Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Manedwolf on February 09, 2009, 12:45:09 PM
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...the newly released Kindle 2 has been raised in price from $300 to $360 for a pretty much disposable device.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI/ref=amb_link_83626371_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=0GWBQ8025VEGMAP2VYR3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=469548931&pf_rd_i=507846 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI/ref=amb_link_83626371_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=0GWBQ8025VEGMAP2VYR3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=469548931&pf_rd_i=507846)
I thought Amazon used to be good at marketing?
How many people are going to spend $360 on a device when the last, now obsolete version wasn't even out long, and when bestsellers are $10 to sort of "rent", because you can't hold them or print them, you just have the virtual copy that works on the device?
I have to wonder.
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The original Kindle, I thought, sold out months before Christmas. Far more successful than was expected.
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The original Kindle, I thought, sold out months before Christmas. Far more successful than was expected.
Bezos kept refusing to say how many they sold, which is never a good sign. They also didn't say how many they made, so "selling out" can be extremely misleading. I still haven't seen an official figure on sales.
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Techcrunch.com says that Amazon sold 240,000 Kindles.
If true, I'd say that that makes it a successful product launch.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/we-know-how-many-kindles-amazon-has-sold-240000/
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It's an awesome, yet overpriced device. Many folks in my office have them, but I just have a hard time shelling out that kind of money for a "book reader" no matter how cool it is.
Get the price down to 199 or so, and I'd consider it.
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Yup, it's a cool device, just too darned expensive right now. They need to push the price lower, both for the reader and the electronic books, if they want to sell more.
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Yeah, I'd pick one up for 100-200, but I ain't gonna shell out 300 for it. The price will come down eventually.
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I wouldn't even consider paying $50 for one.
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The issue I personally have with it, why I'm not interested (and I have heard this from others) is that the books are in a very tight form of DRM on a device with planned obsolescence, on a closed, proprietary EV-DO data network.
Even DRM songs can be moved around and eventually unlocked, or something. This, to me, is planned obsolescence for books that you're ostensibly buying.
I can pick up an 1870 version of one of the books sold for several dollars for this device, and it still works. It never expired.
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The concepts using flexible e-ink displays I've seen are very interesting.
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The concepts using flexible e-ink displays I've seen are very interesting.
Being one of the first major products getting e-ink off the ground is probably the only good that will come of the Kindle.
When you can get a full color multi-function netbook for $50 less, something's wrong with your business model... :laugh:
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For me, part of the pleasure of reading a book is holding the book, turning the pages, etc. I haven't taken to spending long periods of time reading off of a screen, and doubt that I ever will.
Besides, I still enjoy libraries, and browsing the stacks. Cost is only my time and the gas to get me there.
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When you can get a full color multi-function netbook for $50 less, something's wrong with your business model... :laugh:
AJ FTW.
Heck, I saw the solid-state drive version of the Dell Mini-9 on sale for as low as $200.
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AJ FTW.
Heck, I saw the solid-state drive version of the Dell Mini-9 on sale for as low as $200.
I think that's only with a "sign over your firstborn" 3G data contract.
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I think that's only with a "sign over your firstborn" 3G data contract.
Yep, I forgot about that. If the terms were, "Sign over your firstborn nephew," I think I could have gotten my sister to go along with that.
Heck, the Acer jobbies go for $350 'round here, $10 less than the Kindle.
What the heck is so great about the Kindle that I'd prefer it to a truly useful device?
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Even DRM songs can be moved around and eventually unlocked, or something.
Heck, it's pretty straightforward to re-record music with a loopback cable and minimal loss of quality. I'm not sure how you would go about freeing a Kindle book. It would be sensible if it was just PDFs or something, but no.
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I own an extensive library of hardbound books I've been adding to for almost 40 years.
Can I do that with a Kindle? :rolleyes:
'Nuff Said...
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Heck, it's pretty straightforward to re-record music with a loopback cable and minimal loss of quality. I'm not sure how you would go about freeing a Kindle book. It would be sensible if it was just PDFs or something, but no
That's very lossy, though. If you've got a good system, you'd definitely notice loss of quality. That's D-A-D. Burning to a Redbook CD and re-ripping is D-D-D and incurs no loss, I'd recommend doing that instead.
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My wife got me a Kindle for Christmas '07. I thought it was an overpriced gadget of no real value, and was intended solely to cut down on the storage requirements of my massive book hobby. The last was partially correct, but the rest was not.
