been a (probably temporary) spike in the last month, but the long-term average price has been:
    less than $10 for 64GB
    less than $5 for 32GB
    $2.50 for 16GB
    about $2 for 8GB
    about $1.80 for 4GB.

    Why in the world would anybody make a 4GB device in 2016? Bumping up to 16GB only costs about 70 cents more per device. I tried to buy a 2-4 GB microSD card for my Roku because people said it didn't need any more, but there weren't many available anymore and the price difference was so negligible it was easier to just get a 16GB card.

    1. Re:Why is anyone making a 4GB device in 2016? by iampiti · · Score: 1

      Yeah, totally agree. It's stupid going for the lower capacity chips.
      I'm of the few people who still prefer a standalone device for playing music (and my smartphone doesn't have an FM radio) and most MP3 players have 4 or 8 of memory. I bought a 16 GB Samsung player about 5 years ago (it even has a MicroSD slot). Why are we going backwards?

    2. Re:Why is anyone making a 4GB device in 2016? by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

      Why are we going backwards?

      Same reason some people roll out of bed every morning to work on yet another RDBMS-backed web app.

  8. Re:Amazon Japan's Manga-Ready Kindle by Khyber · · Score: 1

    If they did that, I'd sue them under CFAA. Fuck their EULA - it's my property and possession is 9/10ths of the law.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  9. Re:I learned something today by xanthines-R-yummy · · Score: 1

    Anime != hentai.

  10. Re:Amazon Japan's Manga-Ready Kindle by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

    Store the e-book encrypted with a key that is unique to your device like in the Nintendo 3DS.
    Deleting the book is just a matter of revoking the key.

  11. Re:I learned something today by Qzukk · · Score: 1

    There's been one for a long time. The last time I saw it though, I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Sasami from the Tenchi series.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  12. As someone with a Kindle in the land of the risi.. by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 1

    Seriously, as long as I got access to WiFi the storage is not a real issue.

    What degrades my experience is rather the slow page turn and/or lack of caching of pages in both directions. In addition a lot of times you want to zoom in, to see the page of the manga as intended... sometimes it's a full two-page thing, sometimes it's traditional one-page right-to-left-to-down, and sometimes it's a 4-koma top-right-to-bottom-right, etc.

    Basically the real issue is that the Kindle doesn't let you choose a way of viewing a certain book/manga.

    --
    - These characters were randomly selected.
  13. Re:Amazon Japan's Manga-Ready Kindle by Khyber · · Score: 1

    I took on Electronic Arts and won over Spore (and even had the story featured on Slashdot) - wanna try your bullshit again, son?

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.