Hands-On With The Kindle 365
Amazon's Kindle e-book may have sold out in record time, but there's still a lot of discussion about the device's merits. Neil Gaiman likes it well enough, but it's sent Robert Scoble into a fit of apoplectic rage. For a real, meaty, hands-on look at the way the device operates in everyday life, Gamers With Jobs writer Julian Murdoch has a slice of life with the Kindle. He takes us through his Thanksgiving holiday weekend with the device, noting the quirks (good and bad) that cropped up with Amazon's new toy. "Short of reading in the tub, the Kindle is easier to read in more places, positions, and situations than a physical book ... But it's far from perfect. It is expensive. The cover, which I find completely necessary, is in desperate need of more secure attachment (Velcro works great). The book selection is less-than-perfect, although I imagine this will improve with every passing day. And Amazon needs marketing help. The Kindle's launch reeked of 'get it out fast.' The big-picture marketing efforts (like video demonstrations and blurbs from authors) were great, but simple things like communicating how freakin' easy it is to get non-Amazon content on to the device, for free, remain horribly misunderstood."
Misunderstood, no: intentional (Score:3, Insightful)
And it is in Amazon's interest to show people who might otherwise buy material how to avoid buying material... how?
Free as in Beer? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm not tied to a single source for my books then I may consider it, but I still enjoy they actual book feelings though. Weight, smell, etc... Some parts of reading a book have nothing to do with what is written... At least for me.
Re:Misunderstood, no: intentional (Score:3, Insightful)
I really don't see how they could have made it much clear, and the fact that people still don't understand it reflects more on them, I think, than Amazon.
Re:Misunderstood, no: intentional (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:5, Insightful)
-They are
-Explain to me how you do this with paper books?
-Good point, something that must be addressed by congress. So get involved.
Re:easier than a book? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic digital data is very fragile in comparison to it's analog counterpart. The benefits of that fragility however is the ability to cheaply make exact duplicate copies of the data.
When you have digital data with DRM, you have the worst of both worlds essentially.
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:2, Insightful)
Please don't link to video. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. Just pass them by.
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:5, Insightful)
Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, I think I have a theory on why people get so upset about the idea of digital book readers. It's not the DRM, it's not the batteries, it's not whether you can loan your book...
The biggest problem is ego.
People who read a lot of books LIKE having huge bookshelves to impress people on how many books they have. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO read more than thou, hence, I am more intelligent. Bow down and kiss my ring!"
How many of these people keep around books they know they will NEVER read again? Why not donate them to the library, and clear up space on the ol' bookshelf? Because they like having the scorecard on the wall. Having an e-book spoils all the fun.
I think this is actually a generational thing. I'm noticing that younger people have no problem downloading scanned books, reading them, and moving on. I think the ego stroke of the big library will eventually be extinct, like we're seeing with big walls of record collections.
Re:Please don't link to video. (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree with your point, I don't know if I'd go quite that far. A lot of content, especially in the realm of creative works, is more fully enjoyable in multimedia format. I'd rather hear a band play a song than read the sheet music; I'd rather watch actors perform Shakespeare than read the script.
But for a non-creative work like a gadget review? Put the digicam down. Text will carry the essential value of the content just fine.
Re:not so much pricing of the unit, as the content (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that the price of ebooks will likely come down as the demand for them increases, but I doubt they will get to be as cheap as you want them.
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't think it can happen? It already has. http://www.google.ca/search?q=mlb+drm [google.ca]
Re:A solution in search of a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Okay, I'll just toss these ebooks in the fire and stuff a dozen hardcover books into my jacket pocket. While I'm walking home in the rain I will open one up and yell "SEARCH, DAMN YOU!" at it until it flips open to the page I need. When I get home I will tear out the pages I need, fold them up and slip them into the CD-ROM drive on my PC, hoping that it will somehow figure out how to import the a few sentences and a diagram into a paper that I'm working on...
And then I'll go out and search for some more non-existant benefits to using eBooks.
Don't get me wrong, I like real books just find and am quite happy lugging around big stacks of paper, but there are many cases where eBooks are much more convenient than traditional printed volumes.
Where do I begin? (Score:4, Insightful)
Preface,
Dude you really really need to talk to people outside the early adopter, gadget/freak crowd. In anything remotely resembling the device's current form, this device is doomed.
First give it buying appeal:
*) Drop the price
*) Make it a _lot_ less ugly...