After using the Kindle for a few weeks, I found it to be invaluable. Is it expensive? Probably. Then again, the free books I've downloaded from various sources (including a massive portion of the Baen library) have helped pay for it, as have the reduced storage issues. Would I have bought it for myself? No, and I would have regretted it. When this one wears out, I'll get an upgrade.
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I own an extensive library of hardbound books I've been adding to for almost 40 years.
Can I do that with a Kindle? :rolleyes:
'Nuff Said...
How does owning Kindle preclude you from doing so? It hasn't stopped me in the least. Just ask my wife.
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I have thouands of books in my home. It's a pain in the butt sometimes. But, I'll never be without them.
When I read something for pleasure, I want the tactile feel of paper between my fingers, and the smell of paper, from cheap pulp acid stock books to fine linen-based archival quality, books in my nose...
I've tried reading books on my computer, and within 10 minutes I'm going out of my mind, hating what I'm doing. It's not pleasure at that point, it's work.
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I'd be tempted to buy the Sony version (as it accepts PDF, RTF, TXT, etc.) IF books were sold in DRM-free formats.
Let me buy a txt file. The device can deal with formatting, and thus compensate for the text size and page layout I choose.
Till I can buy txt files - no way I'm getting an e-book reader.
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I'd be tempted to buy the Sony version (as it accepts PDF, RTF, TXT, etc.) IF books were sold in DRM-free formats.
Let me buy a txt file. The device can deal with formatting, and thus compensate for the text size and page layout I choose.
Till I can buy txt files - no way I'm getting an e-book reader.
This^^
I can see the utility of this. It's a lot easier to carry one lil device than 5 books. And yes, I'm the sort of person who takes 5 books every time I fly out of town. Being able to take along a few thousand books, so I can pick and choose based on my mood..... that'd be awesome.
I've considered getting a small netbook kinda lappie: I see them from Tiger Direct and the other wholesalers for a couple hundred bucks all the time. But it's a pain in the ass trying to read long pdf's or text files on a lappie.
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Not sure it's the business model on the reader.
Why should I pay the same price for an E-Book as I'd pay for a paperback? Or in worse cases a hardback?
I mean there's paper, printing, and transportation costs in a PB/HB format (and I don't mean shipping to me) so why are the Kindle books the same price mostly as the print editions?
If they knocked off the cost of production of the physical media, then they might have more takers.
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How does owning Kindle preclude you from doing so? It hasn't stopped me in the least. Just ask my wife.
Of course - it doesn't...
Except that I'm a cheap SOB and can't imagine myself buying the same book twice.
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I have thouands of books in my home. It's a pain in the butt sometimes. But, I'll never be without them.
When I read something for pleasure, I want the tactile feel of paper between my fingers, and the smell of paper, from cheap pulp acid stock books to fine linen-based archival quality, books in my nose...
I've tried reading books on my computer, and within 10 minutes I'm going out of my mind, hating what I'm doing. It's not pleasure at that point, it's work.
^^^
What HE said...
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I'd be tempted to buy the Sony version (as it accepts PDF, RTF, TXT, etc.) IF books were sold in DRM-free formats.
Let me buy a txt file. The device can deal with formatting, and thus compensate for the text size and page layout I choose.
Till I can buy txt files - no way I'm getting an e-book reader.
+ a lot to this sentiment. Something that handles a variety of formats would be spot on. I would love something like this for air travel.
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Heck, the Acer jobbies go for $350 'round here, $10 less than the Kindle.
And aside from my hard drive failure I can recommend it fairly strongly. Then again, I've dropped another chunk of money on the thing to get a 9 cell battery.
Balog is right though, reading .pdf's on any screen gets pretty tiring after a while.
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+ a lot to this sentiment. Something that handles a variety of formats would be spot on. I would love something like this for air travel.
1. I totally agree with this.
2. Congrats on your 1000th post MillCreek. =D
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That's very lossy, though. If you've got a good system, you'd definitely notice loss of quality
Have you ever actually tried it? I know it gives the audiophiles fits to think about it, but using any decent soundcard at all, the quality loss is imperceptible. Recall that the best-sounding albums ever were made in the seventies when the recording was effectively re-recorded to lossy analog media probably dozens of times between the mic and the vinyl cutting head. I DO have a nice system, and I record vinyl using my plain-vanilla soundcard all the time, and the results sound perfect, even on headphones.
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Debating starting a new thread on this, but wth is the difference between a netbook, ultra-mobile pc, and a small laptop? If I just want something small and easily portable to browse the internet on (via wifi) or read .txt and .pdf files while on the bus or generally out and about, which would I need?
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I'm not really sure what the difference is either, seems that no-one has a good definition.
