Comments on: Kindle: Great gift for Washington's Birthday?

Amazon's e-book reader, out of stock for Christmas, may be the best thing that ever happened to the market, but it may also be the biggest obstacle to the ultimate success of e-books.

[rmva]

If both Borders and Barnes and Noble file for bankruptcy and close half their stores, the availability of paper books will take a serious haircut. Amazon may be the only healthy bookseller left standing.

[pbg3445]

I'm as technophile as anybody, but I've learned to be leery of proprietary systems--and knowledgeable of obsolescence. (I've got boxes full of floppies and stacks of Syquest cartridges to prove it. On the other hand, I've got books from mid-19th century Germany that still work just fine, even though the manufacturer went out of business during the Franco-Prussian war.
The only advantages that I can see to an eBook reader is searchability (they can do that, right?) and the ability to carry around a library the way I carry around my music collection in my iPod. But booksare different beasts from pieces of music.
Right now, the Kindle is just a book TiVo--that only works on one channel. And I don't use books the way I watch TV either.
But give me a kindle with the ability to search across all the books loaded on it, a pre-loaded Britannica that will link to words in the book, and a playlist feature--you know, quotes--and I'd start looking at a Kindle. Provided the variety's there, provided it will read non DRM e-books (or better yet, pdf's), and provided my books don't vanish when Amazon rolls out its Ultra Reeder Extreem five years from now.

[-fjtorres-]

The device you describe exists.
Battery life is an issue but otherwise it meets all those requirements and then some.
Its called a TabletPC, slate version.

[herbe13]

The Kindle does most of what you are asking for. It can search across all the books on it. For the ?playlist?, every passage you highlight in a book is recorded in a book titled ?My Clippings? even if the highlights are removed from the main book. ?My Clippings? is saved as a txt file so it can be read on a computer if you want. While the Kindle doesn?t have Britannica loaded on it, it does have a dictionary and when you look up a word in the search feature, one option is going straight to the Wikipedia page about it. I know Wikipedia isn?t quite Britannica, but it?s a start. And the Kindle does read non-DRM books. It can natively read mobi files and txt files. Unprotected Microsoft Word, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC , MOBI files, and PDF can be e-mailed to Amazon for conversion to kindle format either for 10 cents if you want it wirelessly delivered to the kindle or for free if you just want them to e-mail it back to you so you can manually put the files on the kindle.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

As the other commenters said, the Kindle has some of what you want.

The Search function works across all the stored content plus a dictionary and Wikipedia (though it's slow).

The Kindle doesn't have any real concept of playlists, though.

Fortunately, the Kindle is quite fluent with non-DRM ebooks, and it's even able to download other books wirelessly without a PC, contradicting a claim in the Wall Street Journal article. The PDF support (via translation) is inadequate, though. Really basic PDFs can work okay, but anything complicated is hopeless.

So maybe the Kindle isn't what you want. I think it isn't what most people want, really, even most heavy readers. But keep an eye on it. It'll get better.

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[smilin:)]

1. You CAN search across all the books loaded on it. In fact it searches all books, built in dictionary, wikipedia and a couple other things by default.

2. It WILL read non DRM books.

3. For formats that it can't read Amazon will do a FREE convert for you. Just email it to them and they email it back. Essentially anything you can print from your computer can be read. They'll also send the converted copy wirelessly to the kindle for a charge of 10 cents.

4. You'll never get away from DRM. The publishers require it, not Amazon. Same thing with iTunes, Netflix downloads etc. If you want convenient electronic delivery of intellectual property then the owners are going to ask for assurances you won't steal in return. It's the way of the world and has nothing to do with Kindle.

5. You don't have to pay for most books. There are like 100,000 books out there for free. Many more at low cost. Event the most expensive Kindle books (Current NYT best sellers) are like $9.95

6. It is completely wireless and requires no computer. All books, daily newspapers, magazines etc are sent via built in wireless...and no you don't have to have some paid account. Hell you can websurf for free on it if you don't mind the screen/keyboard limitations.

7. It does audio books and mp3s (although it makes a lousy mp3 player)



Edmalloy:
The sales are not "cooked". The thing is selling like hotcakes. I bought one a couple months back. It was a 2 week waitlist. I had to resubmit my order (credit card expired during the 2 weeks). The new order was 3 weeks. The waitlist a few days later stretched out past christmas. Amazon is making these as fast as they can. The things are $360/ea. They have no reason to deliberately not sell them.

How you made the leap from "out of stock" to conspiracy to sell more by deliberately not selling them is beyond me. Take off your tinfoil hat. It's not working and it's apparently making you dumb :)

[MadLyb]

My biggest problem with the Kindle, other than ugly white plastic (Thanks Apple), is the keyboard.

I know they are trying to converge functionalities and can respect how this helps people who use them for more than casual reading, one books are not a one size fits all. That is why they come in different sizes, and types.

Until the eBook industry gets a grasp on that, establishes a single standard for the books themselves and then suppplies different form factors that can use these standardized books, I will still prefer paper.

[ibeetle]

The real success is when Amazon and Sony both get away from their DRM and offer a open eBook format.
When I buy a book from Borders it is the same book that is from Barns & Noble. I do not need a special Borders key to unlock it.

This also means that retailers have to support it. When a customer goes in to a book store and ask for a book the sales staff should not only ask if they want it in hard cover, paper back or audio book, but eBook format as well. A format that will work on any reader software. Sony, Amazon or even the iPhone.

