Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

Are any of you guys going to buy this thing? It looks so geeky and while you can throw around a book or a newspaper, it feels like this would be akward. I also think its more enjoyable to read from paper than from a computer screen.

Kindle

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

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Are any of you guys going to buy this thing? It looks so geeky and while you can throw around a book or a newspaper, it feels like this would be akward. I also think its more enjoyable to read from paper than from a computer screen.

Kindle

I say it bombs.

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The old ebooks were awful, but the new e-ink technology is really something you need to try in person as it is a huge difference.


OP,

I'm suprised you off all people can't see the obvious upside to having this. It weighs ten ounces, you can download a book instantly, and a single memory card can store hundreds of books. Now with blog access, wikipedia access, and magazine scripts and no monthly fee or need for hotspots, its an amazing deal.
,
2+2 has tons of people backpacking around the world, imagine being able to carry an entire library with you.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

I want one.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

I'm not sure. Wikipedia says the resolution is 167 dpi, which is about half of an inkjet printer. It's e-paper, which should create less eyestrain than any kind of computer monitor. If the price drops by about half and the res is high enough to display text pleasantly, I think it could be a big hit. I'd probably buy one.

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bobman,

the clarity and eyestrain of reading from e-ink is same as paper. You don't feel like reading from a computer screen at all imo since its not backlight in any way.

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$.99 per blog subscription/month

gg

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bobman,

the clarity and eyestrain of reading from e-ink is same as paper. You don't feel like reading from a computer screen at all imo since its not backlight in any way.

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The eyestrain will be the same, but the clarity has to do with the resolution also, which is still quite a bit less than normal printed material. I'm no typographer, but I think 167 dpi is right around the border of what you need to make serif text pleasantly readable. No way I'm going to read an entire book in Verdana or some [censored].

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i never heard of e-ink before and i am having a hard time visualizing/understanding it, but if it is as good as you say, then I could see the appeal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

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$.99 per blog subscription/month

gg

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i would pay that to read baseball prospectus on it

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personally i think it is very very cool, yet i highly doubt i will buy one, so i guess that says a lot.

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No eye-strain, free access to wikipedia from everywhere and the ability to just download the first chapter of most books is pretty cool.

I wonder how account specific the books are, i.e. if I lend you my memory card, do you have the books? Share over the internet?

I would want it to be really, really cheap to convert my word/pdf files onto this thing.

I think I want one, but I'm not entirely convinced the romance of the printed word would be as enjoyable. Was anyone else reminded of the essay from Douglas Adams' posthumous "Salmon of Doubt" which he writes on like a palm pilot and concludes by basically saying 'this thing is amazing, I'll never use it again'.

Still it looks cool, but I think 400 is too much to pay, I'll keep my library card thanks.

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$.99 per blog subscription/month

gg

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i would pay that to read baseball prospectus on it

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you can read BP for free (assuming you subscribe) on a smartphone/iphone

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This looks awesome, but too expensive [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

Guys,

obviously the price will go down. agreed that it won't take off until it does, because i love these things and want one, and am someone who usually buys worthless tech crap, and even I'm waiting on this.

If I planned on traveling a lot, backpacking across Europe or something, I'd get one in a second.

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No. This will flop horribly in the consumer market, and may be good for academics. People don't consume music like they do books.

[ QUOTE ]

Ron Burgundy: I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal.
Veronica Corningstone: Really.
Ron Burgundy: People know me.
Veronica Corningstone: Well, I'm very happy for you.
Ron Burgundy: I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.


[/ QUOTE ]

That example demonstrates a little of the difference between listening to music from any device and the reason and way we read books.

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wow this thing looks awesome. it would be nice if you could rent books. there are a lot of books i'd like to skim through but i wouldn't do so more than once.

