The Kindle

[Seras54]

So, the amazon kindle, do you think its going to be the next big technology because of how it works? That it could be a major imnnovation?
I think it will be personally, I just got one for my birthday, and I am -very- pleased with how this thing works. Its incredibly easy to read on, since it doesn't use any backlighting, instead its like an etch-a-sketch using oil. It seems like you're reading off paper. It has an amazing battery life, and the coolest thing yet, is the Amazon whispernet, a massive low function internet that has service -everywhere-.

I think the kindle, and its e-books, along with its brilliant intergrated technology, could become to books what the ipod has been to cd's

 

[TheLastCylon]

I'm not sure, it just doesn't seem natural curling up under the covers with a Kindle.

 

[Golden Gryphon]

I'm sure it's useful if you're traveling but I really hope it never takes over from paper books. For me there is nothing more spiritual than sitting, about to open a new book on my lap and I doubt I'd get the same feeling from a Kindle.

 

[ghalkhsdkssakgh]

No. I love my paper too much. Plus, books are much less likely to electrocute you if you drop them in the bath.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

Having no previous knowledge of a "Kindle", I was temporarily confused when I stumbled into this thread. Anyway I don't like the idea, it seems like a desperate ploy to replace something that works so well already and costs almost nothing:the book.

 

[Jerious1154]

My mom got my dad one for his birthday, and I've used it. It's convenient and it works really well, but to me it feels awkward not being able to actually flip through a physical book however I want.

 

[DigitalSushi]

I'd like to download Kindle to my iPhone, there is an app, but I'm not too sure of the price, if the price is like a gazzillion Euro's then I'd be willing to buy it so I could get all the books I want.

If the price is me having to apologise to someone on the internet when I angered them, the fucking deals off! FUCK YOU INTERNET.

 

[Baby Tea]

...to me it feels awkward not being able to actually flip through a physical book however I want.

I could see this as being an issue for me as well.
Flipping around a book is easy. If you've got a book you're readying and you want to jump to a specific chapter (Say a computer help book or something, I don't care), then it's easy with a book. Flip and go.

Plus I don't care how good eh battery life is...it's still needs a battery. I can go camping for a week with a book (Or three) and never replace batteries while reading all day on the lake-shore. I'm willing to bet the battery life isn't over 24 hours.

No thanks. I'll stick with books.

 

[Seras54]

...to me it feels awkward not being able to actually flip through a physical book however I want.

I could see this as being an issue for me as well.
Flipping around a book is easy. If you've got a book you're readying and you want to jump to a specific chapter (Say a computer help book or something, I don't care), then it's easy with a book. Flip and go.

Plus I don't care how good eh battery life is...it's still needs a battery. I can go camping for a week with a book (Or three) and never replace batteries while reading all day on the lake-shore. I'm willing to bet the battery life isn't over 24 hours.

No thanks. I'll stick with books.

when you turn it off it saves your page, and you can flip to the start of any chapter or whatever, its some really excellent programming work.

 

[ThaBenMan]

...to me it feels awkward not being able to actually flip through a physical book however I want.

I could see this as being an issue for me as well.
Flipping around a book is easy. If you've got a book you're readying and you want to jump to a specific chapter (Say a computer help book or something, I don't care), then it's easy with a book. Flip and go.

Plus I don't care how good eh battery life is...it's still needs a battery. I can go camping for a week with a book (Or three) and never replace batteries while reading all day on the lake-shore. I'm willing to bet the battery life isn't over 24 hours.

No thanks. I'll stick with books.

when you turn it off it saves your page, and you can flip to the start of any chapter or whatever, its some really excellent programming work.

And you can probably search on it too, right? I don't know how many times I've tried and failed to find a specific passage in a regular book that I wanted to read again for whatever reason. I'm sure with the Kindle, you can type in any snatch of text from it you remember, hit search, and bam, you've got it.

I dunno, the Kindle is pretty damn awesome. I'm considering getting one. Both the Kindle and regular books have their pros and cons. Maybe I'll wait and see if the price comes down at all.

 

[axia777]

I would like to get one but the DRM really sucks. Amazon has deleted books from people's Kindles for various reasons. That is just BS. If they stop doing that I might get one but I really doubt they will. Right now I use some freeware to turn digital books into e-books for my PSP. It works really well.