Audible really started to take off when they started (officially) supporting the iPod and partnered with Apple making audio books available through iTunes. Originally, Audible used a audio format that the iPod could not playback.

Sony is making a huge mistake not officially supporting the Macintosh platform and not selling their books through a kiosk in every Borders (and/or Barnes and Noble).

Amazon is making a mistake buy trying to sell a butt ugly, poorly made product for and outrageous price and not selling their kindle books through iTunes like they do with their partner Audible.

They need to take a page (yes pun) from Stanza. Stanza is free. They have free (public domain) books and offer many new releases at a fair price. I guess this is why Stanza has been downloaded to more iPhones than Amazon has sold Kindles.

[Zoobie]

DRM is a requirement of publishers, not Sony or Amazon. Both the reader and the kindle can display PDF, text, and .doc in addition to proprietary DRM formats.

Sony is already getting away from their DRM. The book publishers have created their own EPUB format, that Sony opened up on my PRS-505 through a software upgrade. This means you can buy eBooks from any website that sells EPUB (which are still rare)--you aren't tied to Sony Connect anymore. I have never had a problem importing free (public domain) books from ManyBooks.net, although the proof reading isn't to the standard of the 100 free classics I got with the reader. I loved the concept of the reader, was a little uncertain when I first got it, but now I love the versatility. If I'm reading a book I'm not enjoying, I've got 100 other titles at my fingertips to choose from, and it's great for travel (no more lugging books through the airport). After getting used to it, I won't give it up. I've even contacted authors and asked them to publish their books in the EPUB format; one author responded and is anxious for his publisher to get a move on, because they all see the torrent's (aka theft) of their books out there.

I love the idea of kiosks in B&N, Borders, and I'd add airports and libraries to that list.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Sure, Stanza is free. I've downloaded it myself. A lot of iPhone owners have downloaded it. That doesn't mean we're all using it, or that it's a better product, or that it's the wave of the future, or anything else. Hundreds of millions of free copies of desktop Linux have been downloaded, but it's still less than 1% of the consumer market.

DRM may be a pain, but it's the price we pay for access to commercial ebooks. DRM works pretty well on the Kindle, as it does on the iPod, so it isn't that high a price to pay.

[gsimmonsonca]

As a Canadian, my biggest complaint about the Kindle is that it is still not available here! When it is, I will happily put up with all it's shortcomings...

[cadetvet]

The killer market for these devices is school textbooks. If anyone has seen a sixth- through twelfth grader lug 50 lbs of books to-and-from class, you'll understand. Try going on a sports trip - equipment, clothes and 50lbs of books. It's ridiculous.

At $100, these would be godsends. They have DRM, so copying would be limited. Printing and shipping costs would also be eliminated. And the orthopedic health of our children will be vastly improved. The publishers would still make their money, but the kids would be far better off.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

It'll probably be a long time before textbooks move to an ebook format, and it may require that they be written specifically for ebook delivery. There's no ebook reader on the market that can do even a barely tolerable job of presenting existing textbooks because the screen resolution requirement is just too high. Not even Tablet PCs can handle this job. I took a stab at figuring out the minimum requirement for a handful of electronic textbooks I have in PDF format, and it came out to a full-color 8x10" screen with at least 2,400 x 3,000 pixels (300 dpi) and even then, the image quality wouldn't be good enough for certain kinds of figures, like highly detailed graphs, and some zooming-in would still be required, which is really inconvenient.

[edmalloy]

The only conclusion that I can draw from the fact that there is an apparent huge difference in sales between readers for which we have "hard" sales data and the Kindle is that the Kindle's sales reports are 'cooked.'

The fact that the current version is "out of stock" when a new version has been announced seems to mean that the current version wasn't selling so that Amazon decided to add to the hype for the next version.

I have nothing to base my conclusions on except a lifetime of following retail trends and a fondness for H. C. Anderson.

ed

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Huh? Amazon hasn't released Kindle sales figures as far as I know, so they can't very well be "cooked."

[hndrsnsbks]

WHAT "sales reports"?

[rmva]

"Dow Jones Newswire report that Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said on the issue: "Don't believe everything you read -- there's a lot of rumor and speculation out there about Kindle. One thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be no new version of Kindle this year. A new version will come out sometime next year at the earliest."

[edmalloy]

Let me be more specific. My use of the word "cooked" was unfortunate. What I mean is that I think Amazon is intentionally giving the impression that the Kindle is actually selling. I do not believe this in the slightest. I think that their refusal to give any sales information is proof of that.

I also think that Amazon is resorting to the time-honored Microsoft practice of having employees submit inaccurate or untrue comments .

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

You lack faith in the power of Oprah. All hail the Oprah!

Also, what "inaccurate or untrue comments" do you see here? I mean, seriously, you're the only one posting bogus comments here. At least you're the only one admitting you are... :-)

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You can still get a refurbished Kindles by Christmas, direct from Amazon for $329 (although at this point I'd recommend you pay for at least 2-day shipping):

http://www.tinyurl.com/RefurbKindle

Dozens have been sold and shipped since Dec 1, but they go in an out of stock. They don't last on the site very long, so if you want one, you must order it immediately if you find one in stock. If you they are out of stock when you check, be sure to read my blog for tips on getting one:

http://beesontheknob.blogspot.com