I don’t understand the notion of Kindle. Why buy it? Why not just get books to one’s PDA?
I think the words are supposed to be displayed in a way that’s easier to read long texts from than normal PDAs.
What if you don’t own a PDA?
Then I guess it makes sense.
If you lose/break your Kindle/PDA, you lose your whole freaking library.
I’ll pass on the junky toys, thanks.
Gimmie a book. It don’t need batteries.
Because it’s another inestuous marketing relationship between big business. Thre will be more choice and convenience but it will cost you.
I don’t have a Kindle, I have a Sony Reader - and I love it for travel. It does not replace books in my life. I do a lot of travel for work and an electronic device is very handy for me - instead of having to lug several heavy library books to my destination (and carry back books I’ve already read), I can store up to 160 books on my Reader. It has a great battery life and can also hold MP3s, so I only need to carry one device (instead of a book AND an mp3 player). It uses e-ink technology, so it’s like paper and doesn’t tire the eyes like staring at a computer screen. It’s compact, lightweight, battery lasts forever (well, a long time anyway) and it’s easy to read - it really is wonderful for travel.
I definitely don’t consider it a junky toy - it’s a really nice looking piece of hardware and it works great for what I use it for. I don’t have a PDA.
My 3 reservations - not a huge number of older books have made it to digital format yet (I had wanted to stock up on a bunch of my “tried and true” books to have at my fingertips while traveling, like Shogun or Lonesome Dove, it was very surprising what was not available). There is also a small flicker when the page is turned - considering the “book” is just one page, instead of 2 like a real book, it’s a LOT of page turning. It took awhile, but the flicker doesn’t bother me anynore. The download site is a little clunky - I wish they would redo the interface to make it friendlier!
I do love it, but I use it nearly 100% for travel, normally I use the library since there is no way I can afford my book habit.
As for the Kindle, if you lose your Kindle, Amazon supposedly keeps your entire purchasing history backed up and can restore all your previously bought books if needed (so I’ve heard).
Incorrect. If you lose/break your Kindle and have to replace it all of the books you purchased for it can be downloaded from the Amazon Cloud for free. If you need to delete books from the Kindle to make room for others and then later want to get them back (say if you add memory), you can download them again from Amazon for free. Also, you can browse Amazon and Wikipedia for free via Kindle’s cellular connection with no charges to you at all (no monthly fee, nothing), and you can get one of 110,000 books (and climbing) from anywhere in a minute or two (anywhere you get cell phone service). And you can get all of this for around ten bucks per book.
The Kindle kicks some major ass.
I’m tempted to get one strictly for the free wikipedia access.
Like with Itunes, the price on the content seems too high. There should be a bigger gap in price between purchasing an actual book, with manufacturing, printing, and distribution expenses, and a digital copy that’s essentially free to distribute. If books were $5 a pop, I’d be more tempted. Similarly if CDs were $5-6 a pop on itunes I’d probably buy 4x as many.
Edit: You could ask the same question about ipods. Why does everyone get ipods when they could get a multifunctional PDA that plays mp3s in the same price range? Being a specialist device geared towards one purpose and being better at it is one reason.
How well does a Sony reader handle the Gutenberg project?
This is one of those technologies that you probably have to see before you ‘get it’. The screens of a Kindle or a Sony Reader do not use an active light-emitting display like a PDA. They’re more like real paper. As a result, they are much easier on the eyes, and feel more like reading a real book.
In addition, the resolution of PDAs is crap for reading. I have a Nokia 770 that I use for my E-text reader, and it’s fine - it has an 800 X 480 screen, and text is pretty sharp on it. Plus, you get the equivalent of a full page of a paperback on the screen at once.
But my PDA is only 320 X 240. Text on it doesn’t look very good, and the paragraph widths are small. So your eyes do a lot more moving, and you do a lot more scrolling/page flipping. Also, it’s hard to embed pictures in with the text.
Battery life is another major concern. A Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle use NO power to maintain the screen. So you can set the thing down in mid-paragraph, walk away for a few hours, come back and start reading instantly, just as you would with a book. You don’t have to power it on, scroll through your application menu, launch your book reader, etc. That kind of convenience is more important than you’d think, and can make the difference between actually using the device to read on all the time, and not reading on it at all.
I think they are great devices. I think they need to come down a bit more in price, as does the content. When these things are $79.95, and books for them are $10 for new releases, 3 for currently in-print books that are normally on the paperback shelves, and .99 for the whole back catalog of fiction and non-fiction, they’ll transfrom the way we read.
