Amazon Kindle

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http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-kin...

* Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
* Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
* Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle"”whether you're in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
* Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
* More than 88,000 books available, including 100 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
* New York Times® Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
* Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
* 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.
* More than 250 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.
* Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
* Holds over 200 titles.
* Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
* 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.
* Includes free wireless access to the planet's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia"”Wikipedia.org.
* Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing.

Okay, so being able to buy books, newspapers and magazines anywhere wirelessly is pretty f'in cool. Using Sprint's cell-phone network for internet access and not having to pay for it. And the prices are really low. My only concern is selection, but it's still pretty impressive right now and should improve over time.

It also sorta stinks that you have to pay $.10 to email documents to your device instead of letting you transfer them over USB cable, is that a piracy prevention mechanism? Doesn't make sense since you have to transfer audiobooks over the USB cable already.

Still, pretty impressive looking device. I've been hoping an eink reader would come along with a reason for me to buy it.

It certainly has caused a commotion in the reviews. I was reading the 1 star reviews to see what the complaints were and I haven't even seen any from actual users.

No PDF support? Nice to see someone doing a digital pricing scheme that makes sense, rather than trying to sell a more restrictive digital product for equal or more money than the "standard" counterparts.

I really want to see the e-paper display in person. I saw a demo 7 years ago, and the tech has tons of potential. Free wireless with no plan is also an incredibly smart move as it makes the delivery mechanism invisible.

That said, 1980 called and wants it's ergonomic keypad back.

That. is. FUGLY.

I'm so not buying one until they redesign.

Seriously, looks like an old calculator or somethin'

I bought one. Will have it tomorrow and will let y'all know how it is.

Magnus: ditto.

FWIW, it reads TXT and Mobi files, and mobi creator makes PDF conversions super simple, I've used it before. How well Kindle deals with Mobi files we'll see, but its a super easy HTML conversion format that works great on everything else. I've used it to make clean ebook content for my PSP and palm devices over the years. It will also take in word documents perfectly. It's free.

So all the "oooh no PDFs and no USB?" handwaving is kind of pointless, since there's a super easy way to do the former and the latter isn't actually true. MP3 player off my SD card is a bonus.

We'll see, but based on the library and the newspapers alone, I know it will get a ton of use in this house, unless it is somehow otherwise a POS.

I skimmed the page So it will take text files? I'm not limited to purchases from Amazon? Now I'm interested. I hate the form factor but love the convenience of one "magic book". I used to do it with my PDA but stopped carrying it and got tired of the QVGA screen for books.

So all the "oooh no PDFs and no USB?" handwaving is kind of pointless, since there's a super easy way to do the former and the latter isn't actually true. MP3 player off my SD card is a bonus.

Is the USB thing not true? I really don't know, they make it sound like the only way to get your own books on the device is to send them to that email address for a dime a pop.

From the Gizmodo Hands On:

Gizmodo wrote:

Can you transfer documents straight to the device? In our testing, we only got MP3s to show up when we transferred them via USB. PDFs, RTFs, and JPEGs did not appear when we copied them to the Documents folder on the Kindle. Stay tuned as we get further in on that, but for now, it sounds like you really do have to e-mail it up.

How Kindle Recognizes Files

Kindle will only recognize and display files on your Kindle Home screen if the file type is natively supported and located in the appropriate folder on your Kindle or optional SD memory card. Also, items purchased from the Kindle store will only be recognized by a Kindle if it is registered to the Amazon.com account used to make the purchase. See Adjusting Your Kindle Settings for information on registering your Kindle.

Here are the file types and locations that Kindle will recognize automatically:

Recognized File Types
documents
Kindle (.azw), text (.txt), Mobi (.mobi*, .prc*)

music
MP3 music format (.mp3)

Audible
Audible.com (.aa)

The star just says they won't use .mobi DRM

I bought one.. though on the Elevator in my NY office I noticed a factoid on the Clearview Ad system that only 36% of American's polled read a book the previous day for relaxation.

I am a huge Proj. Gutenberg addict and if I can't add those .txt files to this thing without paying them $.10... well, why would I upgrade from my $100 rocket book?

Also, how on earth, in this day and age, can they release a device that ugly? I mean, the ipod is largely the same as every other mp3 player available. What makes it better? Seamless integration with software and great looking hardware. They've got the software down by taking the PC out of the picture altogether and allowing the unit to be standalone and that's brilliant. But this thing looks like a 1980s calculator, who would want to type on that keypad? When the Sony eReader looks as good as it does... it's just silly of Amazon to forget to make this thing look as high-tech and cool as it is.

Although, I may be judging this book by it's cover...

Lester_King wrote:

I am a huge Proj. Gutenberg addict and if I can't add those .txt files to this thing without paying them $.10...

