Boing Boing on GOOD: Why I Like the Amazon Kindle 2 (or will once I get one)
I only did a couple of things today, but one of them was paw the Kindle 2. Unlike a lot of other skeptics and their quite reasonable criticisms, I'm actually a pretty big Kindle fan. (I have no problem viewing it purely as a paper book adjunct, a role at which it excels.) I took a crack at explaining why—and why the Kindle 2 is better than the first one—in this article at GOOD.
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Damn you and your pile of blogger money that you have to spend on Kindles!
BWAHAHAHAH! "blogger money"! BWAHAHAHA!!
I'm grateful for early adopters because they help finance the companies that work out all the imperfections of new products before I buy them. And by "early adopters" I mean anyone who buys a product before it's been on the market for at least six years. Hot damn, I'm looking forward to getting a Kindle 4!
Why would anyone want to buy something like a Kindle when you can read ebooks on any good smartphone?
Can't trust Amazon, seeing as they left their previous ebook customers high and dry (remember Digital Lockers?).
A Kindle is $360? I had no idea.... I assumed these were $100-$150 devices. I mean, a PSP is less than half that, and an iPhone/Pod is less too. And this doesn't let you do anything but read (not that reading's bad, but for $360?). I assume the price is high due to the screen size?
I realize this isn't a productive posting, but I'm just really surprised at $360. I missed that the first time around.
Not to mention, of course, all the books floating around online as PDFs, or slurped from Amazon Preview, Google Books, and O'Reilly Safari.
I do this presently, and while PDF To Go can do the job, and a 480x360 resolution screen is "adequate", I totally jones for the readability and display real estate of an e-Ink book reader.Now, if Asus made an EeePC netbook that used an e-Ink display and underwrote development of NeWS PostScript for it... Let's post that to the WePC partnership between Asus and BoingBoing.
Nanuq: I wonder that myself. I understand a lot of people love the Kindle, but I feel no pull from it. I assume the primary answer to your question might be "screen size". Though for me, I think the Kindle size is an awkward middle ground. I either want something small in my pocket that I can pull out on a bus, in a line, during a break at work, etc, or I'll have my laptop.
Smart phones with higher resolution but still small screens hit many sweet spots - one device instead of three or four (music player, reader, phone, pda), actual pocket size, and the usual lovely backlit access to whatever data you want, whenever. The kindle is too big, but not big enough.
I'm not generally a fan of convergence gadgets, but that's mostly because they tend to attmept the convergence of incompatible goals - lousy phone plus lousy camera is a lousy device. But a good PDA, phone and ebook reader in one is a device I have wanted for a long time. Yes, I know they have existed for a while, I should append "affordable, very high resolution display and days of battery life" to that list.
What I find funny is that they expect a huge load of people to want to buy it and because of this huge line they will give owners of the Kindle 1.0 preference.
Are there really people today (or ever) who would spend $360 more for an upgrade? Why would Kindles be so ultra recession-proof? I have a feeling Amazon is lying about the sales of its amazing 'half my rent' reading device no one ever needed.
The Kindle2 is on 4 of my tech feeds - what's so special about it? I already have a cheap mini pc that can do anything this can and more - an Acer Aspire One with XP, a Gb of ram, 120Gb HDD. And its not much bigger than a big paper back.
Anyone remember the old Franklin E-Book? I had one with a dictionary and a concise encyclopedia. It was the size of a pocket calculator. I can't imagine needing an e-book any bigger than this. All you need is a touch display, a HDD to hold a voluminous amount of books, and a small keypad to program setting preferences.
I know one owner, and she looooooooves it. Being able to download a sample of a book is a big plus.
Nothing will replace the smell of old books. Call me an old fashioned romantic or whatnot (despite the fact that I'm a teenager), but... no. It just doesn't cut it for me. There's something intensely physical about a book that's a great part of the text, it often seems. Plus they smell good.
Reading the Amazon reviews, a lot of people seem to have problems with the network/system the kindle uses to distribute books.
I don't like the DRM. I'll probably be able to get by with a Nokia N800 or N810.
I have my N800 which works just fine outside of USA. Kindle is America only.
