Is the Amazon Kindle Really the iPod of Books?

Switched ^ | December 1, 2007 | Tom Samiljan

[libstripper]

Hype Check: Amazon Kindle

Last week, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Kindle, a new electronic book reader that has quickly become one of the hottest gifts of the holiday season (in fact, the device's first run sold out in a mere 5 and a half hours!). We got our hands on one and have been busy browsing, buying, downloading and reading e-books, -magazines, -newspapers, and blogs for the past week so we could report our findings back to you. But is the Amazon Kindle really the iPod of books? Will this new instantly-iconic gadget make a book-lover or info-hound in your life happy this year? Read on to see what found.

What it is: The first electronic book-reading device from Amazon.com, which lets you read your choice of more than 90,000 books, as well as dozens of magazines, newspapers, and blogs, on a 6-inch sized screen. Like the recently upgraded Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle uses E-Ink, a new type of display that has eschews the typical LCD screen's harsh backlight for a glare-free, book-like experience.

[libstripper]

This is too much at $400 a pop. However, for anyone like me who's just bout been driven out of the house by the Book-of-the-Month Club, the History Book Club, and the Conservative Book Club it has great promise, especially if the books can be downloaded to CD/DVD for later reading and storage, which ought to be possible with appropriate copyright protection. With the books costing $9.95 apiece, you're getting them for a little less than half of th cost of an ordinary hard cover book, and with no shipping and handling. It should also be really great for college students, who have to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books each semester and then have to lug them around. Scholars who need access to great mases of data will also find these hugely useful, since they'll be able to access massive libraries with a few touches of their fingers.

This being a relatively simple device, I look for its price to drop to no more than $50.00 in the next couple of years, just as the prices of DVD players dropped from a similar level.

If you want a tour of the Kindle, go to the Amazon.com website.

[reformed_democrat]

I've been reading iBooks for years on my iPac. Project Gutenberg has free downloads of the classics.

I never go to my doctor's office or the DMV without it.

[BunnySlippers]

Mossberg’s column in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday slammed it. It has good shopping interface but is not a good reading device.

I’m sure the review is on the WSJ website.

[BunnySlippers]

BTW, here’s the link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119629309068607131.html

And there are more articles in the WSJ about it as well.

[cajungirl]

I am so glad to see this thread.

Got a sony e reader a month ago and love it. I have always loved books, the feel of them and collect them. They are moving me out of the house.

so I got this thinking I wouldn’t like it so much but it would be good for travel. Now I love it so much.

But I hate the Sony e book site,,it is abysmal and you can’t even do a good search without gettiing weird results.

So I just got a kindle for hubby {hahha,,really for me} mostly because of Amazon’s support. I wanted to see if anyone else had experience with the kindle.

You have to factor into the price, the luxury of not having a bedside table piled high with books, the luxury of flying to a vacation with all your books in a tiny device that doesn’t need recharging.

And reading it is like reading a book,,no back light.

I love it!!!

[BunnySlippers]

They are moving me out of the house.

This is my problem too. I have to bite the bullet soon and just donate them. Selling them on eBay has been slow and too labor intensive. But I do love books.

[cajungirl]

I had to get a bench for my bedroom as my bedside table was collapsing. Plus hubby reads three or four books at a time {I don’t know how he does it}. When we moved here we had to have an entire huge Mayflower van just for our libraries.

So I love books and my love of the ereader has amazed me. You can lie down in any position and read, it slips in my purse to read anywhere. It can have small or big fonts so when my eyes tire, I just make the font bigger. It is just like a book.

I wish Sony had a better book site. And I haven’t tried to download from other places. When you buy it you get 100 classics for free and that is fabulous,,everything kfrom the Bible to Shakespeare, Sinclair Lewis, Huck Fin,,that kind of thing.

Mostly I love traveling away from home with it. When going for two weeks it is nice to have all my books in my purse!!

We are waiting on the kindle, not here till after Christmas but I don’t think I will like it as well.

[BunnySlippers]

If you read the article you’ll notice they said the Sony reader had a lousy site.

I finally migrated to library books. I browse amazon.com and then go to the library website and put them on hold. In fact, since I no longer have family, I’ve left my entire estate to the Los Angeles Public Library. They’re wonderful!

[Chickensoup]

I use libraries too. But they are leftist hotbeds. Leave your monies to one of the conservative think tanks that fund the out of the box Conservative books that are so popular.

[SunkenCiv]

Unlike with computers, one can take this for on-the-can reading. ;’)