May 7, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I do like the ability to search in an e-book, but mostly for some technical books. I would probably still like to have a physical copy as well. In the past, I have enjoyed audio books and would consider them for my commute, except that I usually listen to NPR.
I guess without actually seeing a Kindle or other e-ink device in person, I can't say one way or the other if I would like it. However, I think I would prefer a physical book. Even though I work in (and really enjoy) IT, I also like to separate myself from it. Don't get me wrong, I love learning about new technologies and gadgets, but some things I don't necessarily have to have. Right now, I do carry my cell phone all the time, but I don't want to be connected anymore than that. Only if my work requires me to have a portable device for e-mail, will I carry one.
Ian.
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
-- Winston Churchill
May 8, 2008 at 7:23 am
I've had my Kindle now for almost a week and thought I'd report on it. I totally love it. While it's not without its faults (the most glaring being the "next page" buttons are too easy to accidentally hit) I've found ways around that from user's hints on Amazon.com. I enjoy the ease in downloading books and the price of new releases is typically $9.99. I've downloaded a lot of free samples. It's really convenient and while it won't replace books, it's a great alternative reading tool for me.
May 8, 2008 at 9:13 am
Good to hear, Debbie. I checked out the Sony again and am getting tempted!
May 8, 2008 at 2:56 pm
slhope (4/30/2008)
You're missing the other big advantage a Kindle/Sony Reader/etc has - the screen. Unfortunately, this is also why it hard to get and expensive. Sure it's only grey scale, but the quality and ease of reading from it has to be seen (in person, not a photo) to be properly understood. I used to read off a PDA, I still use a computer all day, I've tried OLED screens and the Eee, and none of them are close. If you're going to try and get a lot of people to read something other than a paper book, an e-ink screen is the best thing I've seen that might do it.
Quite honestly, I don't think the paper book is the pinnacle of display technology, so the Kindle's (which I have seen) resemblance of a paper book is more novelty than a truly high-contrast, high resolution display. You even need a reading light to read a Kindle in the dark. D'oh! Yet another accessory to tote around. Looks like it is not as convenient as it is marketed to be... Let's face it, it is a novelty and there is a huge amount of hype surrounding it. It is much more like a segway than an iPod. I remember all the hype around the Segway... It will revolutionize everything. Crap...
So far, the only device for sale using the OLED display is the Sony flat screen TV, and at 11" and $2500, it is prohibitively expensive. I have seen e-ink and the kindle, and it is no where as good as an OLED display. The Sony OLED TV has a 1,000,000:1 (yes, holy crap!!!)contrast ratio and breath taking color depth. I guess it is your opinion, but I think the Kindle isn't even in the same universe as an OLED display. One can marvel that the display looks a lot like a book, but I don't think books are the pinnacle of display technology. It's what I would consider a novelty...
B&W is a huge problem if you read magazines. The lack of a backlight is a problem if you read at night. So Kindle can really only do a decent job of rendering certain types of publications under certain conditions (daylight). It is limited in so many ways and can easily be replaced by a multi-function handheld pc of the near future. It doesn't make sense to me. It is almost if I started partitioning my media onto different devices -- so on this laptop, I will have music, on this device I will have video, on this device I will read text, on this PC I will use Word, on this PC I will use XL, on this one I will use RAD. It's the opposite of the convergence of functionality we see in the market.
To me, the Kindle customer is either a voracious reader who will really get use out of it (about 1% of the population) and other people taken by the novelty of it (wow, it is a computer that only displays some types of books, but the screen looks like paper!). The latter people will fall off the bandwagon and stop using the service.
The EEE PC does not have an OLED display, however, we will see OLED and PLED in smaller PCs of the near future. It's just an example of how small yet powerful sub-laptop-sized PCs are getting. The new display technology illuminates w/o a backlight, which means a huge power savings, and much longer battery life. Combine that with newer, solid state storage devices and new advances in battery technology, and it gets even better...
I recently read an interview with Jeff Bezos about the kindle, and while he didn't say it, the author implied this is the iPod of books. Yes, they have been out of stock, but I haven't seen the true numbers. This is meaningless, as it is more likely that their supply chain is the issue, than the notion that this will be the next iPod. Sure does help the stock price, though. When the hype dies down, I wonder if they will keep the service running?
But hey, I have my own "Kindle". I bought an HD radio recently. It's a totally dumb thing that will be obsolete in a few years, when everything we see and hear will be on some form of personal computer. The device itself is a computer disguised as a radio. I bought it because it uses very little power and I leave it on all day so my dog has something to listen to while I am gone, and yes, I am also a public radio junky. But I can't justify it as "the future" of radio or anything. It will end up in a landfill, probably on a pile of Kindles...
Heck, I could listen to public radio on a PC... The issue was more power conservation and the radio was sub $200... When I bought my new flat screen TV, I did so realizing that TV, cable, satellite, etc. will be obsolete as well. Heck, we have the technology, it is just on the business side, they haven't worked out the licensing... So on demand is a dismal world of movies with bad actors and a few gems of indie cinema... It's all the cheap "airline" stuff now... mainly because the business side hasn't worked out their model for how to extort as much money as possible from us... They should look to Apple... It is brilliant that they can charge $.99 a song for something vastly inferior to a CD, but most people don't notice the difference on those white earbuds... No one ships the CD, no one has to have it on a store shelf with 6-8 employees on the payroll. They simply have not passed on the savings to the customers. I can usually buy the equivalent CD for the same price on Amazon and it sounds much better than the psychoacoustic shuffling bull crap that 128bps AAC's sound like.