Sometimes I wish there was some sort of questionnaire required on all comment areas for ebook articles. It's always the same half dozen whines by people who have no experience with the display technology, don't read novels, or are just luddites with a dead-tree fetish.
There are more than enough worthwhile questions raised by ebook tech that we shouldn't have to deal with this crap every single time (especially on a site as hip as bb).
"It's expensive..."
So were CDs, DVDs, mp3 players, printers, laptops, glasses, hats, etc...
"I can read just fine on my iPhone/Blackberry/Digital Watch..."
You probably haven't held an eink device or you probably don't read as much as you think you do. Even if it's true for you, it isn't for the majority of folks out there. This product obviously isn't for you - why are you commenting again?
"You could buy a netbook..."
Laptops of any form are cumbersome and distracting for serious reading. Find me a netbook with a 3 week battery life, a display that won't give me debilitating headaches, a free built-in cell data connection, and it as thick as a pencil. Then we'll talk.
"It's not the same as holding a...."
People said this about clay tablets, scrolls, handwritten manuscripts, records, VHS, and any number of outdated technologies. Books don't hold any inherit specialness other than you grew up reading them.
How can anyone honestly think that we'll still be glueing together flattened pieces of dead trees to do our reading 100 years from now?
I hate to be the grumpy guy - but those of us who follow ebooks know exactly what I'm talking about.
quite! Why I bloody well demand meself I have the original author stand at the foot of me bed, lead to shock collar in me hand, and demmed well recite his work by heart,with-out-error! I don't know, all this vulgar, bloody,lower-class reading-words-on-paper bol-she-vik clap-trap, in my day we had an Empire!
wow that screen is shiny, almost looks glossy = bad
So no SD slot, no ePub support and no use outside the US. Well done Amazon, you've made a product with even use more tie-in than Sony.
How can anyone honestly think that we'll still be glueing together flattened pieces of dead trees to do our reading 100 years from now?
Because this is a method of distribution that has held up for at least the last thousand years? Because you can't flip through the pages of an e-book like you can with a paper tome? Because you can't loan an e-book to a friend, or give it away freely? Because of DRM, when your device breaks, you just lost your entire library (this actually happened to me with the Kindle)? Because it's easier to highlight or make margin notes with a pen on paper than it is with a keyboard not much larger than you see on some cell phones? Need any more reasons? How about "paper books don't need to be recharged?"
Sorry to say, my friend, that e-books will not replace paper prints within the next millennium, if they ever do. At best, they will be supplemental to each other, always competing, but never actually forcing either or the other out of the market.
Disclaimer: I do love my Kindle. And after a couple of days of banging my head against the wall, I was able to figure out how to restore my library on my new Kindle (though I understand there are limits on the number of times you can reassign the content you "purchased"). Nowadays, I use it mostly for what you might call toilet reading, or for reading books that I did NOT get from amazon, specifically to avoid the DRM issue (again). I *do* love my Kindle. But it will never replace my bookcase.
great technology for adult and modern kids, perhaps that technology can more familiar with everyone, so we can stop cutting tree for years
#22, nice.
As for the gripes about gripes about the costs and the 'tree fetish'..there are millions of people just in the US who do not have access to the internet let alone a device to read expensive (non-shareable means way more expensive overall) eBooks. So long as paper is cheaper than ePaper devices the masses will continue to learn and be entertained by that blasted backwards technology we call the printing press. Who needs to have a Kindle to realize that? How much better can reading words be on a Kindle? $360 better? Possibly, but most people would qualify that as an absurd luxury and we're commenting because why wouldn't we comment on technology on a technology website? Sorry but it's not exclusive to 'those of you eReaders'.
It is a remarkable device but there is no sign that Amazon is trying to make the technology accessible to more than people with fairly decent disposable incomes or people of the world in general. The rest of us 'luddites' and people who don't read will just have to wait for the cheaper knock-offs that work fine in order to catch up to your not-pretentious level of intellect, Chris Schmidt. In the meantime, we will just have to enjoy our expensive ass hats.
I have a v1 Kindle and when I was in the US I used it quite a bit. I really liked the convenience of being able to get a book about thirty seconds after ordering it. That was big selling point for me.