When I first heard about them, I thought “they’ll never replace the feel of a real book in your hands”. But they do. They’re far better. They’re easier to hold, lighter, smaller, and have features like text search, notes, etc. The Kindle has a connection through EVDO to the internet. Hell, if we had wikipedia connectivity for the Kindle in Canada, I’d buy one tomorrow. That would be incredibly cool to have.
Hmm, well the access to the distribution network seems kind of cool. I have an iPhone, and I can access wikipedia for free, as well as the rest of the internet. I could download PDFs from the Gutenberg project at any time. I’ve downloaded a number of audiobooks to it. I guess the larger screen is nice, and the more easily readable thing is nice. Personally, I think having yet another device chained to one’s person would be annoying.
‘It’s a non-volatile, random-access storage medium. A book!’ – Blank Reg, Max Headroom
I have an iPod Touch and I can also access the web with it, but only from a WiFi station. I don’t know if your iPhone accesses the web the same way, but if it does, the Kindle is actually better in that it uses a cellular network connection, so it is accessible from far more locations like the beach, or while riding down the interstate, etc.
And I love the way my iPod Touch browses the web, but there is something really awesome about being nearly anywhere in the world and having a virtual Barnes & Noble/BAM, etc. at your fingertips (you can browse books and read the first chapter before buying right from the Kindle). Likely, one of the coolest things in the world for a rabid reader is being able to drop a major bookstore in front of you at any second no matter where you are. You can read countless previews and never buy anything. I think this is where the price of the Kindle comes into play. They have to charge enough to justify a cellular device that they aren’t charging you fees to use.
Totally worth it, until they figure out a way to combine everything in one device that is.
You may not be thinking of it in the ‘right’ way. You may not have had any kind of music player before your iPod or other MP3 player, so you’re going from nothing to a new device. You might be thinking of the Kindle as the same thing, going from not carrying a book reader around to having one. That’s extra space being taken up by another device.
But look at a different scenario. You’re a bookworm. You always have a book in your purse or bag that you carry around with you, so in those quiet moments when you’re eating lunch or waiting for someone, you can flip it open and read. In that case, you’re already making space for a book. The Kindle has roughly the same face dimensions as a book and is thinner, so it’s a net gain on space.
Or say you’re a student, working your way through three different books in three different classes. Those three books may well be taking up space in your backpack already, when the Kindle can hold all three with no problem. In these two cases, the ability to carry a thin e-book reader when you would otherwise be carrying a thick paperback makes much more sense than simply adding a new tech device to your arsenal.
There’s also the difference in manipulation. I like to be able to read at lunch, but I hate books for it. Holding a book open with one hand is uncomfortable and cumbersome, especially as I read quickly and turn pages at a good clip. With a Kindle, I can lay it on the table and just read at my own pace, tapping the Next Page key every so often.
In fact, I got an e-book reader for my Nintendo DS for this very purpose; I set the text to display in the top screen which I can angle as I please, and I only have to hit a key to advance the text. It’s extremely convenient for reading while eating or doing something else that doesn’t require a lot of attention. The only problem is the DS reader only takes books in .txt form, and it’s difficult to get books in that format legally and easily. A Kindle is a very tempting device in that respect.
ETA: I’m aware of Project Gutenberg, but the books it offers doesn’t meet my interests very well.
I have a cheap Palm from Ebay and various software that works fine with it.
Can’t speak for the Reader, but I have a Kindle, and it handles Gutenberg texts just fine.
Part of the appeal too is timely periodicals. You can get newspapers (from across the country, I’d imagine) delivered to the device over the cell network. Newspapers can be big and cumbersome.
Not only that, but if they implemented it well, you could have regular updates on the news stories rather than being locked in to what the story was at 3am, or whenever they print it.
I actually looked into buying a Kindle but when I found out that the book downloads cost 10 bucks a pop, I passed. This price needs to be cut in half before I even consider buying one.
I can access the internet via WiFi or cellular using my iPhone. So timely periodicals and Wikipedia are just the speed of download away. Admittedly they haven’t rolled out the 3G version yet. But with my phone I can read, listen to mp3s, watch videos in hi-res and full color. When 2.0 becomes standard, I’ll be able to get a lot more. Obviously my entire phone is backed up on my computer, so the issue of restoring my data doesn’t exist. Hopefully iTunes will start carrying eBooks too. Then it won’t matter for me. Though, the screen issue, I admit is a valid one.