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It seems like they could have made it a little more aesthetically pleasing. The design looks boxy and clunky. I know functionality should be king with this type of device, but I can't help feeling like I'm seeing one of those pictures of the first generation of cell-phones, or a big clunky 80's PC or something.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

One thing I can attest to is that people who love books love books - meaning they actually love the physical book, not just the text. If/when they become cheaper I would love to have one, but I think this is going to play out as a glorified blackberry for now (i.e. it's mostly going to be bought by people that use the internet for news and they'll read the news on this instead of reading it on the internet).

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

george,

you can buy a book and then resell it on amazon and it only costs you shipping and a selling fee. that is a good way to 'rent' books.

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at first glance the books are too expensive and the selection isn't very good. try searching for hunter thompson

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

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$.99 per blog subscription/month

gg

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i would pay that to read baseball prospectus on it

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you can read BP for free (assuming you subscribe) on a smartphone/iphone

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yeah i know, but what i'm saying is that an extra 99 cents a month isn't really all that much for a service that provides a much content as bp does.

i'm in the same boat as yeti, i think it's awesome but i don't see myself buying it at $400.

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i wonder how much effort it takes to ocr rip a book to a word file.

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their selection mirrors that of a drug store. they have all the best sellers and then they have a bunch of garbage books that no one would ever buy or read - except old people i guess.

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$.99 per blog subscription/month

gg

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i would pay that to read baseball prospectus on it

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you can read BP for free (assuming you subscribe) on a smartphone/iphone

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yeah i know, but what i'm saying is that an extra 99 cents a month isn't really all that much for a service that provides a much content as bp does.

i'm in the same boat as yeti, i think it's awesome but i don't see myself buying it at $400.

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yeah, I mean, with everything I subscribe to, it would end up costing me $35 - $40 a month. (if 1 RSS feed = Blog)

seems like a lot to have another place to read blogs/download books. that is basically the cost of a data plan on an iphone, and the hardware of an iphone is cheaper too.

(or an HTC phone, or whatever)

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I have a pretty solid collection of reading material in Word and .pdf format. Would I be able to read these? Also, why is the amount of memory so small? 200 books is nothing.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

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No. This will flop horribly in the consumer market, and may be good for academics. People don't consume music like they do books.

[ QUOTE ]

Ron Burgundy: I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal.
Veronica Corningstone: Really.
Ron Burgundy: People know me.
Veronica Corningstone: Well, I'm very happy for you.
Ron Burgundy: I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.


[/ QUOTE ]

That example demonstrates a little of the difference between listening to music from any device and the reason and way we read books.

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One thing I can attest to is that people who love books love books - meaning they actually love the physical book, not just the text.

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I have a fondness for mushed-up trees, too, but my kids won't. Certainly not my grandkids. There are just WAY too many advantages to treating books like 1s & 0s, instead of a physical commodity.

At one point, books were ALL HAND-WRITTEN. Each one required loving attention from a real human being, so I'm sure that new-fangled "printing press" felt cold and gimmicky. It seems to have done ok, though.

I don't think the Amazon Kindle v1.0 is going to revolutionize much. But there's pretty little question in my mind about whether ebooks will take-off eventually.

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I have a pretty solid collection of reading material in Word and .pdf format. Would I be able to read these?

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I bet not. If so, this thing would be MUCH better. I have a a lot of pdfs, too.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

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I have a pretty solid collection of reading material in Word and .pdf format. Would I be able to read these?

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I bet not. If so, this thing would be MUCH better. I have a a lot of pdfs, too.

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the website says Word files can be converted and email to your device "at a minimal cost", didn't mention pdfs specifically.

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One thing I can attest to is that people who love books love books - meaning they actually love the physical book, not just the text.

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It wasn't long ago that you could say people love albums, not just the music but the physical disc/tape/record and, especially, the cover art.
This is still true to a certain extent, but it didn't stop ipods and itunes explosions.

Devices like these are the (not immediate but eventual) future of publishing, and the romance of a loaded book shelf wont stop them.

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I think the hard drive is small to increase battery life and keep the weight down. That you can leave it on so long is a plus.

