Amazon Kindle

Finished reading a sample and bought and downloaded a full book. It took approx 5 minutes. Guessing I'm not the only one doing this today, but still not the 1-2 minutes promised. Having said that, can't say I really care about the speed of downloads, as long as it's faster than a UPS truck

I bought the new Ringworld prequel and had it in under a minute once it finally found a cell tower.

Also, i can confirm that both .moby and .prc files work flawlessly. Just loaded some stuff from the Baen library and a PDF I'd converted with Mobi without any issues. Even picks up tables of contents and the like without any problems.

Honestly, this device sounds optimal for someone like me:

  • I read a lot. I always have a book with me and my favorite lunchtime thing -- aside from hockey -- is eating somewhere and reading.
  • I buy a lot of books. Not a billion, but enough.
  • I re-read books that I like. I've read Cryptonomicon about 4 times now, and I'll read it again some day.

And just reading the impressions makes me want it more. I simply can't pull the trigger at that price, I can't do it. I certainly can't justify it to the wife, it would simply be an extravagance. Gimme rev 2 with a bigger display and a (much) lower price and I will hump it dead.

It's way too easy to buy books. This could really hurt my bank account.

I'm withholding any more impressions until I review this thing next week. I will say that I just did bedtime for my daughter with it and completely forgot I wasn't reading a physical book within 5 minutes.

magnus wrote:

It's way too easy to buy books. This could really hurt my bank account.

If it's easier than Prime and One-Click checkout then I'd better stay far, far away.

Questions about .mobi and .prc files:
-Can you still bookmark and annotate like you can with .azw?
-Assuming yes, do your bookmarks and annotations get saved to the "cloud"?

I'm guessing it won't upload to the cloud, since the .mobi file isn't already out there.

rabbit wrote:

I'm withholding any more impressions until I review this thing next week. I will say that I just did bedtime for my daughter with it and completely forgot I wasn't reading a physical book within 5 minutes.

I'd actually appreciate a full-on review for the frontpage or whatever. I'm really on the fence with this thing. Really, my only gripe is how f*cking geeky it looks.

No go for me although this thread has me interested in a book reader now.

The Kindle seems more designed to become a portal to the Amazon storefront than just a bookreader. I favor the the looks, battery life and focus of the Bookeen.

Book prices are too high though on the Bookeen especially. Freakonomics, for example, is $20 for the Mobipocket version and $17 on Amazon for a hardcover.

You can probably find a first gen Sony on ebay for a lot less. It's a very capable reader, with a few flaws. You'll need to master BookDesigner since the Sony store sucks.

Also, there's a video review over at jkontherun that complains about the page turning button placement? Second opinions?

I'm worried about accidental page flips when it's stored in a bag. Is there a soft-off, or do you have to take it out of the leather cover to get to the power switch on the back?

Gizmodo had a nice roundup of the various book readers available now and "coming soon".

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/ebooks/co...

I also follow the blog of author Charles Stross, and he had a writeup on Sony's latest reader not too long ago. For the people who don't at all understand why you would want a single-purpose ebook reader as opposed to a PSP/PDA/laptop, it covers the advantages succinctly.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...

rabbit wrote:

$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 ...

The average cost of a mass market paperback has been 8-10 bucks for about 2 years now. 10 bucks because they're pushing this new, taller format that's supposed to be easier to read, but really it just costs more.

trades are anywhere from 12-15, hardbacks 18-35, depending on discounts.

But in all those cases, you're getting a physical product, which I think is behind a lot of the motivation behind people with book fetishes. That's why we pay so much for books, a mental illness that relegates 60-90% of the crap we need to box up when we move to books.

It's the same difficulty I have paying for mp3s (until eMusic).

That said, I think it's a great idea, and I eagerly await generation 2 of both Kindle and the Amazon service.

unntrlaffinity wrote:

But in all those cases, you're getting a physical product, which I think is behind a lot of the motivation behind people with book fetishes. That's why we pay so much for books, a mental illness that relegates 60-90% of the crap we need to box up when we move to books.

It's the same difficulty I have paying for mp3s (until eMusic).

That said, I think it's a great idea, and I eagerly await generation 2 of both Kindle and the Amazon service.

That's my biggest deal with digital distribution with all the different media. I'm a collector and i love having the physical item stacked up on shelves. While i can always get a similar feeling by looking at my playlists and spend extra time cataloging and inputing into databases it's just not the same as the real deal. I'm really going to hate seeing them go bye bye.

ranalin wrote:

That's my biggest deal with digital distribution with all the different media. I'm a collector and i love having the physical item stacked up on shelves.

*I* agree with you. My wife, however, strongly disagrees. Grumble, grumble.

kleinetako wrote:

I'm worried about accidental page flips when it's stored in a bag. Is there a soft-off, or do you have to take it out of the leather cover to get to the power switch on the back?

