Why the Amazon Kindle is Going to Completely Rule

Just one question: does it have DRM? If so, then it’s dogshit.

I have one and I love it! I’m glad I ordered mine the day they became available. Like you, I routinely read multiple books at once, and my kindle has already lightened my backpack. I see myself using it as a replacement for the paperback. I haven’t made up my mind on whether or not I’ll use it to replace hardcovers. (I just like the feel of them.)

I’ve also started loading my own content into mine. PDF conversion is dodgy, but most other file formats work well. I haven’t tried the audio yet. Guess I’ve fallen into the trap of calling it a “book”. Anyway, I wrote a quick review at http://ktstevenson.com/2007/11/21/amazon-kindle-libraries-in-the-palm-of-your-hand/

I think you’re confusing whether you like the sound of it and would find it useful, with whether it has any commercial legs. My guess is the answers are yes and no respectively.

“The non-backlit display, while great for conserving battery power, would obviously preclude one from reading in low light.”

That’s the whole point of it, that you can read ebooks without the screen beaming light into your eyes. You read off reflected light, like a real book. That’s why I’ve never gotten into ebooks, because I can’t concentrate on them the same way. You can get an LED booklight for like 10 bucks and read it in pitch black.

@Vince – The content you buy from Amazon is DRM’d, but I’d hardly dismiss the whole device based solely on that. Apple and the iPod would like a word with you.

@Ed – I admit, my being enamored with the device may have shown through a little more than I’d planned. But, the fact is that most of the features I mention are indeed valuable. And as much as it may not be apparent, I think the Kindle is extremely innovative in its space.

I agree with most of your points. People have strange expectations for this device. I have not handled one, but I looked at a Sony 505 recently, and I really liked the way the screen looked, very crisp. As for reading in bed, none of my current books lights up, so I don’t need a backlight. For me they could skip the audio portion completely, my iPod does a fine job with that. As for the flashing display, I suspect you quit noticing it after about the first 30 pages or so. I don’t find the price off-putting either. My husband’s subscription to the Wall Street Journal is more than $200 per year, and when he is out of town on business it just piles up, and we often miss papers or get a different one by mistake. We could get him a Kindle subscription for $120 and he would be able to read it daily from wherever he is. My recycling bags would no longer be overflowing with newspaper. I am seriously considering the purchase of one next year.

@verena – Your point about none of your books lighting up has earned you “awesome comment of the day”

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I don’t want to pay $10.00 for a book that I can’t put on my shelf and lend to friends. That’d be the biggest hurdle, having to buy the paper version and the Kindle version, because while I could read either and be happy, when I find a good book I want to own it, have it, lend it, talk about it, etc. etc.

1. It only works in the US. That’s the biggest bummer of all.
2. It has DRM. That means that I’ll probably won’t be able to read it again ten years from now.

I’d buy it if it had wi-fi instead, and its files were standards like PDF or RTF. Otherwise, I think it’s awesome, and I’d buy one myself if it worked where I live. However, I think it’s ridiculous to charge for subscriptions, because you can get most of it through RSS.

I’m actually between the crowds, here. I like and use e-books. I already own two different reading devices (both of which kind of suck for actual reading — but are great for reference material). I probably won’t be getting a Kindle, and I’m betting that the Kindle will ultimately fail. Here’s why:

Firstly, remember that the Kindle is being marketed as a true *reading* device: something that will revolutionize both book-reading and book-buying. That’s an ambitious goal. And, there’s a lot to like about the Kindle for that purpose. E-Ink is amazing, and the flicker on other E-Ink devices I’ve used is really not as annoying as people presume it will be. It’s less interruption than turning a real page, and the advantages in readability and battery life are well worth it.

However, at $400, your average reader isn’t going to buy this thing. I think Amazon knows that, and they’re trying (quite wisely) to position this device toward the bibliophile and technophile communities.

Since I’m both a bibliophile and a technophile, I am excited about the possibility of a truly good e-book device. The Kindle isn’t it, though it’s much closer than past attempts. There are two major types of reading I do: research/scholarly (yes, programming books fall in this category), and recreational.

The Kindle is pretty nice for recreational reading, but if you like to read materials beyond mass-market books and “stuff on the web”, the Kindle’s capabilities are somewhat cumbersome. I don’t want to have to send Amazon a PDF made from a set of documents I downloaded from Gutenberg.org, only to transfer it in the proprietary format back to the Kindle. Could they really have not included direct support for common, standard formats?

Still, not bad as a recreational reader. Not $400 worth, but not bad.

The Kindle is *horrible* for research/scholarly reading. The annotation capability is pathetic. There is *one* typeface, and it’s not monospaced. I can only imagine trying to read technical documents and books without access to the typographical conventions that lend to clarity, and without proper alignment in code samples and the like. I can’t store my annotations back to my computer in a standard form — if the Kindle line fails, gets purchased, or what have you, I can lose all my notes. Yeah, I could use a separate pad or device, but I’m not going to spend serious cash on a book-reader that can’t keep my notes at least as well as the margins of paper books can.

And, finally, the deal breaker: the DRM scheme. I’m not entirely anti-DRM, but the implementation on the Kindle prevents me from reading a book and then giving it (or selling it) to someone else. It makes it damn near impossible to lend a book to a friend. These are important features to me, and until Amazon — or someone else — figures them out, I won’t be buying any e-book reader.

I have a Kindle. Overall, I am very impressed. Route around the DRM by using non-DRMed Mobipocket. I’ve got a 4gb SD card in there loaded with literally hundreds of books, none DRMed.. The sweetest thing that never gets mentioned about the Kindle is the awesome search utility. It runs some sort of pre-indexing routine on all books when they’re added, so you can do lightning fast searchest across hundreds of books.

That said,

1. Wireless EVDO — yes, you can use this, but mine remains off 99% of the time. Very slow for web browsing and rains the batteries ridiculously fast.

2. Audio — yes it can play audio files, but the DRM gets you here too. If you want to listen to an audiobook you *have* to buy the audiobook from Audible. If you’ve got MP3s of audiobooks, like I do, they won’t work because the Kindle will only play MP3s in a random shuffle mode. That is probably the single dumbest design defect they put in there.

Hm, seems that the cinese Hanlin eReader is a better product:
http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/English/embedpro/index.asp

I think I will use US$400 to get an Asus EEE laptop instead. Perhaps this Kindle won’t fit everybody’s budget.