Amazon Kindle

[Dalaena]

If Kindle makes it way to the libraries, I'll definitely get one.

I don't mind paying for books at all, but my checkbook doesn't keep up with my consumption of written materials.

[Kravenar]

Originally posted by Aristotle
Yeah, I didn't think about that. If every book was just a click away for Dalaena, we'd go bankrupt one $9.99 debit at a time.

You'll know Ari bought Dal a Kindle when we start seeing reg bonuses like:

"Registration Special: For this month only you'll recieve 100 orb in your bank for every $9.99 registered!"

[Deokoria]

Originally posted by Aristotle
I have a question:

If you buy a book, do you have access to it forever, even if you delete it from your SD card? Because when you eventually fill up your card, you might want to delete some stuff to make room. But what if you want one of those books back?

Yep. Even if you remove it from your Kindle, the book stays on your Amazon account and you can redownload it at any time. There is also an utility on the Kindle that allows you to see what items you have and where they are stored as well as enables you to move them to where you want them to be. It works pretty well. I've already accidentally deleted things and had to use it.

Plus, not all books are $9.99. Most are a lot less. In fact, there's a number of older books available that only cost around $0.50. The one thing that is a little annoying about the click and buy method is that it does a separate transaction for each item you buy. My bank has already contacted me wondering why I have so many transactions to the same vendor.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Deokoria
The one thing that is a little annoying about the click and buy method is that it does a separate transaction for each item you buy. My bank has already contacted me wondering why I have so many transactions to the same vendor.

Yeah, that'd look pretty suspicious... maybe they need to make some arrangement whereby you can pay them $50 or $100 and just keep some credit?

I do like the idea of buying books online and eliminating all the costs of printing (and not forgetting that when you buy a full-price book, you're also part-paying for the copies that get remaindered), but of course there are myriad security/reliability questions. If Amazon have conquered all those and put together something that WORKS, is usable, and doesn't let people get a million free books, good on 'em! And I reckon they'll make good money with this.

[kashata]

I already have a stack a mile high of books Im either reading, about to read, or feel the need to read soon, and that doesnt account for the time I spend threshing and the 300 or so research papers I have to read for my preliminary exams this spring, so ... I've gotten addicted to audiobooks. I hate to buy the actual CDs for em because my car's CD player quit working and I know I wont listen twice. I usually try to get either mysteries I dont think are literature (so, no need to keep em around), fact books that Id get tired of reading but am willing to listen to, or books that are read by the author because it adds kind of a weird extra dose of the author's interpretation (NOT a good think for Ian McKewan's Chesil Beach, by the way). SO - is this something you could use for audio? Or, if not, does anyone know a cheap audiobook service? I just load em onto my ipod and listen when I can. I listened to like five books that way when coding monkey videos for my masters, it was awesome, and I spend at least an hour and a half driving from zoo to work to school to home every day, so, its a good way NOT to just hate traffic.

[Merika]

Well hell, I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it to be this soon.

I do quality assurance for a book manufacturer and figured I'd be out of a job in 10 years or so because of technology. If this thing is as nice and easy to use as it looks, maybe I better start job hunting now.

It even lets you choose font size, which would've been an issue for me because I'm old and prefer large print books and we don't make all books in large print.

People will soon be saying, "She always has her nose in a Kindle."

[Kard]

When I went to the site, I had the same feelings as everyone else, this thing looks neat.

Scrolling further to get the customer reviews, I got to the section where they have 'Tags Customers Associate with this Product'. The ones that caught my eye were 'Kindle Swindle' and 'DefectiveByDesign'.

I was already curious about some things, such as the storage specifications on the product, which I never saw written apart from being able to store '200 books!!@!'.

So my question sort of relates to one of the more common complaints -- with that SD card, or the USB cable, are you able to transfer the data to your computer and share or send it out? I imagine there is some kind of protection in place on the files, if so, similar to ipods or whatever other DRM eproducts place on their files.

In reading through some of the complaints, it seemed like you could never 'lend out' a book because it was always tied to your Kindle, and that in order to do so, you have to lend out the entire unit. So along those same lines, would that mean there is only ever one copy per unit, or can multiple devices be tied to an account? Would Ari and Dal have to fight over one Kindle if there was something they wanted to read, or could one copy be put on the computer while one remained on the Kindle? Or if they both got a unit and wanted to read the same book at the same time, do they have to both buy it for their respective units? Kind of seemed that way from what I could tell.