I see the same thing with Kindle. Distributing paperless books on a wireless network should cost WAY less than they do. Early adopters are paying for R&D, but we know the prices won't go down... It's a way to make even bigger profit margins, and the consumer benefits ever-so-slightly. I'm not enough of an avid reader to benefit from it, and not enough of a fool to buy into it otherwise, just based on the hype. So that's my $.05 on the Kindle... And heck, I buy stupid, illogical devices like HD radios myself, so I understand the sentiment entirely...
May 8, 2008 at 3:12 pm
My bad... Looks like a few cell phones and small devices are already using OLED since 2007... It is in the flat screen market that this technology is relatively new and expensive. This just proves that Kindle's days are numbered. OLED is not only very efficient, but the screens are extremely thin. The Sony TV boasts a 3mm thin panel. Yowsa!
May 8, 2008 at 3:39 pm
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/05/sonys_xel1_oled_lasts_half_as_long_as_you_expect_says_study-2.html
I'm sure this will get a lot better, but OLEDs have a ways to go.
May 8, 2008 at 4:26 pm
True 'dat. They last about 5 years under normal (well, 8 hours a day is a lot) use acc'd to Wikipedia as well. The backlights in current LCD TV's also have a limited lifespan. PLED is a newer technology that is very similar to OLED, but boasts a much longer lifespan. It is still bleeding edge, and I didn't even consider the OLED in my recent TV purchase. Yet I can see this and other technologies incorporated into very small sub-laptop-yet-fully-featured PC's of the near future. The airbook is just the beginning (and I know, it is not all that).
One thing -- the methodology employed by the 3rd party may not be accurate. They assume a linear decline in brightness overtime, and it is based on 1000 hours of use. Also, even with less brightness, the extremely high contrast (1,000,000:1 yikes) may make a dimmer screen still quite viewable.
Unfortunately, most mfg's tend to overstate the longevity, battery power, etc. of their devices. iPod's only have the battery life stated if you don't touch any controls (which will activate the backlight) and play the music at a low volume. I would assume Amazon's stats on battery life, etc. assume a pattern of use that is not realistic. These are the many things business people say that make the engineers cringe. I'm sure we've all been there ourselves...
May 9, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Looks like Amazon is not releasing exact figures, but I guess it is approximately 4,000. I think the pet rock sold more units. All signs point to Segway.
One other thought I had, how many Kindle owners out there truly need access to several books at a time? Maybe a researcher (but can you get all of that material on a Kindle? No.). How many people decide to read a chapter from Huck Finn, another from For Whom the Bell Tolls, and then a few chapters from White Noise? So even the 1% of voracious readers could probably make due with carrying a few paperbacks, unless they are in Antarctica for several months. I suspect most readers read a whole book, and then move on to the next.
Yeah, the thing is a dog in my opinion. Bezos is just following Dale Carnegie's advice to give a dog a good name. Everytime I login to Amazon, I am like WOW! I need one of those! Every review I read says it is the next iPod and I need to get one (hmmm.. I smell Amazon bucks in some reviewers' inboxes). Then I look at a power strip in any one of my rooms with wall warts shoved into every socket, and think -- meh... not another one of these one-off devices. It's a one trick pony.
One thing I don't like is the DRM and how closed off the distribution channel is. If business leaders had their way hundreds of years ago, we would not have public libraries today... If they had their way 20 years ago, we wouldn't have video rental stores. The new breed of technocrat CEO industrialist is greedy to the extent that it is sociopathic.
If Bezos had people pay for an e-library card, and made for a rental model as well as retail, it would not only be a far more popular product, but it would also be an ethical business model. I would buy one, for sure.
Maybe with crap like Kindle (and two parties that are more interested in corporate welfare than the public good), we won't have public libraries in 30 years or so. I was looking forward to the day when I could borrow a book from a library electronically. In college, I could check them out electronically -- I just had to pick them up. One step forward, two steps back...
May 9, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Steve Jones - Editor (5/8/2008)
Good to hear, Debbie. I checked out the Sony again and am getting tempted!
I'd take the Sony over the Kindle. Sony has a long history of making great products. I just bought an HDTV and a blue ray player, and after days of research, Sony is the best by far -- both in terms of features and manufacturing quality. Their LCD TV's have redundant backlight bulbs in case the original set burns out. Proper!
The other thing is strategy. Sony has learned the lesson of the BetaMax all too well. It was a superior product to the VHS, however they had no control over movie studios. Sony mopped up with blue ray, because they own movie studios. If Sony pictures refuses to make HD-DVDs, that format is going to die, and that is what happened.
I wouldn't put it beyond Sony to start buying up publishing companies to utilize this same strategy. On the other hand, I don't know how seriously they take the e-book market. Sony does have a tendency to stick their toe in the water on a lot of things, HD radio is a good example. They make one device, and see how it goes.
Amazon does have better relationships with publishers, but I think Sony has more money and publishing corps are not that expensive. If they move 2000 units of one title in a month, that is HUGE for them. Best sellers take years to sell millions of copies. People just don't read much.
That said, Kindle is Amazon's first product, and it reminds me of my old Alesis HR-16 drum machine from 1986. Cheap, white plastic and crappy. Just in terms of device longevity, I guarantee the Sony will last longer, and it looks hella cooler. Kindle looks like the thing the UPS guy carries around.
Yeah, you can't go wrong with Sony. Who knows about Amazon's first device, though... The 1.0 version, no less... I already read about crashes and bugs. My new Sony products are Linux based as well, and not one of them has crashed. Sony does it right!
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