I can understand button placement concerns, but after reading for 4-5 hours with it in a bunch of circumstances, I now appreciate it, and I'll get into it more in a full review. Yes, there is a two button press sleep/resume mode. Boot from cold is about 3 seconds. You can also power it on and off without removing it, but the wireless switch is a bit too far back. But the leather case doesn't really "lock" the kindle in, it sort of halfway does.

So this thing works worldwide for access... Or is it USA only?

Meaning, if I buy one and I'm outside the US, I'm screwed?

I really like the idea here, but I'll have to wait and hope for a cheaper version sometime in the future. $400 is far too much. How many books would I have to buy on there before I'd saved that $400?

I bet I don't buy that many in a year or more.

If you buy one outside the US, the wireless stuff wont work I don't think. But you can just drag and drop books from your PC. Even newspapers if you really want to bother, but I can't imagine it would be worth it at that point.

And the answer to thinJ's question is 33, if you're my wife. We figured out she spends about 12 bucks more, as she's somehow addicted to books that are in hardback. For her, 33 is probably a year's worth.

This of course implies the ONLY reason you're doing this is to save money. If it was purely monetary, I'd say its actually way more than 33, because you aren't getting a physical book, which has very different assets (and ones that should actually cost the extra 12 bucks, in my opinion). More on that later.

If you buy one outside the US, the wireless stuff wont work I don't think. But you can just drag and drop books from your PC. Even newspapers if you really want to bother, but I can't imagine it would be worth it at that point.

Oh, ok then. Yeah, in that case I'd better get the cheaper Sony PRS and it looks more stylish at least.

Thanks =)

If this thing uses an LCD screen, the strain on the eyes is incomparably worse compared to just reading a book. An e-book won't truly take off until it actually is as easy on the eyes as a book - no fluorescent lamp in sight.

EDIT: Wow, this actually sounds like they GET IT. Second revision of this device, one that is hopefully thinner, will take the world by storm... if no one else outdoes them before then.

Utilizing a new high-resolution display technology called electronic paper, Kindle provides a crisp black-and-white screen that resembles the appearance and readability of printed paper. The screen works using ink, just like books and newspapers, but displays the ink particles electronically. It reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting, eliminating the glare associated with other electronic displays. As a result, Kindle can be read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room.The screen never gets hot so you can comfortably read as long as you like.

P.S. Can I hook this up to my computer somehow so I can use "electronic paper" to code instead of a monitor ? That'd be swell.

Yeah, until you actually see one, it's hard to imagine just how awesome it is for reading. The black/white contrast is on par with newsprint. The reading angle is too. This isn't like an LCD where it gets dim from the side. When I first saw my Sony on display at a store, I thought it was a display model with a simulated display sticker on the screen. Then I hit the page button.

And that was a first gen device.

I read on my Sony for at least a couple hours a day. Any clip on book light works perfectly for night reading. I'm still tempted to get the Kindle though... Annotation features and .mobi support have me almost sold.

Shiho: Sony's Readers are really skinny. Less than 1cm thick, I think.

If the kindle was any skinier, it would fee wierd to hold. As it is right now, it narrows to a point on the right (literally a point) and about 1.5 cm on the other edge. I'll post some pics with my review after this weekend.

Rabbit-- what's the selection like here? Is it just a portion of their stock (like, say, with apple's DRM-free music)?

The selection is not great yet. Lots of missing books. Only 91,633 books total as of right now on the Amazon site.

How's the "best seller" selection looking? Do they have the latest books as they come out?

Current (as in right now) bestsellers is good - 100 out of 112. If you move back a bit there are some big big gaps. Weird ones too. They have "Into Thin Air" but not "Into the Wild." I did find yesterday when searching around that some books, instead of showing up not available, show "not yet available" which implies it's coming soon.

I'm interested to see next week what the new selections are. I'm guessing there will be some sort of new releases email or notice on the store page. Of course, just like iTunes, if they just don't have it and you really want it (*cough* Beatles *cough*), than it's a complete failure - you can't backorder it or anything, you're buying the book.

After browsing the titles a little bit, I've changed my mind about the pricing. $10 if it's currently in its hardcover phase isn't bad (which is usually about a year, depending on how well the book sells), and I'd be willing to pay the mass market price for it once a book hits paperback (The Road by Cormac McCarthy is $7.96, for example.)

The $400 buy-in is a bit much for me (that's a PS3 now, right?), but if I got one as a gift, I'd be ecstatic. Once the online content pricing stabilizes, regular pricing too I suppose, I'd definitely consider saving up my pennies to get one of these.

These all seem like points Rabbit made before. Guess I'm just switching sides.

I also overlooked its audiobook support previously.

Futurethought: it'd be a great device for editors or people who have to read tons of manuscripts, methinks.

rabbit wrote:

I did?

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

Let me know if that strategy works. I've had the OED on my wish list for a number of years running, and nobody's been willing to bite.

I'm excited.
Prepare to be out shown last year's measly gift of kilt! Kindle is on the way, if my parents see fit to deem me worthy of one.