I've had a couple of devices that could fit largely into your criteria (wifi and pdf) - the Acer Aspire One and the Archos 605. I'd choose the netbook every time, it might be considerably bigger, but folded up and put in my manbag (oh the shame, but it is so useful) it is no more noticeable than a decent sized hardback book. Now I've got a proper OS on it (Xubuntu, but XP would count too) it is a very useful too.
Now - off to Starbucks to pretend to write a novel.
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Zahc,
You are indeed correct.
Some of the best-sounding music comes from a vinyl pressing tracked via a diamond stylus, then amplified with electrons shed by glowing filaments zipping through plates and grids.
Hardly DDD in the transition from performer to listener, but as Bogie and I can attest to, it's pure heaven! =D
It's why this workstation has a tube amp attached to the sound card, too.
Well, that, and the big floor-standing speakers on either side...
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I can see the utility of this. It's a lot easier to carry one lil device than 5 books. And yes, I'm the sort of person who takes 5 books every time I fly out of town. Being able to take along a few thousand books, so I can pick and choose based on my mood..... that'd be awesome.
I've considered getting a small netbook kinda lappie: I see them from Tiger Direct and the other wholesalers for a couple hundred bucks all the time. But it's a pain in the ass trying to read long pdf's or text files on a lappie.
I couldn't agree with ya more.
Long trip/deployment? I like the thought of a few 1000 books available in a Kindle sized thinger.
The two sticking points I see are the format snafus, and battery life.
For the money, I'd rather have one of those eincy weency ASUS critters, and a pile of PDF books on the drive.
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The Kindle looks like an interesting device (kinda like the PADD from STAR TREK), but I think it would sell better if it could support more apps than just the books.....like .pdf, .doc, & .txt files, maybe MP3 or MP4 files (listen while you read), and perhaps touchscreen typing for note-taking or other reminders). Maybe even store photos for use as a digital pic frame/screensaver when not used as a reader.
One-trick ponies don't sell anymore....you have to multi-task to survive.... :cool:
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I just thought of another reason why these electronic book readers may be a good idea. I assume that you can increase the size of the display typeface. That would mean I could read without having to use a pair of reading glasses. I will hit the half-century mark next year, and I am already starting to use reading glasses more and more.
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I just thought of another reason why these electronic book readers may be a good idea. I assume that you can increase the size of the display typeface. That would mean I could read without having to use a pair of reading glasses. I will hit the half-century mark next year, and I am already starting to use reading glasses more and more.
Another pro for the e-books over a net/note-book is the display. LCD screens flicker and can cause eye-strain and headaches after awhile. The e-book screens only update/refresh when a new page is loaded, so there is no flickering. That and the reading is more like from a paper as the screen is reflective (like paper) rather than transmissive, like a computer monitor.
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Iain: is this the sort of thing you had?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220369
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The Kindle looks like an interesting device (kinda like the PADD from STAR TREK), but I think it would sell better if it could support more apps than just the books.....like .pdf, .doc, & .txt files, maybe MP3 or MP4 files (listen while you read), and perhaps touchscreen typing for note-taking or other reminders). Maybe even store photos for use as a digital pic frame/screensaver when not used as a reader.
One-trick ponies don't sell anymore....you have to multi-task to survive.... :cool:
I could be wrong, but I believe the Kindle does quite a bit of this.
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Of course - it doesn't...
Except that I'm a cheap SOB and can't imagine myself buying the same book twice.
Me too. That's why I rarely dowloand something I already own. The classics (Monster Hunter International) will be bought in both formats but the other duplicates come from free sources. Since Amazon bought Mobipocket, there is quite a bit of free material out there.
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Bring down the price to $100-150 and lose the current DRM model, and I'd buy one. I don't mind reading on a screen, and these screens are supposed to have such a high contrast ratio that it's almost as good as reading a printed page.
Personally, I'd like to be able to download the ebook to my computer, then upload them to the Kindle so I could keep backups. Also, $9.99 for an ebook is a bit ridiculous, particularly when you can usually buy the actual book for less.
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Iain: is this the sort of thing you had?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220369
That sort of thing. There are several models out from different manufacturers. Massive numbers of Asus Eee models, more than I've kept track of. Dell have a Mini 9 and now a Mini 10 (screen size, resolution is the same though). Acer have the original Aspire One, and now 10" model. Samsung have one, Lenovo have one. The MSI models are apparently nice. A friend has the 10" Eee, which is ok, but I do prefer the keyboard on my Acer. Nicest keyboards are apparently to be found on the HP models.
Inside though they are all basically the same machine. Most have the 1.6ghz intel atom chip, integrated intel video and between 512mb and 2gb of ram. Hard drives vary.
