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Posted (edited)

So has anyone gotten one of these things (Amazon's new super digital reader)? I was sitting next to someone on a train and she was looking at one. It didn't look that bad (compared to other electronic readers) but I also still didn't think I would want to try to read an entire book on one. Anyway, I happened to mention this to my wife, and she got such a strange look on her face. So of course she had ordered me one for Xmas...

In the spirit of trying not to be a complete jerk, I went and looked at some of the other features, and they are cool.

Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.

Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times—all auto-delivered wirelessly.

More than 900 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post—all updated wirelessly throughout the day.

Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot.

No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments—we take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.

I still doubt I would sit down and read a book, but I will at least give the other features a spin. Now what I won't be doing is trying to read it on the train, partly because on CTA you rarely get a seat and I just don't want to risk it being stolen.

I do seem to spend half of my life trying to keep up with news sites (which somewhat undercuts my complaint about reading stuff off a screen). And the idea that Amazon takes care of the wireless charges and presumably setting up the subscription to some of these papers is appealing. Oops - I just looked more closely and saw that none of these papers are free. $14/month for the NY Times and $10 for the Tribune, whereas they are free on the internet. And you even pay a little for the blogs (though there are serious complaints about them not updating on time). If Kindle completely replaced the internet for me (which of course it wouldn't), well this pricing might not be unreasonable, as Amazon would just lose too much otherwise. But for me it doesn't make any sense. I think I'll probably ask her to send it back, since I simply can't see making enough use out of it. But I thought I would see if anyone else had some experience with it.

Edited by ejp626
Posted

Hm, not for me... there's something to a book that no cool features won't replace. You can make side notes, mark phrases (and no, you can't pull them out in a new document or anything like that... if you want to find them again, you'll just have to go browse the pages again...). Reading a book is partly also a haptic thing. I guess I'm just old-fashioned...

Posted

Hm, not for me... there's something to a book that no cool features won't replace. You can make side notes, mark phrases (and no, you can't pull them out in a new document or anything like that... if you want to find them again, you'll just have to go browse the pages again...). Reading a book is partly also a haptic thing. I guess I'm just old-fashioned...

I have friends who love the device, but I agree with king ubu.

Luddites unite. :ph34r:

Posted

Well, the more I looked into it, the less interested I was. As with so many of these things, there is DRM up the wazoo. The wireless features, which do seem pretty cool, are quite hackable, so that needs to be upgraded. Given that the newspapers give away their content on-line, I still can't believe that Amazon is charging for this, and is probably the #1 reason I'm not too interested. They've even gotten their hands on the Guttenberg Project books, converted them over and are charging for these public domain books.

There are only two things (not remotely on the horizon) that would bring me to adopt this technology. 1) if there was a trade-in for academic books, so I would hand over a copy of some obscure text and get the Kindle download in exchange and 2) if they linked up with JSTOR and some of the other academic journal sites and had reasonable ($20 or less/month) fees rather than $2/article which is generally what Amazon tries to charge for such things. I don't think Amazon would make a profit under these conditions, but I'm certainly not interested in the thing as it is currently priced.

It is a big disappointment to my wife, but better now than finding out on Xmas and having that spoiled.

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