Also, I like the fact that you don't need to sync it, but you can anyway.

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wow this thing looks awesome. it would be nice if you could rent books. there are a lot of books i'd like to skim through but i wouldn't do so more than once.

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....Or you could try your local library?! [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

It looks pretty good, but will def be waiting for the price to drop considerably.

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I think if it were shaped more like a book, I'd be much more into it. It just doesn't look that comfortable to hold. Very cool idea though. Hopefully someone makes one that's a better design.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

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I bet not. If so, this thing would be MUCH better. I have a a lot of pdfs, too.

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project gutenberg focuses on the plain text format, and kindle supports that.

"...Wherever possible, the releases are available in plain text..."

"...But some formats that are not easily editable, such as PDF, are generally not considered to fit in with the goals of Project Gutenberg...

a search at the official site yields 249 results for pdf. plain text finds "More than 1000". furthermore, just because a book is available in pdf it doesn't mean that it's not also available in another more transparent format. i'd be somewhat surprised if that was the case with any of them.

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it would be something if amazon let u browse to project gutenberg from the kindle and d/l those books...they could even charge you $1 per download for the internet service...but they wouldn't do that because the goal with kindle is to get people to buy their books exclusively from amazon.com

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I have a pretty solid collection of reading material in Word and .pdf format. Would I be able to read these? Also, why is the amount of memory so small? 200 books is nothing.

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You can e-mail Microsoft Word, TXT, HTML, or image files like JPEGs and GIFs to your dedicated Kindle e-mail address (found on the Manage Your Kindle page on Amazon.com). We will convert the document into Kindle format and wirelessly deliver it directly to your Kindle for a small fee or back to your computer for free.

pdf: not currently supported
supported types by wireless: pay
supported types by computer sync: free

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

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Also, why is the amount of memory so small? 200 books is nothing.

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more memory makes the device cost more, and i'm sure they want to maximize profits while still providing what they consider a generally sufficient amount of storage. you can re-transfer books, so it's not necessary to keep your entire collection on the device. it's expandable via sd memory cards, and 2GB currently costs $12.25 at newegg.com.

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Looks way too expensive, clunky, and awkward to have around. Useful idea but I'd rather hold off until apple comes out with some sort of ireader.

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In all honesty this seems like one of those instances where new technology doesn't necessarily improve on the old. Printed books have been around forever but guess what - they still get the job done.

Unlike music, most people just read one book at a time. A $6 paperback is just as portable as the Kindle thingy. Or get a paperback free from your local library, even better.

I guess I could see a market for this among college students, if all the textbook manufacturers made their books available. But casual readers can just toss a book in their bag - no batteries required and hundreds of bucks cheaper.

And I agree, it looks very clunky like a Commodore 64 era computer.

Re: Kindle: Amazon\'s new wireless reading device
 

Things people don't seem to get about this device

1)Obviously its expensive now, the price will come down.

2)Someone made this point already, but not long ago people were saying "who wants digital music! i love records and the smell and feel and coverart"

3)Bestsellers cost $9.99 on this while the list price is like $25+ for some of the ones not yet on paperback

4)It can store MP3s as well, which is pretty cool

5)Printed books get the job done....but replacing a paper library with a digital one is much better for the environment.

6)I can imagine shortly that there will be versions where you can download all your textbooks to it. Add a PDA style pointer and you could highlight your text book digitally and tranfer to your computer to study from. NO more lugging around 30 lbs. of books to class, just bring your laptop or this thing. Same goes for trips to library, etc.

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True I agree there may be markets for this type of device as technology improves, and additional uses will be found for it that aren't yet available.

But for casual readers of novels I doubt it will be a big must-have. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong as the price goes down, the design gets better and smaller, and more people adopt it.

They've been trying to get e-book readers like this off the ground for some time with pretty much zero success. My feeling is that it's because printed books are just fine as they are. Then again I'm an old (and old-fashioned) book lover so the younger generation may feel differently.