I
find it quite hard to believe the device that Amazon is selling as it’s
new e-book reader the Kindle. Three years in the making and
much delayed and they came up with a device obviously designed by a
committee where little interest was paid to people who would want an
e-book reader in the first place. Now if I wanted to design
an e-book reader that was sure to fail and possibly serve as a tax
write off like in The Producers these are some of the features I would
include.
- Charge $399 for the reader.
- Make it really ugly with
lots of angles. - Make it incompatible with
the ebook format you use to sell. - Not allow you to add your
own files such as PDF, docs, and text without going through the
companies site with a fee attached. - Charge you two bucks for
books available for free at Project Gutenberg. - Allow you to read from a group of blogs selected by the
company and then charge you $1 to $2 a month for each blog you
subscribe to. - Have EVDO available but not WI-FI.
- Charge you $14 dollars a month to view newspaper content
freely available on the web. - Add a crappy cover that won’t last long.
Oh wait that is the Kindle.
The e-book revolution has been
forecasted to occur for a number of years and a device like this is
sure to delay that day or set that back. The first person you
have to please with new technology is early adopters who are willing to
pay a higher price point for cutting edge technology. Sony’s
second generation ebook reader uses the same screen as the Kindle, is a
hundred dollars less, and allows you to add your own content. But sales
of the Sony Reader have been dismal. Amazon will surely have a much
larger library and the built-in EVDO is a good feature that allow’s
people to use the device without a computer. Early-adopters though
probably have a computer and surely want to be able to place their own
content on their own reader. I know that is a deal breaker
for someone like myself who otherwise would like a solid portable
reading device and the ability to get books from Amazon.com.
9 comments
You should write all that to Newsweek. This weeks cover story in the Kindle. I haven’t had time to read the article yet so I don’t know if all the negative points in your blog article come up in the Newsweek treatment. If they don’t you really should snail mail or e-mail what you just wrote because it sure made sense to me. I’m a big book reader (I’m a librarian) and would love to have something like that with so many books on it. On the other hand I’m going to be sticking with paper formatted books for a long time because one of my all-time favorite places to read is while I’m soaking in a nice hot bubble bath. If it can’t pass the reading in the tub test that its not ready for me.
Why would they charge to put your own content on the device/free content on the device? Greed. At least it’ll probably be their undoing, as you say.
It’s amazing how many ebook readers have been like this. Luckily, the first non-crippled ones are arriving, like the Sony model.
I saw a woman on the subway with an iREX iLIAD, or however it’s cased, and it seemed really cool. I asked her about it and she showed me some of the functions, but after researching it I decided to hold off…price and limited functionality are a problem with this one, too.
It has the same problem as every other electronic display device: it uses a screen. Screens are painful to read; they give you headaches; they are the antithesis of relaxing. Readers of this type, along with PDAs and laptops, are handy or nifty, but they’re never going to replace actual books. A few years back some researches announced they had developed a (paper?) surface that would change appearances with small current. It was supposed to be a big deal for advertising, but I don’t know if it ever went into production. But that’s what I’m waiting for — a paper book into which you can plug a memory card and have the pages display any text. Then maybe I’ll be impressed.
Paul,
Unless I am mistaken, the Kindle uses the very technology you are talking about. I looked at Amazon’s website to see what they had to say about the Kindle.
It doesn’t use LCD or any other such thing, it uses real ink, the sort you’d find in a book. The ink is able to be reconfigured with small electronic impulses or some such thing. As a result, the “screen” looks just like real paper, and so can for example be read in bright sunlight like a real book, unlike any computer screen.
The other shortcomings that are mentioned are real issues, but I think so far as the screen is concerned, this is what you want.
yeayeayea…but does it smell like a new book…?
Fr. Philip, OP
Look at the books they’re advertising for the Kindle. If they control the content, you won’t find much to please you if you’re a regular Curt Jester type.
Paul – Shane is not mistaken. The Kindle does in fact use the “eink” technology. I have an iRex Iliad, and this technology works as advertised. To me it really is like reading from a piece of paper and not a computer screen.
I’m a little concerned about the Kindle’s closed platform. It won’t display Mobi-Pocket files, which is the current standard for ebooks. It is also my understanding that files that are not in the Kindle format have to be converted to it including text files, Word documents, etc. PDFs apparently can not be converted. This is all really bad news if you ask me. I also read somewhere that in order to download blogs to the Kindle, you have to pay $0.99 a month per blog…
On my Iliad, I can copy files of all kinds of formats to the device and view them. This includes PDF files, HTML files, plain text, etc. The only problem I have with it is that as Fr. Philip mentioned it has no real aroma.
There are also lots of Catholic books available in the Mobi-Pocket format. I have a copy of the Pope’s book “Jesus of Nazareth”. I’ve also seen lots of Dr. Scott Hahn’s books in the format.
Yeah it does seem like a racket when you put it that way.
I can’t believe the chutzpah they have in expecting people to pay for the blogs. I mean, newspapers I can barely understand, but blogs? It really goes against the whole principle of blogdom.
I assume the price will come down and then I’ll think about getting one. For $199, it can pay for itself after about 30 books. (Figuring $9.99 instead of $16 per book.)