*) I shouldn't have to pay Amazon everytime I blink
Make it a little less geeky
*) Make it so the keyboard can be slid out of the way
*) Make it a _lot_ less ugly...
Make the content have a life longer than the device
At some point your content will outlive the device:
1) It fails (and stockholders will make them pull the plug)
2) It succeeds (and to survive the imitators, it becomes non-backward compatible)
3) You just want the latest version and want to take your content with you
4) The darn thing breaks/gets stolen/etc
Since everything has to go through Amazon for a fee, if you want to keep all that stuff you paid for, you're going to pay how many times per device switch times how many devices in your life?
Give me the ability to do all those book things
*) Support more document formats (text, pdf and html should be a bare minimum)
*) Have content longevity (see previous section)
*) Don't give me anything in a proprietary format
*) Let me push stuff from my computer to my kindle directly
*) Let me do annotations/notes/highlighting on pdfs and ship the modified doc back to my computer
*) For bonus points, give me the option to search both the content of books and my notes
*) For double bonus points, make that search rip through my annotations
*) For even more bonus points, give me a Mac/Windows App to manage my docs (think iTunes)
eBooks are better than paper books (Score:5, Insightful)
Heresy!
But it's true, and I've been saying it for at least five years, ever since I first got my Rocket eBook reader. Read the article, and you'll understand why. Yes, eBook readers have some downsides, but not many, and they're trivial compared to the upsides -- assuming, of course, that you can get the books you want in electronic format.
Until you've done it, you simply can't understand how liberating it is to be able to read without holding the book in your hands. As the author of the article says, he found he could read while eating, holding his daughter, even running hard on a treadmill. And he's absolutely right that a good eBook device is "invisible" -- within a minute or two you completely forget that you're using it, because it gets out of the way of the content that it's presenting. Reading on your PDA or your laptop is not the same thing at all, because those devices don't get out of the way. Laptops are too big, too heavy, too powerhungry and PDAs are too small.
Here's my bottom line on just how much better eBooks are: My choice of reading materials has adapted to what I can get electronically, because I find paper books so annoying. Luckily, I was already a fan of much of the stuff from Baen Books, and they provide all of their stuff in electronic, DRM-free format for a very reasonable price (half the price of a paperback for single books, and about $2 per book if you buy their Webscription bundles). Because of the super convenience of an eBook, I now read almost nothing but Baen's titles.
BTW, as for reading in the tub: I've been doing it for years with my eBook. Just don't drop it in the water and you're fine (have you ever dropped a paperback in the tub? I haven't). If you're really worried about it, though, there's a very inexpensive and simple solution: Get a big ziploc baggie and put your eBook in it. Seal it up tight and you have no worries about water, sand or anything else getting in, and you'll have no problem pushing the buttons or reading through the clear plastic. I find that I can read eBooks in many places that I wouldn't take a hardcover book, because I'd be too afraid of damaging it, and it's not feasible to read a paper book wrapped in plastic. I also like the fact that my LCD-display eBook reader is readable in the dark. The Kindle isn't, but it's better in daylight (my eBook works in full sunlight, too, but it is a little harder to see).
eBooks are the future not because they're cool gadgets but because they make for a better reading experience.
Not a book iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm completely open to the idea of an e-book; as an environmentalist I positively love it. But it seems like too much attention has been focused on making an iKindle, to the detriment of the actual reading experience itself. e-ink is much better than LCD, certainly, but anybody who would claim it's is as pleasing to look at as even a $.99 paperback has pretty low standards. And I feel like a real opportunity has been missed in making it waterproof, too. Who wouldn't love to be able to read in the shower!
Well I like it... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the cost: It's fine given that it has bundled always-on wireless access. If I had to pay $25 a month for wireless for the device and if the device was, say, $100 - I'd be out of pocket in 12 months. TCO is good. Look past the $400 price tag and realize what you are getting for the money. A version 1 ebook (it's pretty good - will get better with V2, V3.....) and 24x7x365 wireless access to a huge library. Good value in my book!
Re:not so much pricing of the unit, as the content (Score:5, Insightful)
bandwidth cost is much lower than the same costs for physical books which include not only printing but also shipping and handling, which alone is probably more than the bandwidth on a per book basis. The grandparent might be a bit off on the $1 number but he is right that nobody is going to pay the same price for a text file that they would pay for a paperback.
