I’m highly sceptical about the new Amazon Kindle e-reader. I
think it fails to solve the fundamental issues which stopped similar
products from being successful in the past. I’m sure it will be bought by many gadgeteers
but I can’t see it breaking across into any other market.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/19/live-from-the-amazon-kindle-launch-event/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/19/liveblogging-the-amazon-kindle-e-reader-show-with-jeff-bezos/
The big problem for me is that the book is not broken. In
fact it’s about as popular as ever. So while I can see this being useful for
certain types of document, I can’t see it replacing the novel. But for manuals,
guides, reference books – things that are read out of order or in small chunks,
books that benefit from being searchable and generally shorter items such as
blogs or articles it could be useful.
The price is $400 at the moment which is a lot (iPhone or a
Kindle?). And this is the sort of functionality that I want to have in existing
things that I own – I don’t want to have new bespoke e-reading device weighing
me down.
What’s good about it?
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It can still be read in bright daylight (how
many expensive laptops still can’t do this?).
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It has a long battery life and batteries are
easily replaced.
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It’s small and light.
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Amazon remembers what you’ve bought so if you
lose it or it gets wiped you can re-download your e-books.
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You can get RSS and Blogs.
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It has free EV-DO wireless so you don’t need to hook it up to your PC
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While it has its own Kindle format it supports
pdfs and word docs