Amazon's Ebook The Future of Reading?

theodp writes "With a seven-page cover story on The Future of Reading, Newsweek confirms all those rumors of Amazon's imminent introduction an affordable ebook. Kindle, which is named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, has the dimensions of a paperback, weighs 10.3 oz., and uses E Ink technology on a 6-inch screen powered by a battery that gets up to 30 hours from a 2-hour charge. Kindle's real breakthrough is its EVDO-like wireless connectivity, which allows it to work anywhere, not just at Wi-Fi hotspots. More than 88,000 titles will be on sale at the Kindle store at launch, with NYT best sellers priced at $9.99."

Yes!!

[Michael_gr]

This is what I've been waiting for. I almost considered buying Sony's Ebook reader a while ago, but, to tell the truth, I hate Sony. The Kindle sounds like something I'd really like to have. It's not cheap but once it's in my hands, I have the entire Project Gutenberg to go through.

Re:I wonder

[rucs_hack]

I'm unconvinced about this thing, and ebooks in general personally. My idea of a pleasant afternoon is a browse in my local antiquarian bookshop, and I like the look of my bookshelves as is.

What really interests me is this book vending machine thing. Now that I could get behind.

I don't get this

[rolfwind]

I mean a six inch screen at $399? What's so revolutionary? I can get a sony ereader with eink right now for $299:

http://www.amazon.com/E-reader-Portable-Silver-E-book-Approx/dp/B000WPXQ2M [amazon.com]

and it looks a million times better with less buttons. While I personally want to buy it, I won't until the screen is the size of textbooks or a standard 8x11 page sheet. I hate squinting -- I might as well read off a PDA if they keep insisting on making screens so small. What is so frustrating is that we could have our libraries - every newspaper we read, every book we ever bought, every textbook in such devices already with current technology.

But how long will it be in coming? Will textbook manufacturers stall until the wikibooks project provides real competition on any level?

Will the future releases of J.K. Rowling come in pdf or will they wait until, like music, they can't ignore the market due to downloads they don't get any compensation for?

Re:How does it beat just using a PSP or Gameboy DS

[lena_10326]

Also look at Palmfiction on a HiRes+ Palm device. Far superior 320x480 touchscreen loveliness, and fantastic battery life.

I just don't get why I should buy a special (single) purpose e-book reader at $400 when I've already got a powerful handheld (PSP and DS) that's capable of doing it. Most households have cellphones and/or handheld game systems. Those are the systems you target if you're a smart businessman.

Re:I wonder

[Neeth]

I am thirty five years old. The thing is, once you start reading you forget that you are reading from an electronic device. The important thing is that modern ebooks use the electronic paper technology, so it is not back lit. You have to use normal light to be able to read your ebook. But what a joy it is to be actually able to read in broad daylight!

Ebook Copyrights

[Danathar]

The ONE reason I don't buy ebooks anymore is due to copyrights.

With a book it's quite LEGAL for me to loan what I've purchased to somebody else. With most ebooks I can't. They usually are locked up with DRM as well. The publishers want to treat ebooks like traditional software (in regards to copyright). You can't just check out an ebook at the library free of charge (usually) and you can bet the publishers would like it to stay that way as they generally hate libraries.

The liberal copyright restrictions on books when it comes to loaning them to somebody else is very important.

Re:How does it beat just using a PSP or Gameboy DS

[lena_10326]

That's cause you didn't RTFA. It is not single purpose, it has wireless connection and also audio so conceivably it's a competitor for other devices, such as music players. From TFA:

Maybe you didn't read the other articles then. How about this quote? salon.com

Details are skimpy. The device, reports say, will have Wi-Fi, Sprint's EV-DO wireless service to make book purchases on the go,

Or how about this quote? cnn.com [news.com]

The Kindle is equipped with a Wi-Fi connection that taps into an Amazon e-book store, which users can access to purchase new electronic books--and Amazon has reportedly signed onto a deal with Sprint for EVDO access. Additionally, the device comes with a headphone jack for audiobooks, as well as an e-mail address.

But the source said the Kindle apparently won't bear many other BlackBerry-like features such as a calendar or address book. The Kindle may also lack a backlight. Instead, it comes with a small reading light attached to an adjustable arm.