Books arent like music, they dont have as much replay vaule, your not sitting on a train thinking, "man, if only I had that book I finished last week I would read it again right now." Most people read one book at a time, or a few books at a time in some cases and there is much less value in carrying your entire library with you. So given all that, why would you buy a device to do that just to pay the same price for the book as you would for a nice bound copy?
Re:My beef with Amazon (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please don't link to video. (Score:5, Insightful)
For us guys your statement holds. However the huge 'romance' novel industry argues that for most women text porn is preferred over visual. Whatever. Wonder if Bezos has made sure to have lots of that sort of stuff ready to sell on the Kindle.
(And no, with eight gray levels and 800x600 resolution forget jpeg/gif.)
Different Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
What - that's a load of crap I pulled out of my ass? Congrats. You're right.
Here's what I do know though - you're full of crap about why people like having books, why people read, and ultimately, why people like large libraries. It's for the same reason that people collect records, plates, coins, stamps, insects, door knobs and other things: they like the objects, and they like collecting them. Books tend to have a specific place of honor because for the longest time, they were the only way that knowledge was passed down. As a result, a large library correlated strongly with being learned, which was why they used to be status symbols.
Today, they're merely an indication of a person's passion. Looking down on people with large libraries says the same thing about you as does looking down on people with any other pastime; be it baseball, baseball cards or collecting train tickets: you're a pompous ass who needs external validations for why you're a worthy individual.
What's up with the keyboard?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Textbooks are a problem.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really think that you're paying $100 for the physical artifact when you buy a textbook? You're really just paying what the publisher can get away with because everyone has to buy it.
Go to a normal bookstore and look at the prices for books that are the same size and weight as textbooks. They're all around $50 or $60.
Re:easier than a book? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, when it comes to reading traditional books I often find it hard to find a position that's comfortable for holding the book open and also turning the pages (this is particularly a problem in bed). Being able to hold the device stationary and just press a button with my thumb to advance is quite appealing.
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't, but I'm sure it had a lot to do with convincing the content-types to come on board. No mainstream content, no mainstream device.
"... still make a healthy profit as BAEN books seem to do."
That topic is open for debate. Baen releases a lot of books for free in electronic form in order to generate print sales. This works because, currently, there isn't really a good solution for reading ebooks and as such most people will pay for the printed versions if they think they like the story or author.
But will that model continue to work as we transition into a reader-based world?
Let's say we go a generation or five down the road and have a slim, light, long-lasting, durable affordable reader with a nice bright high-resolution high-contrast screen (OLED?) that can be read under any lighting conditions. Instant downloads of content, magazines, and so on. Which, in turn makes reading ebooks such a pleasure that the market starts transitioning more and more towards that format.
So in that case, do you still give away your content for free when there's no "print" version to buy?
Remember the early digital camera market? Electronic book readers are currently at the 1981 Sony Mavica digital camera stage , where everyone looks at it and says, "Why on earth would you use that and not film?" Now, just a couple of decades down the road, how hard to you have to look to find a film camera at Best Buy?
And in many cases it's still not because digital is better, quality-wise, than film. But it's definitely good enough for most purposes, and it wins hands-down in the convenience category.
just get the OLPC (Score:2, Insightful)
The OLPC has a keyboard, and has the ebook mode. You'll get something between 20 and 24 hours of reading in the ebook B/W mode on the OLPC. It has a great shock and water resistant case, I believe you can leave it out in the rainstorm.
David Pogue with NYT demonstrated dropping it on a really jagged rock from about 5 feet off the ground, then threw water on it, then through dirt on it. Plus the OLPC is 400 AND you are donating one to a child in a developing country.
You could get 2 OLPC and totally share ebooks instantly. The mesh networking allows download, plus has regular internet and browser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBoghPvyhts [youtube.com]
Re:Pricing is the big hurdle (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at the eBook Prices (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, start browsing. Yes, New-York-Times bestsellers are $9.99 or lower. Sadly few of the books in the Computers and Internet [amazon.com] section are significantly cheaper than the physical versions: Fred Brook's Mythical Man Month [amazon.com] - $25.91 in eBook format. Martin Fowler's Refactoring [amazon.com] - $35.87. Joshua Block's Effective Java [amazon.com] - $39.99. To be fair, not all computer-science books cost that much but $25+ for an eBook is too much for me.
So while the overall selection is good and the prices on a lot of large-print-run books are great, it looks to me like the publishers are sticking with the view that books with low print runs must be priced higher, even when electronic. Too bad. I was hoping Amazon eBooks would let me carry more of the stuff that interests me beyond literature.