My wife bought me one of those original $400 Kindles for a birthday present when they first came out. Now it seems horribly overpriced, but what can you do? I loved it at the time.
I did some poking around. I thought that all Kindles, like Nooks, were Android devices but they aren’t. Apparently most are a limited Linux-only device except for Fires which are also Android-enabled. What I see on the jailbreaking pages are things like screensavers, fonts, USB connectivity, etc. I’m not sure whether you can get rid of the ads on the ad-supported version like yours.
It’s surprising there isn’t more development on them. Especially to use the 3G connectivity.
I guess this is a big plus for Nooks. A huge number of Android apps and such can be run on it using Google Play or the Amazon App Store.
Apparently the original screensavers on all these are so hated that this is the major impetus to jailbreak them! The makers could thwart some of that if they made it easier to install your own backgrounds and such. Nooks come with really, really ugly “author” images which was the first thing I got rid of when I rooted mine. (You can add your own screensaver images on a Nook, but the default author ones keep showing up for all sorts of things. Woodcut-style image of the Bronte sisters? Do not want.)
The ad-supported version of Kindles are obviously not being sold at cost.
I’d be surprised if any of the e-ink devices (including the cheapest Kindles and Nooks) were Android devices or could run Android apps, with or without “jailbreaking.” e-ink readers and tablets are really two different beasts.
Kindle Fire is an Android tablet.
Yes, I know. And it’s not an e-ink device. Like I said, tablets and e-ink readers are two different sorts of devices.
I paid over $400 for my Kindle DX in 2009. I don’t know if Amazon even sells the DX anymore, but I’d be surprised if the price hasn’t come down.
As much as I love my Kindle, I think I’ve become resigned to the idea that standalone ereaders’ days are numbered. I used to really like that I had a device dedicated to one task, reading. Now, however, I find myself gravitating to multifunction devices. Why lug around a device that can only do one thing, forcing me to carry a separate device, when I can have the best of both worlds with, say, a Galaxy Tab?
Of course, there is the advantage of e-Ink as there is no comparison, eyestrainwise, between e-Ink and an LCD display. e-Ink is better, by far. Fact is, however, I’m now willingly sacrificing eyesight for convenience, which is not smart, but there it is, and I’m by far not the only one.
Mark my words, I’d say by mid to late 2014 standalone ereaders will be things of the past. Kindle’s paperwhite was a good idea, but I think it’s just staved off the inevitable for a while. As sad as it is to admit, if I were in the market today, I wouldn’t buy an ereader, regardless of price.
Ok, how about Nook Touch, Android 2.1
Upon looking it up, I see you’re right. I stand corrected. Well, not exactly: I said I’d be surprised if an e-ink device could run Android apps, and I am, in fact, surprised. I still have to wonder how satisfactorily many of those apps would run on an e-ink screen.
It is a distinctive design that was controversial and much talked about when it first came out. Evidently Amazon decided later to make their devices more bland and generic.
Yeah, my second generation Kindle was close to $300, as I recall. Almost as much as the lowest end iPad mini.
At first I thought your statement was going to turn out to be mostly wrong, but it appears to be 98% correct other than the fact I got lucky on Nook Touch.
The Nook Color isn’t an e-ink device. It’s a tablet.
I didn’t have an e-reader at all (though I wanted one) until my wife gave me a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas. I love it! Although they are not making much money off of me yet; almost everything I’ve downloaded has been $0 (public domain) stuff, mostly classics.
I know; but the Nook Touch, which is what RaftPeople mentioned, is.
It is perhaps confusing that Amazon and B&N have chosen to use the same “brand name” (Kindle and Nook) for both their lines of dedicated, e-ink e-readers and their lines of tablets.
They’re not squeezing them hard enough. I’ve virtually given up buying Kindle books because many of the books I want to buy are dearer as an Ebook than in hard cover.
Amazon shouldn’t be squeezing them at all. If their process are too high then consumers won’t buy them. But generally speaking why shouldn’t they be more expensive than a hardcover considering that they offer much more functionality.
Amazon’s not squeezing anybody. Amazon buys the books from the publishers, at the publisher’s stated whole sale price, just like they do with paperback copies, for exampe. Then Amazon offers some of those books to their customers at a loss, because Amazon’s goal is to increase the number of books available in their Kindle library and make the switch to Kindle readers more attractive to their customers.
The Publishers and Authors are getting their same cut from the wholesale price but they’re worried that Amazon’s buying power and sheer ubiquity is undercutting their own ability to prop up the sales price. That’s why a bunch of them colluded with Steve Jobs to fix the prices for digital versions at $9.99 a book. Eventually the DOJ got involved and charged them with price fixing. Most of the Publishers settled but a few are going to court over it.
It’s concerning that any one retailer dominates a market as well as Amazon comes to have, but that doesn’t mean that other retailers are allower to encage in pricefixing.
As for the price of the hardcover vs the price of an ebook - Amazon pays the wholesale price for the book that the publishers request. After that, they own the book. They give them away or sell them or whatever. It’s the publishers ganging up and putting the squeeze on Amazon, trying to force Amazon to do their bidding even after Amazon’s paid for the books.
The pricing of Kindle books is HORRIBLE. WHY should an ebook cost as much as a HC or more than a PB?
The one good thing about ebooks is that it truly offers an opportunity for self-publishing. A new author can have a book sold on Amazon for 99 cents without the expense of paying for a number of dead tree books to sit in cartons in the garage.
~VOW
I bought all of the Sherlock Holmes stories for something like three or four bucks for my nook. Yeah, they’re in the public domain, but I was willing to shell out a few dollars rather than do a search.
And I hate the fact that B&N decided not to capitalize nook. I realize that the small n makes a nifty logo, but it just seems WRONG.
I have a rooted Nook Simple Touch, B&Ns bottom-of-the-line eReader. (Not to be confused with the Kindle Touch.) It runs Android 2.1 and I am running several apps on it and plan on loading several more. The most intensive one I’m running is Opera Mobile. I hope to have YouTube working on it soon.
I’ve come across videos of people running ridiculous things on NSTs (as direct apps or with emulators): Angry Birds, Sonic the Hedgehog, MS-Windows 3.1 and of course for watching videos. If you can play Words with Friends on it, it’s a usable tablet.
Yeah, the refresh rate and resolution is poor, but don’t sell these little things short. As you move up the range, these get better and better.
Over at XDA-developers there are people working to do interesting things with all sorts of Android devices. Here’s a sample thread about apps that work on the Touch. Right now one of the problems is that app developers are moving away from support for Android 2.1 and older versions have to be used.
There’s a project called CyanogenMod that is working to allow devices to update to newer versions of Android (among other things) but full support for Touches is not quite there yet.