But original Kindle had a few problems as a physical device. First, the keyboard, which was not used while reading, was annoyingly large and prominently positioned. Second, the control keys were located exactly where I naturally held the thing, requiring a contrived reading position to avoid pressing them accidentally.
The problem I see is that the v2 Kindle doesn't fix either of these defects. The keyboard is still large and prominent -- they should have made it a slide-out or used a touch-screen. And the control keys are still misplaced -- they belong at the top of the device, where they won't get accidentally pressed (and where their placement could mimic turning pages from the top corners.) Also, Amazon doesn't seem to be planning to extend their cellular service to Canada any time soon.
Let's hope v3 will get it right.
@4, because I want to read more than 20 words per page?
Expensive and it does not have a non-glare screen. What's with that?
Why not just read a book?
Well, it seems that my RSS feeder is full of Kindle stories. In truth, I was hoping that Amazon might do something better with their device. Even in its new incarnation, Kindle makes Sony Reader look good.
Good:
1. Good size eInk screen, faster then Kindle 1.
2. Light, metal case, thin.
3. Keyboard (good for annotating etc.)
Bad:
1. Locked in to Amazon book store.
2. PDF and other formats support only available with conversion and conversion costs money (so you basically pay for books you already own, or for your own documents).
Sorry to say, my friend, that e-books will not replace paper prints within the next millennium, if they ever do. At best, they will be supplemental to each other, always competing, but never actually forcing either or the other out of the market.
Absolutely true. It's rare for any medium to completely replace its predecessor, even when it offers some "improvement" over the earlier version.
Television didn't kill radio, recorded music didn't kill live performances and photography didn't kill painting. The best that ebooks can hope for is to one day become more common than their paper forbears, not to replace them.
#18 Chris: You're dead on. Kindle discussions inevitably (and IMHO, unnecessarily) devolve into a Paper vs. Device debate that (a) is worn to death, (b) misses the point, and (c) gets absurd faster than you can say "Get off my lawn!"
I read Anathem on a computer monitor. It caused indescribable pain all down my optic nerves and made all of my brainparts do the tarantella.
#22: You spent $300+ on "toilet reading"?
I don't think the Kindle (or similar devices) are going to replace books entirely. People will still buy nice hardcover versions of the books they love (probably through a print-on-demand service). It's going to replace the massive stack of tattered Pratchett novels I grab from to read when I've got a flight somewhere. It will replace the read and trash romance novels 40 year old house wives burn through. It will replace the newspaper I buy at the coffee shop and throw away on my way out the door.
Why is it that we can envision a world where people live in gas bubbles floating around man-made suns (Sun of Suns - free ebook I read on my Sony Reader), but not the eventual $49 color version we'll see a few years from now.
Why can't we talk about the future of self-publishing, free ebook sites, or any of the INTERESTING topics ebook readers raise?
I'm curious as to how many people who talk about how much they like the Kindle have actually sat down and read a 300 page book on one. And if they really thought it was somehow a better reading experience than paper. If yes, how was it better?
I'd pay $360 for a Kindle, if:
- it had an SD card slot.
- it had PIM functions.
- it had wifi and web-browsing.
- it allowed unrestricted uploads of my own files (yes, free ebooks a la Proj. Gutenberg etc.).
Anybody got a link about why it doesn't have all/some of these?
In shorter, if Palm TX had eInk and were bigger, maybe.
I'm curious as to how many people who talk about how much they like the Kindle have actually sat down and read a 300 page book on one.
I've read a lot on the one I have access to.
And if they really thought it was somehow a better reading experience than paper. If yes, how was it better?
Well, reading 'The Diamond Age' on it was kinda awesome.
Aside from that though, the ability to look up a word in a dictionary without losing your place in the text is good. The ability to look up background info (as my g/f does when she reads travel-writing) is quite useful. The ability to clip some text and e-mail it to someone is kinda nice too. Daily newspapers and magazines on-the-go is nice. And the e-ink is impressively easy on the eyes, the batteries last forever, and finally, the heft and portability of the device is not unlike a book.
Sure, you can read magazines and newspapers online, but what about at breakfast, or on the subway, or the many other places where people read periodicals that they wouldn't open up a laptop for. Plus: the whole eye-strain issue that makes e-Ink displays so preferable.