[FrequentTravler]

For what it's worth, here's my 2 cents...
I'm on my second Sony Reader and really like it. While I much prefer the tactile experience of a book, I travel extensively and read constantly when on the plane or waiting on line, etc. So for those of us in that situation, an E book makes good sense. I used to read on my Palm TX but as my eyes have aged it's not a fun anymore.
The Kindle IMHO, is too expensive and fugly to get much traction but like all Rev 1.0 products, it may in time morph to something more useful.

[jdb8167]

Is this the same Mike Elgan who wrote this: "The only downside is that he works out every day at the gym, where cardio machines face TVs that broadcast sound over FM radio. Six months later, when his iPod is stolen, he goes to buy another player this time, he hopes, with an FM radio in it. Several competitors offer this feature, but not iPods. Hes about to choose a new player with an FM radio when it hits him: None of his files now totaling 300 songs and 50 movies will play on the new player. He bought and paid for all this content, but it only works with iPods and iTunes."
It's official: Apple is the new Microsoft
Oops. The DRM in the Kindle is far more oppressive. At least with iTunes you can convert your songs to AIFF by burning to a CD. I agree on the movies part and until movies get an equivalent option of converting to a non-DRM format, I recommend against buying them from the iTunes store (TV is more transient so that is less of an issue for most people.)
So, why is it bad that some media on an iPod will be incompatible with a competitor's device, but not the Kindle where 100% of the purchased media won't work on a competitive device?
Pretty inconsistent on Mike Elgan's part. Not that I expected anything different.

[jdb8167]

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I travel extensively and read constantly when on the plane or waiting on line, etc. So for those of us in that situation, an E book makes good sense.

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Kind of sucks that you can't read on take-offs and landings though. Maybe you can carry a nice paperback for those situations /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[hexor]

New marketing technique to make people think they are missing something: Produce only a few thousand of the devices so that you are assured you can state "Due to an overwhelming response to our product we have completely sold out." This is a sure way to dupe all the news organizations to report this as well. Both Amazon with this device and MS with the Zune 80GB has done this lately. (unless someone can prove me wrong and find where they state exactly how many of these they have actually shipped)

[Cerebus]

What you knew: Amazon owns Mobipocket and sells ebooks in encrypted mobipocket format.
What you didn't know: You can't read encrypted mobipocket ebooks on the Kindle.
What else you didn't know: Amazon won't be providing you with new copies of already purchased encrypted mobipocket format ebooks so you can read them on the Kindle.
More you didn't know: Breaking the encrypted mobipocket files you legally own in order to convert and read on the Kindle makes you a criminal.
Something else you didn't know: Browsing anything other than Amazon with the web browser incurs charges you will be liable for. Read the fine print of the agreement.

[Cerebus]

Shh. Once the attendants sit down & strap in for takeoff or landing, how would they possibly know?

[mochant]

You nailed it Mike! An excellent refutation of a lot of the noise that's surrounded Kindle's release in a great format. Nicely done.
I first saw Kindle at Gnomedex earlier this year and kenw then I would order one, warts and all, the moment they became available. I've had mine for almost a week and it is the best eBook reader yet. There's surely room for improvement but Amazon swung for the fences and hit, at worst, a double off the wall. I'd grade it a triple myself but I'm a soft touch when it comes to eBooks.
Kindle follows a long line of devices I've read eBooks on including Newton, Psion, Palm, Sony Clie, Nokia 770 and N800, Tablet PCs, Sony Reader, and MacBook. It blows them all away - even the Sony which is admittedly a prettier device but one hampered by more-than-skin-deep flaws.

[HL]

No way, no how. Real books are much, much better to read, to handle, to look at.
A person's library (or lack of) is just as important as anything else they own. I go into far too many houses where there is plenty of room to watch TV but there is nowhere to sit and read. Plent of "game rooms" for kids to waste time in but not a book or newspaper in sight. In too many houses I have been in, it's impossible to read anywhere except at the kitchen table--there will be no overhead or reading lights of any kind. And this gizmo will be just as bad as any other game or electronic "replacement" for a real book.
Really, what's the rush? Why the hatred of books? What's the rush?
Books go anywhere, require no batteries and if someone owns a lot of books (over 1,500 in my case), a room full of books is a wonderful and warm place. Not so with a room full of screens or yet another electronic toy that is far inferior to paper.
Books are better in all cases.

[Gatesbasher]

So, let's see: Elgan thinks "Apple is the New Microsoft" because of the way they run iTunes, but Amazon wanting you to buy a $400 device so you can buy $10 eBooks from them, but can't pass them on to anybody else, or read the tens of thousands of free eBooks you can get from Project Gutenberg, et. al., that's a revolution? Yeah, a revolution in greed!
E-ink is a good concept; make the screen at least 5 by 8, and with the same resolution as a good printing job, say 1200 dpi, then we'll talk.
Seriously, who is this guy, and why does anyone print any of his ravings?

[ReeceTarbert]

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Books go anywhere, require no batteries and if someone owns a lot of books (over 1,500 in my case), a room full of books is a wonderful and warm place.

