should I buy a Kindle? looks like not

When I first heard about Amazon’s new e-reader, Kindle, last week, I was pretty excited. Yeah, it’s pricey, at $400, but the idea of being able to read not just books but newspapers and blogs wirelessly and comfortably really appeals to me, as does the idea of being able to carry around a lot of reading material in a small package. (As a subway rider who hauls around a lot of crap with me every day, this can be a matter of some concern. If I’ve got only a few chapters left in a book, do I take it with me on my trip plus something else to read when I finish that -- which means carrying around an extra book all day -- or do I put the almost-done book aside to finish later and just start on a new book? Truly, this is a dilemma of literary proportions.)

But now the reviews are coming in, and it seems as if the ideal e-book is not yet here. Tech columnist Walter Mossberg in The Wall Street Journal has panned it. David Rothman of Publishers Weekly worries about the Kindle’s “Big Brotherish terms of use” and the privacy issues involved: Amazon keeps track not only of what you read on your Kindle but where you place bookmark and what electronic notes you make on your reading. Yikes.

Publishing industry consultant and observer Laura Dawson has a nicely concise take on the Kindle:

By now, the Kindle device from Amazon has been out for a full week and the reviews are in. In the “plus” column: The E-Ink technology is great. The battery technology is amazing. The fact that it doesn’t have to be connected to a computer to download content is really cool. The wireless subscription getting picked up by Amazon (so you can have delivery of newspapers, blogs, magazines to your Kindle) is also great. Some say it’s not quite as ugly as the prototype. In the “minus” column: While the wireless subscription is free, the content (which is normally free on the web) is not. The selection of Kindle-ready books offered for sale on Amazon could be much better. The device does not read PDFs. You cannot text portions of what you’re reading to anyone. And it looks like something from Toys ’R’ Us.

(That’s from her email newsletter “The Big Picture,” which you can read online with a free subscription.)

I don’t think it looks like a toy -- I think it looks like something out of Star Trek, and I’d feel like such a cool geek carrying that around. And while it’s true, as Dawson says, that you can read blogs and newspapers online for free, books still demand to be paid for. Still, she eventually concludes that the Kindle is “yet another artifact of interesting-but-not-very-useful technology.”

Which seems to be the general consensus in both the book and geek-toy worlds. Oh well: I guess I’m sticking with paper books for now.

I am, however, looking into what’s involved in getting my book, The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride -- and maybe even the content of FlickFilosopher.com -- available via Kindle. If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know, of course.

(Technorati tags: Amazon Kindle)

8 Comments

by Mark Cogan on November 29, 2007 4:19 PM

I'd reconsider; there are some misconceptions floating around, and there are some very positive reviews out there. You have to pay for blogs if you want them formatted specifically for the device and delivered wirelessly. But the Kindle includes a perfectly good web browser, and Google Reader works just fine on it, for free. You have to pay for e-books you buy (of course), and, if you want to use the e-mail service to convert documents, you have to pay ten cents per document for that. But there's also a free e-mail gateway into your device that doesn't do conversion, so you can just e-mail plain-text documents (such as the output of Project Gutenberg) to your-name@free.kindle.com to load them that way. Positive reviews (both from geeky technophiles): http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/11/26/kindle/index.php http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/672259,CST-FIN-Andy29.article

by Count Shrimpula on November 30, 2007 9:16 AM

Hm, I made a post yesterday, but it said it was being held to be approved, and it seems to have been eaten. Well, to sum up: Kindle seems neat, but yeah, probably a generation or two away from getting the kinks worked out into something nice. But hey, the iPod didn't really take off until the 4th generation ones came out, so that's all right. You should check out the Sony Reader. Same e-Ink technology (which is amazing, you have to see it to believe it if you haven't, and they have them on display at Border's, so you can), cheaper, reads PDFS (as well as TXT, RTF, and a few other formats) so you can read everything on Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org), looks nicer, and seems a bit better designed. On the con side, it doesn't have the nifty wireless, and the software doesn't have a Mac version. It reads SD cards, though, so you can load the books onto a memory card in any OS and insert that into the reader, and it'll read those. Purchasing the books would be a little tricky, though. If you don't have a Windows computer, you'd have to borrow someone else's to actually make the purchase. I can't imagine why Sony wouldn't make a Mac version of the software. I'd like to know who thought the Mac audience was not in the target demographic for their expensive, shiny, hip electronic device. Oh well, you can't have everything, and it's actually a step forward for them from their awful MP3 players. My girlfriend got me one for Christmas, and I love it. It's worth a look if you really are looking for an e-book reader.

by Clayj on November 30, 2007 10:57 AM

My initial thoughts: The device looks really, really cheaply made. They need to hire a better designer for Kindle 2.0. I like that you can download books and such wirelessly. And having periodical information (blogs, newspapers) updated automatically is pretty cool. But I worry about censorship: The problem with electronic storage is that things can be edited/redacted. What happens if there's some sort of legal dispute, and a book I have purchased is "recalled"? Amazon.com could delete it from my Kindle without my express consent. Or, they could alter anything on my Kindle, or tell the government (or anyone else with juice) what I am reading and use that information against me. That's not cool. Sony's Reader is less prone to that particular problem, and it looks much nicer. But it still ain't as good as a good old-fashioned analog dead-tree book, and there aren't any DRM issues with my books. So I'm sticking with paper for the foreseeable future.

by David C on December 5, 2007 7:59 AM

It looks to me like the prototype of the device that truly will the the revolutionary gadget. I'm not tempted to buy this one, but I'm eagerly anticipating Kindle 2.0 (or perhaps a competitor's Kindle-beater.)

by MaryAnn on December 5, 2007 11:19 PM

the software doesn't have a Mac version

Well, that absolutely rules it out for me. I don't have access to any Windows machines, and I don't care to.

by Count Shrimpula on December 6, 2007 9:16 AM

Hey, I'm with ya. Hell, I'm running Linux as my primary OS, and if they don't have a Mac version, they for damn sure don't have a Linux version. I just happen to have a couple of spare Windows licenses laying around, so. It's one of the very few things I need to go over there for. Anyway, just something to keep on the radar. I'd think they'd have to release a Mac version of the software at some point.

by Clayj on December 6, 2007 11:47 AM

I'd think they'd have to release a Mac version of the software at some point. You vastly overestimate Sony's acumen when it comes to software. They make great equipment, but their software has always sucked. (And I've owned a TON of Sony VAIO computers. I have four of them right now, plus three Macs.) Besides, the Sony Reader (as pointed out) will read e-books from memory cards, so you don't actually need any software from Sony to make this work... just a way to convert e-books into PDF format. Sony's biggest problem with their reader is Amazon's biggest asset: Amazon has a large library of e-books and a means of distributing them that doesn't require a computer. Sony's library is much smaller and currently (and probably always) Windows-only. What we really need is to combine Sony's product design skills with Amazon's library and easy distribution system. The question for me is whether Amazon would ever deign to allow Sony to hook one of their Reader products into Amazon's store.

by Sean Riley on January 7, 2008 11:16 PM

Mary-Ann, check out the iLiad from iRex. Despite an overabundance of lower-case i's, this is what I think a Kindle should be -- Slick, sexy, capable of numerous formats. http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad

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