On the Economics of the Kindle 398
perlow writes "Just how many books a year would you need to read before the cost of Amazon's Kindle is justified? The answer is not so cut-and-dried. If you're a college student and all of your texts were available on Kindle (possible but unlikely), you could recover the cost of the reader in a semester and a half. For consumers to break even with Kindle's cost in that time, they would have to be in the habit of buying and reading four new hardback books per month — if the convenience factor wasn't part of the equation. At two books per month, breakeven would be in three years." Here is the spreadsheet if you want to play with the numbers.
Next up: (Score:4, Funny)
Next up a spreadsheet detailing the break-even point of your iPhone one 25 cent pay phone call at at time!
Re:There is more to it... (Score:1, Funny)
Oh, there is something better: reading while not inhaling noxious fumes.
Pussy
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Funny)
Because reading a laptop screen sucks ass if you have to read for any length of time.
Ah I see it's time for the weekly slashdot ebook article again, filled with the same repetitive comments as last time.
Every ebook article has at least one person complain they could never look at a computer screen for more than a few minutes therefore they could never read using a computer. Supposedly, everyone on slashdot is either a gamer or a programmer or hacker or whatever. How are you other gamer/programmers doing it without a monitor? Are you guys ALL using braille readers or speech interfaces? If you are, then more power to you dude. But realizing thats probably about 1% of the readership, I laugh at the other 99%.
Required contents for each weekly slashdot ebook article:
One guy to complain he can't read anything on a computer screen (dude, you go to slashdot for the pictures, like our old pal goatse?)
Another guy to complain all his books have brightly colored pictures (see spot run, run spot run?)
Another guy can't read unless his ebook reader has a built in mp3 player / youtube video player / embedded firefox / etc, you know just like every paperback or hardcover book ever made.
Another guy, whom apparently bathes more than the sterotypical geek, will complain his ebook reader doesn't work so well in the bathtub. Oddly enough no one complains that they can't read paperbacks in the shower. I don't think I've taken a bath since the mid 1980s (before most slashdotters were born?), but don't worry I use my shower once or even twice a day and I never miss not being able to use a book. My advice is bathe with a member of the appropriate sex+species instead of a book, anyway.
Then the other guy complains that his ebook reader only holds a 20 hour charge and he hates it when the battery dies during a reading session (maybe he should nap after nineteen and a half hours of bedtime reading, or sleep somewhere within 100 feet of commercial AC power?)
Then someone else always brings up the "right to read" essay despite the fact that a real slashdotter would never buy a reader that doesn't work with some hack to read plain texts like gutenberg. I waited for that before buying my REB-1150 or whatever its model designation is. Works pretty well. It's a cool story, but everyone here knows it, k thx bye.
There's probably a few other sterotypical ebook comments that I've forgotten.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:3, Funny)
"I don't think I've taken a bath since the mid 1980s"
Richard Stallman? Is that you?
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I don't care about saving the trees either, just my back. ;)
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:3, Funny)
Wrong. The correct answer is that UIDs should have been capped at 196329.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:3, Funny)
I am strangely compelled to continue this thread's theme.
i like the idea of portable porn. (Score:5, Funny)
"Dirty rotten companies shove mp3-camera-gameboy-dildo-phones down our throats every minute of every day. "
I would like to subscribe to your color E-newsletter with stereo screaming and moaning.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Funny)
If you really want to save the trees, kill a lawyer. I'd bet one lawyer wastes more paper in a year than an entire classroom.
Done.