Amazon’s new “Kindle is the first e-book reader that allows you to select, buy and download titles directly to the device, instead of downloading them to a PC first and then transferring them over. Amazon is offering a large collection of digitized books — about 90,000 — compared with fewer than 25,000 for Sony. The Kindle also can download newspapers, magazines and blogs directly, and update them automatically. This is possible because the Kindle comes with free, built-in wireless Internet access, using a cellular data network,” Walter S. Mossberg reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“I’ve been testing the Kindle for about a week, and I love the shopping and downloading experience. But the Kindle device itself is just mediocre,” Mossberg reports. “While it has good readability, battery life and storage capacity, both its hardware design and its software user interface are marred by annoying flaw.”
“The device is poorly designed. It has huge buttons on both edges for turning pages forward or backward. They are way too easy to press accidentally, so my reading was constantly being interrupted by unwanted page turns. Plus, the buttons are confusing. One called ‘Back’ doesn’t actually move to the previous page, but supposedly to the prior function. I never could predict what it would do,” Mossberg reports.
“The software interface also is clumsy,” Mossberg reports. “Amazon has nailed the electronic-book shopping experience. But it has a lot to learn about designing electronic devices.”
Full article here.
How Microsoftian! A product that’s clumsy and poorly designed with badly-labeled, unpredictable buttons, which is adroit only at getting the suckers who bought into it to waste more of their money.
Andy Ihnakto (famous Apple fan boy) seems to think it’s the next coming of Christ… <a href=”http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/672259,CST-FIN-Andy29.articlea href=”>
let me try that again, sorry,
his article @ Chicago Sun-Times
I didn’t realize that the book was broken and needed to be reinvented.
“It’s not an iPod. Kindle is the closest we’ve come to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” – Andy Ihnakto
Very original, Andy…
Sounds like “Kindle” should have been called “Kindgling”… Mac-loving Andy Ihnatko loves it, though.
Cripes, guess I need to read the latest posts before posting… and that should have been “kindling”… guess I should go to bed.
Why are we talking about the Kindle again? Does MDN just have to slam any product that’s not created by Apple? I’m never going to read a book on my iPhone, and I think the Kindle is kind of interesting – at least I understand what they were going for in making a reader more readable and not backlit. No, Jonathan Ive didn’t design it… but I think Kindle is pointing in the right direction towards usability.
“I didn’t realize that the book was broken and needed to be reinvented.”
Exactly! What is wrong with that lovely smell of a new hardcover?
“Does MDN just have to slam any product that’s not created by Apple? “
Yes they do. Because MDN is a pile of garbage website and they are terribly insecure where they have to trash everything if isnt by Apple and put an anti-MS slant to it even if it has nothing to do with MS.
I re-purposed my old (but reliable) Handspring Visor Pro as an “eBook” reader. It has a Springboard module (remember those) that reads and writes Compact Flash cards (it’s nice to have but not required for this purpose). It currently has a 512mb CF card that cost me almost nothing.
For reading material, I get text files for free from
http://www.gutenberg.org/
and other sources. These aren’t the latest writings, but they are the “classics” that most people don’t bother reading these days. You can load an amazingly large library of text files into half a gig. Because the screen is black and white, the contrast is quite good in sunlight. Obviously, the Kindle has a bigger and better display for this application, but $400? And $9.99 per book? My Visor is smaller (so you don’t look silly pulling out a bright white brick), and the narrower screen (fewer words across) facilitates faster reading. And since my Visor was in “retired” status, my solution is basically free.
I watched the Kindle video, was immediately struck with the impression of “another dead branch ending.”
Make the Touch a bit bigger, and you’re done. Or better yet, put some bucks into a working plug-in visor. That’s the “Billion dollar product.”
One product: infinitely malleable, light, rugged, sexy.
@ken1w – Thank you. I had been searching for an “ebook reader” for several months, actually a couple of years, off and on, and finally came to the conclusion that buying a proprietary and expensive reader was simply not necessary. I did the math and discovered that about 98% of all ebooks will fit within 4-8MB of space, so I went to eBay and spent $3.99 on a PalmVxII [+$7.00 s&h;], and ka-ching! I can get quite a few free and legal titles from WOWIO. This site can provide free titles to readers because they embed a few ads within the text. <a >eReader</a> has zillions of electronic titles for purchase, you do have to use their software to read their titles, but they have a free reader for every computing platform ever made including OS X, Linux, and Palm. It’s great!
@Richard, yes there have been a few ereaders that have come and gone over the years but they’ve all been proprietary, each ereader only allowing you to download and read books from a particular vendor, and the reader then cost several hundred dollars on top of that – forget it. I think a good and dedicated ereader should cost about $50 bucks, and should give me access to all titles. I absolutely despise this constant “partnering” crap that desperately tries to indelibly tie two products together to the exclusion of all others. I think that all vendors of electronic titles should be compelled provide their product as PDF and/or provide ereader software for ALL platforms and readers.
And to those who like “real” books – well I do too, but I just read too much too fast, and live in a small enough apartment that storing all of the reading material I go through in a month is not realistic. But I still buy real books, because, well, there’s just nothing like holding and smelling a real book. So out of ten titles I buy 3-5 of those are probably ebook titles now. Another nice thing about using the aforementioned Palm is that I can read in bed late at night without disturbing my spouse.
Apologies for the bad html tags but you get the idea.
“I didn’t realize that the book was broken and needed to be reinvented.”
Yes. Didn’t you know… the book is so middle ages
“Yes they do. Because MDN is a pile of garbage website and they are terribly insecure where they have to trash everything if isnt by Apple and put an anti-MS slant to it even if it has nothing to do with MS.”
Unlike sites such as CNET, ZNET, etc., etc., etc and into the thousands (not to mention the web’s innumerable blogs), that continue to spread FUD and regurgitate any other blatantly “anti-Apple” nonsense their pea-brained minds can spew about nearly every (if not every) Apple product produced since the original Mac.
Give it a break already. I’ve been hearing and reading this garbage since the late ’80s. It’s as wrong now as it was then.
Which is, BTW, not to say that Apple can do no wrong.
how can you glorify yourself by having a library for others to admire with a kindle. How would that go in your lawyer’s office? No large stacks of imperious tomes to look learned and wise.
Taking the kindle to the beach might also be a problem. Problem with electronic e-readers -> hard to match the shear robustness of paper books. Plus you can give away your old book to charity so they can make a few bucks to help the needy. How do you do that with a kindle. All about digital rights management for books (now there is a REALLY scary idea -> restricting knowledge to those who can afford to pay: how many brilliant ideas and inventions will we lose because of this?) What happens when you wish to borrow a book from the library -> can you say that’ll be five dollars thanks (so how can the needy read then?)!! So much for the principal of first use.
It’s a good idea for some things…really bad for others.
Personally, I like the paperback book. A few days ago I dropped one from about 5 feet into a puddle of water on a concrete walk way, after I dried it off IT STILL WORKED!!!!!! What a great invention.