Kindle
I was kind of embarrassed, but now I'm coming out into the open. I got a Kindle. This was a hard decision to make (making the blog post, not buying the Kindle. It was an impulse purchase). Everyone was ridiculing Amazon for producing such a stupid and crippled device. After playing around with it and actually reading some stuff on it, though, I can justify it to myself. The price was pretty stupid, but the value is pretty great. Let me list the things that aren't really well advertised on the Kindle site.
- Free web browsing. This is the biggest one. They mentioned some stuff about looking up articles on Wikipedia, but it sounded like that was a special-cased service and they wouldn't allow arbitrary web browsing. They do. And it's free. You can browse to sites like manybooks.net and download ebooks. Or check up on the Twisted review queue. Whatever. Apparently there's even some javascript support, but I have a hard time believing anything of interest is supported (definitely no XHR, guys). I think the reason they didn't advertise this very well is that it makes using their blog subscription service absolutely idiotic.
- The format support is better than it looks. You can download your bookwarez or your Project Gutenberg texts or whatever. You can transfer .txt and .azw files directly, and it does support the MOBI format. All you have to do is rename your mobi file to .azw and the Kindle will pick it right up. It's totally idiotic that they didn't advertise the native MOBI support (they do advertise that it works with their free conversion service. That must be one of the easier converters to write).
- It looks like they have a good attitude towards future development: Right in the home menu there's an "Experimental" item which leads to three cool things: Basic Web (see point 1), Ask Kindle NowNow, and Play Music. Yeah, it'll play mp3 files, either with its built-in speaker or through headphones. The Ask Kindle NowNow thing is kind of neat, but it's not that exciting given that they have a web browser that's quite capable of viewing google.
Here are the things that they do advertise, and that they were right to advertise:
- The display is damned snazzy. I'm surprised every time I glance over and can actually see what's on the screen when the Kindle is lying at some odd angle to my line of sight.
- Yeah, it's full of DRM, but it is really frickin' cool to be able to find, buy, and download a book in a minute or two. Now when people recommend that I buy some book or another, I'll actually be able to get it instead of (forget to) write it down on a list somewhere and (forget to) buy it at some book store the next time I'm around one.
I'll bet that within a year or so there will be working cracks to de-DRM an AZW file. Like I said above, it seems to just be a mobi file, but with some encryption added. The DRM is the thing that worries me the most, even as a consumer, since I'm wondering if I'll be able to read these books in ten years. But given the Kindle's support for other formats, you could keep yourself busy reading nothing but non-DRMed content acquired from places other than Amazon.
The stupid things follow:
- I can't copy an .html file to the Kindle and view it. Even though it has a web browser, there's no way to look at local content with it, as far as I can tell. You can send them to the free conversion service and get back an .azw, though. Or put them on the web and view them with the web browser :-).
- The books are kind of expensive. I'm used to paying about $7 or $8 for a paperback, and the books seem to consistently be about $9 or $10. Given the convenience, as a consumer I'm not annoyed (as a socialist, I am. Production cost for a bunch of bits is less than $10). And it's actually *way* cheaper to buy a Kindle book than a new hardback release, since paperback releases are often delayed. I bought Pratchett's latest novel, Making Money, which I haven't seen in paperback yet, for $10 instead of the at least $20 that I'd pay at a brick and mortar store.
Ok. So I got it, and I'm pretty happy.
10 comments:
Yeah, I was considering buying one too since I read that it actually supports various other text formats. I also really like their free cell/data service. However, I didn't want to drop $500 on something that doesn't already have some hacks. (I'm certainly not going to pay $500 to try myself.)
What I did get was the XO from the OLPC project. It's about $100 less than the Kindle, you get a neat small, very hackable computer (I got to play with some of the previous models at the Media Lab), and you donate one to a child (which is tax deductable). It also has a pretty neat display that is viewable in the sun. Well, I say "did get" but what I really mean is "paid for, but will not receive until early 2008".
I'm not particularly fond of Sugar but I look forward to seeing what I can do with the thing. And gotta support my alma mater. :)
Oops, I messed up the prices in my head. The XO and the Kindle are the same price, it's the Sony Reader that's $100 less.
You bought something you probably don't really need, and now you are rationalizing your purchase.
Did you happen to read the license agreement and terms of service of the Kindle?
Here is a relevant part of it:
"You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party"
That sounds as awful as what the music industry has been doing. If you buy a real book, you can lend it to someone else. Not so with the Kindle.
Do you think authors are going to like this business model? I think they'd rather have all your friends read their book, and some of them buying a copy. Most authors are about spreading their ideas, not about maximizing profit.
The Kindle and similar products are as bad for little-known authors as music DRM is for little-known bands. Selling and sharing is good for promotion. Locking it up in DRM isn't.
For that reason, and because the reading experience with real books is still superior to reading electronically, I will not buy a Kindle, even if I could in the Netherlands.
cyli: Yeah. I think the biggest thing that separates the Kindle from the other things is the free EVDO access. I'm still amazed that they offer free EVDO web browsing. Well, and the epaper display.
rene: I knew about the DRM and licensing at the time of purchase. As someone who regularly infringes copyright by trading movies and music en mass (artists can go screw themselves), one more EULA isn't going to be a problem for me. I consider the limitations of the Kindle purely technical, not legal.
radix: Yeah, the ability to buy a book immediately from Amazon and browse the web anywhere for free appealed to me tremendously too. I would love that convenience, and I love the idea of eBooks (space is at a premium in my small apartment). The DRM and the automatic updates that will possibly disable any hacks you install sort of kills it for me, at that price. That and the fact that no one has really looked at whether the device sends information about what you're reading or browsing online back to Amazon. Also, I'm annoyed at the lack of native PDF support, since so much information online is offered in PDF form (like research papers, random bits of tax and legal documents, etc.).
I dunno... if the price drops enough I may buy one despite all my complaints. Oh, you travel a lot, so you should be able to test the coverage. Let me know how that goes.
I’m amazed that none of the blogs talk about the paperless factor in terms of the environment. Isn't moving to paperless books and newspapers an eventuality and the environmentally responsible thing to do? Amazon should be thanked for moving us further in that direction. I didn't buy Kindle for the gadgets - but to be able to take a small library with me on my travels without having to destroy and ship a forrest in the process.
I hate the environment, so that's not such a selling factor for me. Not having to take bulky physical books with me when I travel, though, I am already gaining benefit from.
kenneth: Do you have a good idea of what the environmental impact of buying something such as a Kindle actually is? We cut down fewer trees, but it's made of plastic, which is a petroleum by-product; it's powered by electricity - granted, not much electricity, but more than a book. Do you think that most Kindles will be properly recycled in 2-4 years or whenever their natural end-of-life is when the next revision of this technology is made available? If blogs aren't talking about this stuff, it's probably because it's reasonably difficult to analyze the trade-offs involved.
I loved my Kindle, but here's a warning: the screen is very delicate. I made the mistake of resting my elbow on it while working at my computer and CRACK! The display was totally broken. Kindle support (which is Excellent, BTW) arranged for me to send it to them without hassle, and I'm waiting for the replacement. Some kind of glitch has delayed the delivery, but they seem to be working on it, and soon I'll be reading in style again. This interim period of "real" books has been a drag.
The paper used to make books come from tree farms, not endangered species trees or wild trees or poor helpless not represented trees. go to washington, you can see fields and fields of trees made just for pulp.
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