 

[Pimppeter2]

It could be okay, but I like books as they are.

It seems to gagety to catch on.

 

[LongAndShort]

It sounds like a good idea, but I just like books. You don't get that nice new book smell with a Kindle (very important). I'll stick with books.

 

[Nimbus]

This "KIndle DX" video on Amazon's site has totally brainwashed me.

Too bad they're only available/useful in America.

 

[Seras54]

I only have a 6in kindle 2, so it doesn't do pictures
but I've greatly enjoyed the kindle so far, its been very very pleasant to read from.

 

[megapenguinx]

I am only really interested in it's wikipedia accessibility. Other than that, I'll stick to my old fashioned paper and ink books. (Actually I could see it being useful if I used it to store my college textbooks although the downside is you can't sell them back to the school for money).

 

[Wadders]

I am opposed to this device. I like going into bookshops and browsing around, I like the smell of new books, and books are a good use of trees.

This machine has no - for want of a better word- soul. You cant turn the page down at an interesting point, you cant scribble on it and make notes, you cant pick up a well used Kindle, with grubby pages and bent corners, and know that it has been read, used and loved by it's owner, because it has no pages.

Also you cant put them on shelves, they don't have interesting covers, and you look like a dunce holding a massive gray slab on a bus/ train/ plane.

Just my tuppence worth

 

[Actual]

Plus I don't care how good eh battery life is...it's still needs a battery. I can go camping for a week with a book (Or three) and never replace batteries while reading all day on the lake-shore. I'm willing to bet the battery life isn't over 24 hours.

They're advertising it as having 2 weeks of solid reading time if you turn off the wireless when you're not using it, if they're not bending the truth, that's pretty impressive.

Also being able to read in sunlight is impressive to me, I know screens like that exist but I've never cared enough about my phone to buy one that had such a feature.

I love the idea of the kindle, but it's flawed, first the price is too much. You do get a slight discount on the books but not nearly as much as you'd think considering they no longer have any physical form and the associated production costs. All you need to pay is Amazon for providing it and the writer for their work, and I don't feel that is reflected in the price you're paying.
If they could make a Kindle light, that would suit me, reduce the price and get rid of some of the pointless features. I don't need it to read to me or play mp3s. While downloading a book anywhere, anytime while browsing the net is cool, I don't need that either and can simply connect to my PC when I think of a book I want.
The other issue is that (I may be wrong here) you can only use books in Amazon's format, I can see this being a problem in the future if they're effectively publishing the book they're going to have competition which will mean certain books being unavailable.

But I love books, and I do hate waiting for them to arrive in the mail. So when this becomes available in the UK I may be tempted enough to forget my reservations and buy anyway.

 

[Seras54]

I'll make a note that the kindle has -no- backlight, its like reading from a piece of paper, you cannot do it without a light source.

The kindle is too expensive in my opinion for sure, the mp3 function should go, its not a good machine for that, it just doesn't fit. The text-to-speech isn't very important to me either, but some people might like it. The basic web browsing is very nice, its simple and is excellent for sites like wikipedia.

The kindle books are also always discounted, and you can usually get the first book of a series absolutely free (Perfect marketing strategy, hook them on the first book and they'll have no choice but to buy the rest! Muahahahah!)

However, for the future this is probably a hugely viable piece of technology, it makes books more portable, and more accessible

As for size and appearances, its about the height and width of a book, and about as thick as a magazine, it doesn't feel uncomfortable to hold and doesn't look that odd when you're holding it

you can also search for a specific line or passage in the book

For me personally, its a great addition to my life, especially since I'm a ravenous reader (I can easily read through a 500 page + book in a day) and the ability to access new titles at any time is priceless to me.

The kindle shop is rather barren right now however, with only 300,000 titles, but that's growing some every day, after all, its not easy to convert novels from paper to text

I havn't found the kindle to have no soul, in fact i'm coming to love it because it always breaks my heart some when one of my books starts to fall apart so that I'm afraid to travel with it or read it for fear of damaging it. The kindle is definately a perfect travel companion for me, and though it only has a small onboard memory (about 1.5 gigs by my count) A novel of a few hundred pages will only take up a couple dozen kb. Thats hundreds and hundreds of books, more than you could easily store in a room.