...Still, for now, the product doesn't really have the specifications for prime time. It lacks a color display, which limits the capacity for newspaper and blog reading, supposedly major features that seem as though they can be nothing but underutilized. If there's going to be a digital book-reading device, why exclude almost anything that has illustrations? A "Kindle 2" is probably pretty much inevitable, so why release the lesser version to begin with?
Plus, it costs $400 and each book costs $10. I doubt there's really anyone that needs to have 200 books on call at any given time, so the whole thing doesn't really make a lot of economic sense to begin with, especially since used books are generally far cheaper than $10 anyway. It makes sense for an iPod to be able to store zillions of songs because who knows what they're going to want to listen to moment to moment? But it's a pretty slim demographic that gets halfway through a Toni Morrison novel and suddenly gets the craving to switch over to William Burroughs. And, well, if there are people who belong to that elusive group, they can probably manage to have two books on hand as opposed to an unrealistically expensive electronic device...
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Opinion: New shiny Amazon Kindle doesn't replace my old book
Friday, February 1, 2008
Amazon Kindle vs. Sony Reader: the Forbes comparison
Forbes published a comparison of two most popular ebook reader devices on the market - Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. They created a visual diagram (Disrupt-O-Meter), which illustrates the devices' "disruptiveness" on the digital book market:
And the conclusion:
More Disruptive: Kindle. The device itself is nothing new, but the Kindle publishing platform, harnessing Amazon's distribution power, has the potential to disrupt the way digital content is distributed and produced. Always-on, high-speed wireless, subsidized by subscription fees, allows ease of use for customers buying books or subscribing to magazines, newspapers or blogs. Also, Kindle's easy-to-use publishing platform is open to any content provider who wants to offer something for sale.
Read the full article on Forbes.comFirst Kindle e-Impressions
This week, I read my first book on Amazon's remarkable new e-book reader, Kindle. It's not perfect, but it beats many of the other e-book delivery system I've ever tried. Full disclosure: I work for , which owns NetLibrary, one of the world's largest distributors of e-content...
- The Kindle is lighter than most paperbacks.
- Another great feature is the variety of type sizes from which you can choose. At night, when I'm tired, it is tow clicks to make the type size is bigger. During the day, when I'm more alert, I can go to the smaller size and page forward less often.
- The proprietary format and the charges to access blogs and other content that are freely available elsewhere are real problems now, although I would expect to see these addressed in the not too distant future.