I'm not sure that there is an advantage to the SSD (solid state drive) models really. I did consider getting one, and maybe oneday I'll replace the conv hdd in this laptop with a decent fast SSD just to have a computer with no moving parts. The SSD's in the cheap netbooks are not particularly good though. My 120gb model cost just £20 more than the 4gb SSD model, so I didn't think twice about it.
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I have thouands of books in my home. It's a pain in the butt sometimes. But, I'll never be without them.
When I read something for pleasure, I want the tactile feel of paper between my fingers, and the smell of paper, from cheap pulp acid stock books to fine linen-based archival quality, books in my nose...
I've tried reading books on my computer, and within 10 minutes I'm going out of my mind, hating what I'm doing. It's not pleasure at that point, it's work.
I hate you. I donated about 400 books when I left California. I just could not afford to take them all.
itd be nice if you could get a "electronic" version of a book when you buy the print version; because I'd read the print version, then swap or donate it, and like to keep the electronic version. I'm sure that's "wrong" or "stealing" to some, but it'd be great for those of us with limited space.
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I own an extensive library of hardbound books I've been adding to for almost 40 years.
Can I do that with a Kindle? :rolleyes:
'Nuff Said...
If the Kindle had been designed right you'd be able to do that. But thanks to the DRM they had to impose on everything...
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Bring down the price to $100-150 and lose the current DRM model, and I'd buy one. I don't mind reading on a screen, and these screens are supposed to have such a high contrast ratio that it's almost as good as reading a printed page.
The Sony I looked at was not. There was a flash during the "page turn" that would give me a headache.
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How about something that costs maybe $50, that I can dump pdfs to for on the go reading?
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How about something that costs maybe $50, that I can dump pdfs to for on the go reading?
That would be ideal.
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The Sony I looked at was not. There was a flash during the "page turn" that would give me a headache.
Yeah, but Sony is the HK of the electronics world.
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I could be wrong, but I believe the Kindle does quite a bit of this.
For a fee. It's a nickel and dime device, based on the specs I'd seen. Their EV-DO only, not 802.11.
Subscribing to a newspaper is $14 a month per paper. The same content that is free online or on an iPhone or smartphone.
Subscribing to a BLOG is $1 a month PER BLOG. The same blogs that are free online or on an iPhone or smartphone.
I just don't get the appeal. It's the sort of nickel and diming that usually implies a loss leader device, but instead, it's a premium priced device plus the nickel and diming, and absolutely locked-up DRM.
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Just to be clear, the DRM applies only to Amazon items (as do the fees), not anything else. The majority of items on my Kindle (which has a full internal memory and a 2GB SD card that is rapidly filling) are not DMR protected and were free.
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Speaking of DRM.... http://xkcd.com/488/
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimgs.xkcd.com%2Fcomics%2Fsteal_this_comic.png&hash=8f6c9ae89df38f1d7abcaf914b542bb575b81367)
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The Sony I looked at was not. There was a flash during the "page turn" that would give me a headache.
They're all like that and you get used to it fairly quickly. After using it for a while, you don't even notice the refresh interval since your eyes disfocus and are already moving back up the screen while it's going on.
I just don't get the appeal. It's the sort of nickel and diming that usually implies a loss leader device, but instead, it's a premium priced device plus the nickel and diming, and absolutely locked-up DRM.
It's a niche product for people who don't have an issue with DRM. Most of what I read on my Sony Reader is generally a one time read only, so the DRM restrictions aren't really a bother. Anything more than that and I search out a trade paperback copy. The lack of permanence isn't a big deal either since the majority of my books go off to the local Half Priced Books on a yearly basis. Either way, it's gone and total cost is roughly the same. And, IMO, the reading experience on an eBook is superior to standard format paperbacks.
True, the newspaper subscriptions are overly costly. The pricing structure is workable, if somewhat costly, for text heavy magazines. The blog thing is nonsensical, but hey, it's free money for them if you're dumb or rich enough to find it worth it. But really, the device is about books and the books tend to be fairly priced.
All the proposed substitutes, iPhone (got one), netbook (got one), etc. are less expensive and more flexible, but they don't do the eBook core function nearly as well as a dedicated unit.
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That's one thing I liked about the new BSG.
"HAY HERE'S A CLIPBOARD WITH PAPER AND A PEN"
Unlike Star Trek where EVERYTHING even on the supposedly "PRIMITIVE PRE-WARP PLANETS" was a super high tech neat computer pad that can run two instances of Crysis at 100fps each.
I view this product to be about as silly as the latter TV series.