Editing this real quick to add these two blurbs in from someone who reviewed it, which seem to answer some of the other questions I had and some of those which you might as well now:

Missing or Negative Features (the reason for losing one star on this review) -

* Content - I expected to be able to download ebooks from my local library (for free) and read them on my Kindle. I also expected to simply copy all types of text to my Kindle using either the SD card or the USB. I have found a work-around for my pdf files using the MobiPocket Creator. This works really well except for the Table of Contents - which didn't quite translate properly. I translated several of the free books that I downloaded from wowio. The text came over just fine, but some of the fancy text/graphic chapter headers became separated. Also, some of the books that I wanted are not available in the Kindle store yet. I have used the email conversion and that worked okay.

* Pricing Structure - I am a cheapskate in general and frequently buy my books from thrift stores, library sales and used book stores. I have several issues with the pricing and hopefully, the market will correct some of these issues. I can't share the books that I purchase and there isn't really a "used" market for ebooks. I must admit though, that the longer I used the Kindle, the more I was able to justify the book prices in relation to the convenience of having them on my device. For things like textbooks and other books where I want a "real" copy of the book, I would like to see a purchase option that includes a Kindle version for almost nothing if I am purchasing the title in book form. Also, I would like Amazon to offer me nearly free Kindle copies of all the books that I have already purchased in the past - and the list is long! I also wish the entry point was cheaper since I am spending so much on content.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Merika
Well hell, I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it to be this soon.

I do quality assurance for a book manufacturer and figured I'd be out of a job in 10 years or so because of technology. If this thing is as nice and easy to use as it looks, maybe I better start job hunting now.

I don't know about that. Photocopiers didn't kill the book-printing industry; email hasn't killed the post office; mechanized industry hasn't resulted in universal unemployment. Who knows? Maybe your job will continue as it is, with perhaps slightly less work but more stringent quality requirements; or maybe you'll gently morph into Kindle-book quality assurance. Or if that fail you... there is ALWAYS work around for people who are good at distinguishing the good from the slack. With a little bit of effort you could get into software testing, or any other version of testing. No technology has yet destroyed anyone who has the skill of transferring - invariably the knowledge and skills gained at one job can be useful in another. (Anti-flame note: There have been people who've lost their jobs because a machine has come in to do it for them. All I'm saying is that such people can find related work, if they know how to look.)

[Bael]

A couple notes on questions that haven't been answered...

Audiobooks: yes, the Kindle can play audiobooks, in fact I'm pretty sure the Kindle supports audible.com and can play all of their material without issue. I'm a fan of audiobooks myself, especially with 10+ hour drive back and forth from home to school every semester. I use Audible.com (I have a subscription that's like $15/month and comes with a free audiobook every month... so basically it means getting most of them at at least half price... most of the newer stuff on there is $30-45... but they offer some decent discounts on audiobooks compared to cds and the like outside of the freebe's you get through the subscription)... and I use a relatively cheap Sansa Clip, 2gb mp3 player, I think it was $60? So it's not all that difficult to get set up through them if you wanted an alternative.

and for something that hasn't been brought up yet... PDFs...

The Kindle does not (or at the time of its release, did not) support PDF files... you have to convert them before you can read/view them on the device. I'm sure it has something to do with paying royalties to Adobe and it boosting the cost of the device... but it would have been an amazingly convenient feature to have. And you'd think Adobe could have cut them a deal just to get more people on the PDF bandwagon. Oh well.

The thing looks neat, it'll be interesting when they get the manufacturing caught up with demand... unfortunately because of their crazy deal with Sprint, there isn't likely to be much chance of a price drop anywhere in the next like 2 years, unless the hardware becomes significantly cheaper to produce, or they decide to take a loss per unit to get more people on board once the sales die out a bit...

But for that one dude to expect day one to be able to walk into a library and get access to ebooks... is kind of silly, especially since there's nothing on the Kindle's pretty extensive site that even hints at anything even remotely of the sort. It's a great idea for something that could become of it in the future, but that implies the use of DRM, which most people really don't like... again, if they had PDFs it'd be easy... because limited time use is something built into their file structure. Again oh well. Kuddos on the great idea, I wonder what they'll do with the Kindle 2?

[kashata]

I used to have an account with audible.com and then I dropped it when I was cutting costs to leave my job and go back to school ... I think maybe I pay more now, though, for enough CD books to keep me from getting bored in Atlanta traffic. If I can load em onto my ipod, even better, I can listen while I collect data at the zoo (entertainment + drowning out screaming kids and the smart Ga residents that say "I aint born from no monkey").

So thanks for adding a new regular expense to my account Bael, heh.