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I grew up surrounded by books and I couldn't agree more!
However, as I wrote in another thread, there are times when a book is just too big to carry around -- or read in bed -- and some electronic alternative seems like an acceptable compromise to me. I don't have a dedicated device, but I still keep a few e-books and PDFs on my mobile phone (a Nokia 9500, in case you are wondering). Sure, it can display only a few lines at a time, but it still beats sitting there flipping your thumbs -- or starring at nothing or no one in particular. As I see it, I'm trading character for convenience.
That being said, I'm not especially interested in dedicated devices in general and in the Kindle in particular for a lot of different reasons, some of which are nicely detailed by this article at Ars Technica.

[Jered]

While I do agree that using a cell phone network to provide material to an ebook device is indeed revolutionary, and should serve them well, much of the rest of the stuff about the Kindle is less exciting. There shouldn't need to be any kind of conversion in order to view PDFs on an ebook reader, darnit - there are too many documents and books already distributed in the format (and indeed, Amazon's first aborted attempt at selling ebooks was in a secure PDF format). The only secured format they support is the new Amazon/Mobi store's, so you can't even buy a secure Mobi book from a competing site (like fictionwise.com) and read it on a Kindle. And the high price is surprising - you can buy the latest Sony Reader for less than a Kindle, and both of those devices are really just vessels for their respective online bookstores (you just have to transfer books to Sony's device from a PC instead of the instant gratification of grabbing it directly from the device).
I, too, went researching the current state of ebook readers when the Kindle came out, since I wanted to see if I should pick one up instead of reading books on my Treo (yes, paper books have a great feel, but you can only carry so many paper books at a time, while I can get a reference library into my pocket on a PDA or dedicated reader). Really, what it boils down to is that if you want the online features on a reader, get the Kindle or a smartphone - they're about the same price, it just depends on whether you can stand the smaller text/screen on the phone. If you want a cheaper reader that's still tied to its provider's online store, pick up a Sony Reader for less. And if you want a device with a midrange price but broader support for open formats, get something like a Bookeen Cybook (which supports PDFs along with the other open formats the Kindle can read, and it can run a program to view secure Mobi files to boot).
But yeah, if you aren't swayed by the e-ink thing, by all means keep reading regular books. There should be no rush to go with digital books, the main appeal of them right now is the convenience of downloading the text from the Internet and putting it on a book-like device with no trip to a bookstore/postal delivery in-between, or the large store of reference material you can carry around via such a device. The Kindle won't be the Next Big Thing, but it is a better-marketed reader with an ease of use that will attract some people who may not have gotten into ebooks otherwise. It's not like the iPod was to the MP3 player, but it's certainly not like the Newton was to PDAs either.

[aestival]

If the Kindle takes off, then god help the computer industry, because that must mean that people will blindly accept whatever DRM-laden crappy format is thrown at them.
PDF is a standard format, and it can support plenty of DRM security, so much so that it's widely used to distribute e-books already.
So why isn't PDF being used? Amazon seems to be trying to pull a Sony, and I'd wager they stand about as much chance at market success (ah, remember all those great ATRAC hits? -- no? -- maybe that's because Sony's proprietary format was an almost complete failure?)

[jdb8167]

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There's surely room for improvement but Amazon swung for the fences and hit, at worst, a double off the wall. I'd grade it a triple myself but I'm a soft touch when it comes to eBooks.

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What if the improvement comes from Sony, Apple, Panasonic etc? You are locked in to only Amazon by the books you've already purchased. I buy dozens of books a year. At $10 a piece and no conversion to alternate formats, that is a lot of risk that Amazon will continue to support Kindle.
Now compare this to the iPod and iTunes. Most of your music was probably from CDs and any music purchased from iTunes is easily converted to non-DRM at a small loss of fidelity if you re-rip to MP3 or unprotected AAC. Not ideal but still not a total loss either. Where is the equivalent for the Kindle books? Can I convert to PDF, rtf or Word and lose a bit of formatting but retain access to the material? No, you can only read these books on Amazon's device.
I'm not necessarily opposed to DRM (though I would rather it be absent) but non-interoperable DRM with no escape clause is the worst possible way to buy media. I won't buy DRM movies from iTunes and I will never buy a Kindle unless Amazon resolves this issue.

[HL]

Thanks so much for the few, the proud, the people among the responders who love books. I'm not Luddite, I love my Mac and iPod and cell phone.
But the feel of quality paper, it can't be beat! Plus one really stands out when in a crowd or a long line (think DMV, waiting in a doctor's office, etc.), you pull out a 400-page book. There's just nothing like it. Sometimes it scares those around you because they gave up reading after See Spot Run.
I just can't see electrons ever passing paper. So portable, so tactile, so wonderful. I'm sure there is a market for the latest-and-greatest thing, there always is. To me, it just seems like this is attempt to solve a problem that doesn't exist. What if you fall asleep while reading this thing and drop it to the floor? Ouch! I've dropped my PowerBook and it ain't pretty.
It's paper every time for me. Others may of course differ and fine and good. But I'll argue for the real hardcover book anytime. Thanks again for the kind replies.