Kindle: Amazon's Better Book

it might be worth a look when the price comes down.

paper books don't have drm. while making your own e-book has some advantages, drm has costs that can mean your book just stops being one. the thing is, your "kindle" (the very worst thing about it is the name) is probably only going to work with a percentage of titles, and compete with another device, in which case it might be more like betamax, (no longer an issue, but was once) or more like ntsc vs pal (still an issue) or more like dvd region coding (an evil, exploitive, pain in the ass) or more like blu-ray (remains to be seen, but terrible so far largely because of drm.)

for the few that aren't familar with drm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

this could make paying even half as much for "kindle" not worth it, but if not for issues like that, it sounds great- i don't know anything about the actual platform, just the kind of models that companies currently work with and have before.

and of course lastly, there's a very good chance i would reject such a thing if the savings in manufacturing aren't passed on to the customer. i understand the device is paid for, but since cd's cost less than 5% of the cost of working with cassettes and cost the buyer twice as much, i wonder what the ratio is with "kindle."

even without drm, i'd be insulted, paying $10 per title. i am accustomed to giving bookstores less than that for books i can share with other people. i make exceptions for some titles that cost more, but i never intend to develop a habit for paying $10 a book, that's absurd.

also, where will people buy "used" kindle titles? i don't intend to see that institution pass. you can get a very nice mini-laptop for $400, and load it with books from the public domain, and you have other options with regards to more current titles. call me a skeptic, e-books are a good idea, i've even written one, (no drm,) and i've read several, but a good idea under the wrong conditions can be horrible.

I will consider it later, when the price is down a bit.


I spend ridiculous amounts on books, and have a constant overflowing with books problem.


I would be happy to pay $10 for electronic books, IF it is nice to read from the device. I HATE reading from a computer.

Amazon seems to be pushing Kindle. I found it on the main page when iI went to Amazon, looking for something else.

Link to Kindle

The problem is, that if you read further, you will find that the item has gotten only 2 1/2 stars, based on 690 purchaser reviews. 237 people gave it only 1 star, which is not a good sign. I think that is too poor a showing to consider spending 400 bucks on it.

I won't be curling up in bed with a good kindle....

BBB
Charlie Rose interviewed Jeff Bezos for an hour last week. Bezos was promoting Kindle and they chatted a lot about it. What came to my attention was the Kindle device itself was not shown up close. I couldn't see how the book print appeared in size and readability. This puzzled me---not a good sign.

BBB

i've looked at it now, and the things i said before may apply to the books. i see it's also for wikipedia and newspapers, which is quite interesting.

i'm not quite sure they will offer a wide variety of papers, that's a little bothersome, i'd prefer most or none. the idea of a device that only gives you the washington post is creepy and would help the post in ways it shouldn't be helped for the sake of information.

the buttons look like they would be horrible to use, although to be fair, there are lots of devices that have horrible buttons. the screen is revolutionary, it will be interesting to see what effect that has on future computing devices. again, conceptually, it may be doomed (and perhaps should be in this incarnation,) but overall it's a sweet piece of hardware, even for the price.

there's no chance in hell i'll buy one like this, but if i do anyway, i'll run here to admit it and tell you more about it. i'd rather run a device like this if it came with linux on it. i normally use windows on my computer, but for bookreaders, linux would be essential. it's the closest thing to as-open-as-paper, regardless of what you think it's like to use on a pc.

Link to extensive Kindle review

I found this review, and thought it might be valuable to people who are considering this product. From what I am reading around, the main problem is that the Kindle is a proprietary device connected to Amazon. You must buy the books from them at $10 a pop. You are limited to what Amazon offers. Also, you are not permitted to share your books with others, like you could with a "real" book.

Yeah, I've been on Amazon a couple of time over the weekend, and looked at the Kindle...It was also covered on GMA last week.

For me, not interested, since I get all my books from the library.

If the day comes that you can download books from the library, for a limitied amount of time before it becomes "turned off", I might be interested.

Chai- My brother lives in Queens, NY. He says that he can download books for free from the public library, any time that he wants!

Does he have to read them from a computer monitor, or can it be used with something like the kindle?

I love browsing through the books, touching, flipping pages, etc.
The only reason I might try a kindle is to save paper, but, it wouldn't be the same.

I really don't know what he reads it on ( I will ask him and get back to you). All I know is that my kid brother has more computer and related gadgets than some small countries!

Ive tried everything incuding library downloads for novels and non-fiction. However, since a large part of the market is source book driven (science, engineering, maps, refernce) I dont see "kindle" displacing any of that. My work texts are all taped to specific pages, or are written up in margins
and equipped with other reference cards on specific pages.
Professional libraries will need to have the "kindle" concept thought out more, (sort of like the MP3 format that libraries use for audio books.(the entire carrier is about the size of an old 8 track.
I still see nothing more threatening to the reference text than a DVD with its illustrations in still and moving format(kind of like Youtube in a CD with the text included as a screen)



I dont like reading long papers on screen anyway, I usually print em out which doesnt do the trees any good. Im already up to 13 point type as a total default for all text material.
And, one of the thingies I hate most with electronic books is the slowness to page backward and reread a previous section.


Remember, Bezos is just pushing this for his fortune , not ours.

My brother has an HP Ipaq PDA, and he downloads for free from the library. He has the Mobi Pocket reader downloaded on the gadget.

If you are interested in older books that are no longer copyrighted, you can download them from:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

The problem with both the Sony and Kindle readers, is that they use a proprietory format, you can't download anything else to them, and their stuff costs.

You might also be interested in this:

http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/library/

I saw the ads for it, and all I could think of was the 'Indling Song from Red Dwarf:

THE 'INDLING SONG

Wow phonenix, cool links

I'm going to have to look through them.
thanks

Editor and user reviews of Amazon's portable electronic book reader that was released in November 2007. Also includes video review, product summary, photos, and links to reviews of similar products.

From CNET: Reviews: Amazon Kindle

Hah!

For the last year or so I've noticed a "Click here to view a random page" button on many-many Amazon sites.

They were getting ready for Kindle.

Hah.