Would I buy one? Hell no! If I am going to put 200 of my books on a device I can bother to plug it into my computer, I don’t need wireless. So why cause the device so expensive ($399!) just to scratch an itch few people have. If I really need to search a book I suppose I could do it at home on a computer. Really though, I’m rarely in a hurry (strange for an American) to find something in a non-technical book. Oh and Google, for me at least, has replaced much of the usefulness of the technical book. If that fails well I guess I will use the index in the back. I’ll be waiting for a cooler device to show up. Maybe an iPhone with digital ink technology

I liken this business venture to Sega TV, which was from a technological standpoint amazing. It failed in the end though because of price and also there just wasn’t demand. People didn’t mind buying or renting a video game and plugging it straight into their Sega console.

However, as I mentioned there are plenty of other places where you can read about the technical gadgetry and usage of the Kindle. My arguments are not so much about that, but instead the bigger picture of where the Kindle would fit into the marketplace.

I don’t need to drive a Hummer to write about the fact that I don’t think it’s a viable part of the automotive landscape and will likely meet an unhappy end.

I do quite a bit of research, but the research doesn’t always have to be primary research but can instead be secondary research. This is a relatively standard method for a wide spectrum of writers.

But enough about me, what’s your opinion on the Kindle?

HATE the DRM. This is really stupid and will be the primary reason that ebooks are not adopted. When I am done reading, through Amazon if I must, I should be able to give away, or resell my books through amazon.

Scott B. worked hard to make this as book like as possible. Why did he leave this off? Because perhaps, the print industry would not buy in with out it. Once he has some leverage, perhaps DRM can be changed. We can only hope.

I’ve been reading books, a lot of books, on PDAs for years. (And paper, of course; I have a personal paper book library with upwards of ten thousand titles.) The small screen of a PDA is irritating but the portability (I have it wherever I am) is a godsend. But even if you can deal with the small screen the battery life of today’s PDAs leaves a lot to be desired. My Palm T|X will run 6 hours or so, maybe 8 if I turn the display all the way down. That’s maybe, just barely, on the edge of making a coast-to-coast airplane trip. It’s certainly not enough for a vacation without the plug in tow.

The Kindle has several huge wins compared to other electronic display systems I’ve used: The e-ink display really does work well in bright light. It’s sharp in a way that LCDs never are; the text looks good. The battery lasts at least a couple of days, if you leave the wireless radio on, or a solid week of heavy reading if you turn the radio off. That alone makes it a suitable device for books on the go where the PDA was marginal.

I have some nits about the ergonomics, which could use some work, but they’re actually better thought-out than it would at first appear. They tried pretty hard to make it feel like a book. Too hard, I think, but it does disappear as you use it. I would prefer buttons that didn’t make noise (the light “clicking” drives my wife nuts when I read in bed, but then again so does flipping pages and that are inset from the edges so I could handle the device without accidentally turning the page. These are not make-or-break details though.

I worried about the black flash when flipping pages; I thought it would drive me nuts. It doesn’t: after a few minutes of reading your mind blanks it out just like it blanks out page flips. I only notice now when something keeps the page from turning immediately, throwing off my rhythm. Thankfully that is the exception rather than the rule.

Which brings up another nit: There is a delay when flipping pages. Typically it’s about a half second (which is MUCH better than Sony manages on their device) and you get used to it pretty fast but sometimes (rarely) it can exceed a second. When it is slow I /really/ notice, and if I have to flip forward or backward several pages the performance is just too slow.

DRM, DRM, DRM. People harp on the DRM and it’s true that it gives the publisher a lot more control than they had with paper. But it’s not true that you must have DRMed documents if you use this device. There are tens of thousands of e-books out there without any DRM, and the Kindle is unique of these dedicated-function devices in supporting several very common formats out of the box.

Regarding support for DRMed books, it’s possible to get Mobipocket protected books on the Kindle, although it’s not supported and it’s a little fiddly. Most of my protected e-books are eReader format, as yet completely unsupported. Maybe those will be a loss, but I suspect that software upgrades going forward will add more and more document formats … and even if not, it’s possible to strip off the DRM just like with DVDs (even if not strictly legal). It’s not the end of the world.

In any case I am willing to deal with the DRM for the convenience of the device, just as I was willing to deal with it on my PDAs, and in the case of the Kindle there is real value in being able to buy a book right from the device and be reading it less than two minutes later. Maybe that’s not worth much to you, but it’s worth a lot to me. I especially like the fact that I do not have to buy whatever crappy book they happen to have in stock in some woebegone airport bookstore because I finished every book I brought with me on my trip.

I also like the fact that it’s small — not so much the unit, but the books. I mentioned that I have many thousands of paper books. They take up a ton of space. I will never get rid of all of those books, some of them are uniquely interesting and valuable in paper, but I will not lament many of them disappearing in favor of very compact electrons. As it is today I have about eighty e-books and a couple of weeks worth of newspapers on the device. With a 4G flash card it’s capable of holding about four thousand more books. That’s incredible, and I can see real value there.

I’d like it to be faster. I’d like it to be (a lot) cheaper. I’d really like color and more fonts. I’d like improved ergonomics. But as-is it’s a pretty big hit if you ask me, and perhaps that’s why Amazon is selling them faster than they can make them.

The long-term staying power of the device is going to come from document availability, though, and that is one place where I think it’s not wise to bet against Amazon. The more content they have the more valuable the device gets.

What’s more, if they can get my daughter’s textbooks on one of these I will buy her one IMMEDIATELY. For me it’s pretty much the convenience of not lugging around a bunch of paperbacks; for her it’s tens of pounds of books.

I hope this was informative. If anyone has questions or comments they’re welcome to drop me a line.

jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com