I understand that accessories cost money, but this is just ridiculous.
Amazon is mining gold with this Kindle Stuff. First they release the Kindle Touch without a power adapter. What’s up with that? Besides pure greed? $14.99 or your Kindle is totally useless after the initial charge goes down. The power adapter had always been included with previous versions of the Kindle.
Kindle comes with no case. That’s anywhere from $25 to $39. The one I bought was $29.99. 50 cents of fabric, a piece of Velcro and a little foam. My grandmother could have made the pattern and sewn one of these in less than two hours.
Want a spare USB cable? Give Amazon $9.99. It’s nothing more than a standard USB A-Male to a Micro-B cable. They are $5 from Amazon if you don’t get the Kindle marketed one.
Long John Silver and Blackbeard had nothing on these suckers. This is just pure capitalistic greed.
It occurred to me last night after ordering that $29.99 case how frigging stupid I was. If you were in Walmart and saw a small fabric electronics case would you pay almost $30? Hell no you wouldn’t. Especially after holding it in your hand and seeing just how little there was too it. We get sucked in with this mouse click and shop mentality. You forget its money your clicking away. Meanwhile the Amazon Pirates are laughing their asses off all the way to the bank.
Sure, you can charge it from your computer if you want to leave your computer on all night. I much rather plug it in the wall and charge it. Just like all the other Kindle owners that bought the earlier models.
Even worse, the box that the Kindle Touch comes in doesn’t have room for the charger. So now you have to carry two things around when you travel. The box and the charger. I’m guessing the earlier Kindles had room in the box for the charger, since they came with one.
I just got the older keyboard model, but it came with an AC -> USB adapter…I thought they all did…
Fake edit: Huh, I guess it doesn’t…that’s weird the older model would…still, any AC -> USB adapter will work, as long as it can provide enough amps…shouldn’t be more than a few dollars for a generic one.
Hell, I think I have about five extra from various other electronics I’ve owned.
What gets me is usually Amazon’s prices are fairly competitive for items. Especially when you factor in no sales tax (that’s a 8% savings right there) and free shipping (if you qualify). I’ve bought a lot of music cd’s from them and comparison shopped locally. Not paying sales tax usually makes the Amazon price lower than the local merchant.
They just got greedy with the Kindle accessories. I understand making a profit. $10 for a cloth case is fine. $30 is just pushing it. That will eventually erode their market appeal. No one likes being taken and its something you don’t forget easily after it happens.
I was surprised that the Touch didn’t come with a charger as well, but I’d hardly call it useless. For the first charge I just plugged into my laptop (and was careful moving my laptop around) for a few hours. I just charged it up a second time with a 1 amp wall USB charger I found laying around from an old mouse.
I’m guessing part of the reason they left it out is to keep the price down to $80 and part of the reason it costs so much is to help recoup some of the money along with people buying the licensed accessories. At $80 a piece for the Touch, I can’t imagine they’re making too much money. I have to assume they’re relying on book sales and licensing for the real profit (as well as the ads).
I got my Kindle 3 case from Ebay for about $10. Nothing fancy, no built in light or whatnot, but it’s getting the job done, that job being ‘keep unit from getting the crap scratched out of it in the bottom of my bag’.
2nd Gen Kindle came with a USB/AC charger. Kindle Fire came only with an AC charger. Was given a Speck Bookwrap for the Fire. I love it, but yeah, it was rather expensive at $30. I wouldn’t have bought it for myself.
The great thing (for me) is that both my Kindles and my Android phone use the same charger/adapter. I believe most if not all Android model phones use the same size male adapter, so I find myself charger-rich. My Kindle charger charges my Kindles, my Samsung phone, HTC phones, and my best friend’s Droid Razr, so I will go out on a limb and say they’ll pretty much all work.
I got this case with a light for my Kindle 3 from a third party manufacturer, and I love it to bits. Not cheaper then the ones listed in the OP, though.
My son’s iPod touch came without a mains adapter (just the USB charging cable). Same thing for two different Motorola phones I bought - it’s becoming quite common for things that charge by USB (and especially if the device-end of the cable is micro USB).
It’s not entirely a bad thing because it means charging methods are becoming increasingly interchangeable.
Of course they are. That, and Kindle books is how they keep the devices cheap. Well, kinda - they sell lots of different accessories for different prices; it’s not exactly anti-competitive when you can go direct to Amazon and buy cases from sellers undercutting Amazon. The one you linked to and complained about is not made by Amazon, so it’s not a good example.
Not providing a charger is fine by me - I have about half a dozen chargers around the house already and it takes maybe two hours to charge via the computer. Most people can and do leave their computer on for two hours; you don’t need to leave it on overnight.
The box? What do you mean? You mean the packaging? You use the packaging when you travel?
I don’t know why people would buy the Kindle branded USB cord or charger, except just not knowing that a generic one will work the same. But I haven’t noticed Kindle brand stuff to be any more expensive than branded accessories for other products. That’s just how it is.
And you can get cheap cases from a lot of different places. It doesn’t have to be Kindle-specific. I used a $10 Kindle 2 case (original price $30, but cheap because it wasn’t the current generation) for my Kindle 3 until recently, and I’ve seen lots of cases on Amazon for around $5. No need to spend a lot on accessories if you don’t want to.