Filthy skimmer (heh).

rabbit wrote:
How Kindle Recognizes Files

Kindle will only recognize and display files on your Kindle Home screen if the file type is natively supported and located in the appropriate folder on your Kindle or optional SD memory card. Also, items purchased from the Kindle store will only be recognized by a Kindle if it is registered to the Amazon.com account used to make the purchase. See Adjusting Your Kindle Settings for information on registering your Kindle.

Here are the file types and locations that Kindle will recognize automatically:

Recognized File Types
documents
Kindle (.azw), text (.txt), Mobi (.mobi*, .prc*)

music
MP3 music format (.mp3)

Audible
Audible.com (.aa)

The star just says they won't use .mobi DRM

This device is now 100 times more sexy to me. Man I wish I had the money right now.

The device looked OK in hands of the metrosexual guy who showcases it on the Amazon's Kindle Product page. There's something vaguely Apple-ish (read: metrosexual) in this white hue and the overall over-under-statedness.

The strange shape has to do, I believe, with the convenience of holding it with the left hands, as well as for ease of grabbing it off the surface of a table or a desk.

The oddity of the keyboard is probably supposed to convey the message that this is not a computer.

What's the pricing on books? All I see is $10 which seems way way too high like nearly every other piece of digital media offered for sale. No wonder people just pirate everything.

trip1eX wrote:

What's the pricing on books? All I see is $10 which seems way way too high like nearly every other piece of digital media offered for sale. No wonder people just pirate everything.

$10 is way too high? Do you buy many real books?

$10 for a book otherwise only available in hardcover is cheap cheap. Paperback fiction seems to be between 4 and 8 bucks. The book I'm about to read (as soon as the thing arrives) is the second temeraire book, which is $5.60 on kindle, $8 in paperback, although it would only be like 7 if I went up to B&N and bought it with my members card thingy.

No matter how you slice it though, if you actually buy books, this is cheaper for the books. Of course, I need to read a LOT of books to make $400 a break even proposition, but I'm not buying it for the math. If I was, I'd be getting all my books at the library.

Now if it had the OED in it ...

Just looked at the pic. Man I can't believe they are attempting to market this thing. IT's going to set electronic books back 5-10 years and drop book readership another 25%. Someone call Steve Jobs.

rabbit wrote:

No matter how you slice it though, if you actually buy books, this is cheaper for the books. Of course, I need to read a LOT of books to make $400 a break even proposition, but I'm not buying it for the math. If I was, I'd be getting all my books at the library.

Now if it had the OED in it ...

I'd love to get one of these things and get rid of a bunch of my books that just take up a lot of space. I'm still sort of concerned. You can back up your e-books to any other media tho, right?

(what's OED?)

I'd like to understand exactly what visual aspects of Kindle are you guys considering as "ugly".

Mex wrote:
rabbit wrote:

No matter how you slice it though, if you actually buy books, this is cheaper for the books. Of course, I need to read a LOT of books to make $400 a break even proposition, but I'm not buying it for the math. If I was, I'd be getting all my books at the library.

Now if it had the OED in it ...

I'd love to get one of these things and get rid of a bunch of my books that just take up a lot of space. I'm still sort of concerned. You can back up your e-books to any other media tho, right?

(what's OED?)

Oxford English Dictionary methinks.

The demo video on the page was nice enough. Automatically get newspapers and blogs? Free f'in wireless delivery? Pretty damn cool. The video even showed a dictionary lookup feature for while you're reading, but I didn't catch where it was pulling the dictionary info from.

Mex wrote:

You can back up your e-books to any other media tho, right?

Yes, and you can also re-download from Amazon what you've previously bought.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

I'd like to understand exactly what visual aspects of Kindle are you guys considering as "ugly".

The part other than the screen. This thing screams to be a thin plastic bezel around a great screen. If anything only needs a popup on screen keyboard it's this. I wouldn't care if I had to do text entry with a cursor pad and a button, just get rid of the damnable keyboard.

I agree its but-ugly, but I don't actually care all that much. It seems ugly mostly straight on, but sort of sleek at any angle. I'll let ya know tomorrow.

As for backups - the files are apparently just files that you can back up and move around. For now you can only read them on a kindle though.

And yes, Oxford English Dictionary. Mine requires a magnifying glass, a dedicated stand, and ways 15 pounds.

I don't want to pick on rabbit too much, but in a post concerning the Oxford English Dictionary he made two spelling mistakes.

I did?

If I did, it just proves how much I need it!

The thing that struck me most is that it seems more for Amazon's benefit than for mine.

I'd forgive the "but-ugly" as a typo, but "ways"? ... for shame.

Malor wrote:

The thing that struck me most is that it seems more for Amazon's benefit than for mine.

Huh? How exactly? You save on shipping, and on book prices (I suppose not EVERYTHING is going to be 9.99?).

This thing has a LOT of potential, but I think I'm going to wait for V2. I'm really tempted to get one right now but I'm not convinced...

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