The media blitz over the Kindle is really excessive.
“Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device” (Amazon)
I think it’s great that someone finally found a way for newspapers to preserve their readership, but by getting people to buy a $400 brick with EVDO where they can download books? $10 ebook downloads? I’m curious to see who is going to buy them. Offering free cellular wireless just means that, I suspect, the costs will be tacked on to the related products. I do like the idea of newspaper delivery though. So what does an annual subscription look like with the purchase of this reader which should be obsolete in a couple years? $450? In a couple of years, thinner color versions of these things will be deployed as they are already prototyped in Japanese labs a couple years ago.
Does this mean that this is really just a very expensive kite project to test the winds of the Amazon empire being the Wal-Mart of eBooks?
I admit it. I hate reading pdfs on laptops and computers. I hate it so much that I don’t do it for more than 5 minutes at a time. What did I do about it? I got myself a Sony Reader. The geeks just love ‘em. Reviews: mssv, zdnet, engadget. Actually nearly everyone (except zdnet) is reviewing the old one. I have the new one.
Complete with my info engraved into the face. It’s complementary if you order it from sonystyle.
Really you don’t need to even use the software. You dump pdfs, mp3s, and pictures onto a memory stick or the internal memory and you’re done. It sorts them by itself (or its best guess if they are improperly named) and makes them available to you to read, listen, or view.
Is it a really big deal to plug in a usb cable and drag some pdfs into a folder? I don’t think that it is.
So the Kindle seems overpriced even before you look at its functionality and their ebooks, at ten bucks a pop, are drastically overpriced. Why do you need a keyboard on a book anyway?
Here’s the real thing that slays me. RSS feeds are $1 each on the Kindle.
The Kindle also does not read PDF files.
Wow.
What an amazing service. Good luck with that and your 12 prospective customers. It’s not innovative since Sony has had the same product without wireless out for nearly three years. It’s not cost competitive.
Additional reading:
- Sony Reader and Kindle compared.
- At least there will be more eBook readers, and that means more eBooks available. Yay.
- Why does Bezos look like Gollum in all of his pictures?
How much did they spend on all this PR anyway? He was even giggling like a retard on Charlie Rose when I had PBS on for a second today.
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