Wireless that connects to their "service". Yea. Nice multi-functionality. I assume you're assuming you'll be able to freely surf any site you want. How do you know? The product isn't out yet. You're making it up or guessing if you think you know.

Ok. There'll be audio output. Wowzee... just what everyone was waiting for: playing audio CD's and MP3's on a clunky $400 e-book reader. OOoo. Hot seller.

Oh yea, and I'm sure I'll be dumping my small $75 cell phone for this reader to catch all my email. Yes!

Can it run a PDA version of office? How about games? How about a web browser? How about synching my desktop files? Slapping WiFi and an audio output on this device hardly makes it multi-function. Face it. It's a book reader, single purpose. That's how it's supposedly functions, what the available specs indicate, and what all the marketing hype advertises. That's it. It's nothing special.

Re:I wonder

[DMoylan]

> you can't get - yet - is a laptop that'll go thirty hours on a charge that only takes two hours to get

no but any decent phone can go for days on standby and you can be reading books on them in that time. last year i was commuting 3.5 hours a day by bus and using qreader on a nokia n70 while also using it as an mp3 player. and then using it during the day to take picture and video at work. barely decreased the battery gauge by one bar. the screen is small but i found it acceptable.

on a few occasions i didn't have a chance to recharge over night and it ran for 2-3 days at that level of usage with out running out of power.

a friend bought a sony book reader and while it looked nice it now sits on a shelf unused.

* it's too big. yes it is the size of a book but a book that you carry with you is quite pliable and ends up squashed in a bag or pocket. that cannot happen with an electronic device yet. as long as you are using ascii text it reflows to fit the screen.
* drm nonsense. while i download books illegaly off the web i always go out of my way to get a legit copy. drm software is an unwanted level of complication that makes it harder to use. what when i upgrade from one device to another do i do with the electronic copy of a book. will it transfer? or will it be plays for sure nonsense all over again?
* requirements. if you're travelling you'll need to drag another power supply along. i'd prefer just to bring a phone and a single charger.

some will say that they only want a phone to be a phone. guess what? i carry a swiss army knife too. it's not the best tool for the job but 95% of the time it is good enough.

Re:No picture?

[Pollardito]

They need to hire Apple iPod team immediately. Why include keyboard?

e-ink is a fairly new technology. it's quite possible that they haven't been able to get it to work along with touch-sensitivity, so they may have had no choice

Re:Learn

[MythMoth]

Actually the Sony Reader does nicely render unDRM'ed PDFs and features good bookmarking! It's pretty neat. The DRM'ed books suck, of course, but I've never bought one. Guttenburg texts pre-formatted for it [manybooks.net] rock.

What about underlining for academic purposes?

[shaneFalco]

The whole idea of e-books makes me a little hesitant. I'm an academic and I underline like none other in my books (at least the academic ones). So if an e-book reader had a stylus or something I could "write" with I might be receptive to the idea. Would also help if the academic publishers (Oxford, Harvard, Illonois, CQ etc.) were to jump on board. Does anyone know of either occuring?

Surely

[goldcd]

they should just hand Kindles out to people on planes.
Something new and fun to play with. Get to use it for a few hours to see if you like it - and offering a plane trip with an onboard library of a few hundred thousand books deinitely ranks above half a dozen crappy blockbusters.
More importantly, you can seed the market by letting travellers pay to walk off the plane with their new Kindle and their half-read book.
(Jeff, you owe me if you run with this)

Re:I wonder

[fyngyrz]

I gave up on The Independent shortly after they decided to become an anti-government attack-dog instead of a newspaper.

Funny... I had a very similar experience. I gave up on my government when it became an anti-citizen attack dog instead of a government. You know what I mean... surveillance everywhere they can get away with it, individual liberties trampled upon, wars against personal choices and lifestyles, arbitrary re-writes and censorship of science, shilling press conferences, pursuing wars of aggression where no threat existed, trampling the country's constitution, creating several generations worth of debt load for my descendants, stealing people's property for the benefit of commercial interests, making legislation for corporate and SIG benefit and not the people... yep, a very similar experience indeed.