EBooks Getting Closer
Posted by
Kevin
Yes, this is not the most attractive thing in the world, but the Kindle looks like a very good evolutionary step in the ebook reader. It appears that it has web browsing capabilities, so that you also get an internet appliance for the cost of only the reader, since the service is free to users. Since the service is free to users, I doubt it is a complete internet experience, but it might be good enough. I have seen e-ink screens in action, and they really do look good quality paper, if a bit gray. Browsing through the store, it seems to have a very good number of books, including quite a few by my favorite authors(thought none of the O’Reilly technical books, a serious hole in their offerings in my opinion), at less than 10 dollar prices, sometimes even less than paperbacks. The magazine subscriptions, at least, look cheaper than their paper counterparts, though I need to examine that further. Charging for rss subscriptions is dumb, but if it does have web browsing capabilities, then you don;t need to worry about that. Finally, it has search an annotation capabilities, along with a built in dictionary and complete access to Wikipedia. Those are features that ever ebook reader should have as a bare minimum requirement (I’m looking at you, Sony).
I understand the objections of book traditionalists. I and my wife are readers, and our children, thankfully, are turning into the same. I appreciate the advantages of real books, and the emotional attachment to real books. Books don’t run out of batteries. Their DRM doesn’t die or get updated to an incompatible version. They don’t break when you drop them, or become unusable when they get a bit damp.
But I have over 500 hundred books — and that count is from before the birth of our children. I shudder to think of the number now. I am a programmer, so I have dozens of pounds worth of technical references at my various desks. I have countless folders of meeting reports, technical specifications, etc from my work. It would be wonderful to store all of those items in the future someplace compact and portable like the Kindle.
I am not completely sold on this. I would want confirmation that I can store the Kindle books off the machine, in case of hard drive failure. I would want to confirm that the internet access is really complete and completely free. I would want to confirm that I could print out the contents of their proprietary files (a tech spec for a new project that I cannot get off my Kindle once I have gotten to the meeting city isn’t terribly useful to me). I would want confirmation that the free conversion service is reliable, even if a bit slow. I would like to know that the book prices are going to largely stay in the 10 dollar or less range.
I don’t like the price. But if I get five years of good use out of the thing, then as long as I don’t lose any of my books, the convenience alone would make it worth it. And if this is a real internet appliance on top of it? Thats makes the calculus all the better.
I cannot know for certain, because I obviously cannot try one out (that’s a hint Amazon. Surely, the power of a blog with, umm, hundreds of readers, must be worth something?), but it looks as if Amazon may have moved the ball considerably on ebook readers.
[…] Bookgasm: Reading Material to Get Excited About wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Yes, this is not the most attractive thing in the world, but the Kindle looks like a very good evolutionary step in the ebook reader. It appears that it has web browsing capabilities, so that you also get an internet appliance for the cost of only the reader, since the service is free to users. Since the service is free to users, I doubt it is a complete internet experience, but it might be good enough. I have seen e-ink screens in action, and they really do look good quality paper, if a bit gr […]
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They announced the device some time ago, but were awfully slow at getting the specs out.
It’s not perfect - like you, I’d be very worried about being trapped with orpaned content if the device failed, and it doesn’t seem like you can copy or print from it, which is a major weakness. (Funny how our technology expectations shoot through the roof so quickly: you can’t print from a regular book, but nobody hesitates at buying them for that reason. Yet I think it’s a major frustration with this device.) All your objections are well taken. And it’s fugly.
But I have to say they seem to have gotten a lot of things right. The wireless possibilities just put it in a whole new category from every other device. And the price is high, but it’s competitive with the Sony 505, which has no annotation feature, and blows the doors off the iRex Iliad, which has no wireless. If you are indeed getting about a $15 discount off the price for the ebooks, then the device pays for itself after you’ve bought 25-30 books (that you would have bought at full hardcover retail otherwise). Maybe you only buy softcovers, and maybe there’s a cost associated with the tiny screen (at barely 120 words per page in small type, it’s like reading a comic book), but one way or another the thing really does eventually pay for itself if you’re a heavy book-buyer.
All in all, a pretty damn good showing, I’d say.
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