In The Blogs

Kindle 2.0

| Mon Feb. 9, 2009 8:07 AM PST

KINDLE 2.0....Brad Stone is liveblogging the release of the Kindle 2.0 book reader:

10:21 a.m. | The Reveal: Mr. Bezos is showcasing the device: The Kindle2 has resdesigned page-turning buttons along its sides, a thinner profile, a metal back, and standard round keys — none of the angular weirdness of the original model. It has 16 shades of gray, crisper photos, clear text, 25 percent faster page turns and 25 percent more battery life. “You can read for 2 weeks on a single charge,” says Mr. Bezos.

....10:26 a.m. | Interface Updates: Mr. Bezos is demonstrating the new Kindle and the joystick-like controller. The old version of the Kindle had an awkward scroll wheel and a separate vertical screen that helped users maneuver a cursor up and down its screen. Kindle users can use the five-way controller to highlight a word and automatically look it up.

That certainly sounds nice. Does this mean I should go out and buy one? Or would it be yet another electronic gadget that I use a few times and then set aside to collect dust? Consider this an open thread to persuade me one way or the other.

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Comments

Kindle - Buy one or not?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Feb. 11, 2009 10:12 PM PST.

I have been an avid reader my whole life (far longer than I will admit to in a public forum). I remember checking out 10 of L. Frank Baum's Oz books at once from my local library (you didn't know there were more??) The librarian asked me if I was sure I could read them all before I had to return them. I said "Yes', and I did. I have been known to give my local library upwards of 30 average size boxes of books at once. My house has been called a library in it's own right. But that has become the problem. How much room can I afford to devote to holding on to paper versions of all the books I love to read? And I do re-read them. I have literally bought more than 5 copies of one book over the years because I kept giving it away and then buying it again. And so I have decided to finally buy my first Electronic Book. I don't know if I will like it. I am still trying to decide between Sony's eReader and the Kindle (Money is an issue - the more I spend on the reader the less I have for books). But I am looking forward to giving my books away and keeping them too.

Content is the problem.

Submitted by Paul Escobar (not verified) on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 8:00 AM PST.

There's only one good thing about this gadget. It maybe easier on the eyes than a laptop or PC. I tend to get headaches reading off traditional screens. If Amazon solved this problem, good on them. The bad thing is just how closed this hardware is. It doesn't accept basic formats like PDF & Word. We have to wait for Amazon to digitize content. This is too much hassle. Someone should create a reader that accepts all formats. Free software updates can add to new formats. Maybe it can have a stripped down OS onboard (Linux?).

The netbook is the Kindle killer

Submitted by Joe (not verified) on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 9:32 AM PST.

My Dell Mini 9 netbook costs less than the Kindle and its kin, and it can read e-books too. And it can browse the web, do email, show streaming video or audio, play games and a lot more. And it has this new feature that Kindle doesn't have called "C O L O R". Why would I want a Kindle?

Expensive Books

Submitted by steverino on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 9:51 AM PST.

I buy a lot of used books-- cheap! Rarely a new one. I had a Palm Pilot with a screen that was readable for books, and bought a few for that. Now that the device is dead, so are my books. I got the app "Stanza" for my iPhone that also renders the books legibly, and d/l a bunch of freebies/Gutenberg texts, but I doubt I'll be buying a new electronic book again. And the palm and iPhone are kind of awkward to hold for any length of time for reading. I'm not opposed to the format, mind you, I'm just opposed to spending money-- going into a Barnes & Noble and seeing $30 hardcovers when I'm used to paying $4 used gives me a pain in the wallet. steverino

When does this thing pay for itself?

Submitted by OpinionatedReader on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 11:02 AM PST.

I second the argument against based on book price. $10 for a book? Let's make the price $2.99 or something. Especially after forking out $360 for this thing. There's no book being printed, no shipping, no warehouse. Come on now Amazon... Glad I've got a library card.

Kindle

Submitted by cricket413 (not verified) on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 3:57 PM PST.

I am an avid reader, like some of the other posters. I have boxes and boxes of books in my house and in storage. I have traded, sold, lent and given away books for years. I reread books. Sometimes as many times as 20+. I have been evaluating ebook readers for a year now, since the Kindle came out, and although there are ebook readers that are less expensive, the selling point for me is the Kindle Bookstore. I buy hardbacks and on the average pay $25. If I buy a Kindle and only download the new "hardbacks" I save between $10 and $15 dollars per book. If I buy paperbacks at $9 and convert to the Kindle, the cost drops to $6.50. I average a book a week, which is 52 books a year. If all of those books are paperbacks I save $130 a year, if they are hardbacks I save $780. I figure it will pay for itself within a year and a half. Then, all I have to cart around, store, box up and put into storage, is a 10.2 ounce ebook reader. And if Amazon does what they are saying they want to do - I could eventually own every book I've ever read. And carry them all with me. I figure, the way to think about a Kindle is the same way you consider a video game system. The game system gains value as the player purchases games. The game systems also gains in value as the publisher of the games choses to publish to that console. The same is true of the Kindle. The value of the Kindle will be found in the books available in that format, as well as, the cost of those books. In comparison, the other ebook readers lose value when you compare the costs of buying books through their on-line bookstore. Not to mention, Sony doesn't support Mac. I waited for the Kindle 2, hoping they would fix the issues with the page turning keys. They have and I plan to order one. I was an early adopter of the I-pod and plan to use a Kindle for my reading source for the next forty years. At which point, being able to resize the text may be very handy.

PDF is not a "basic" format

Submitted by brent (not verified) on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 4:59 PM PST.

I'm really surprised at the number of people who complain that the Kindle won't display PDFs. I love PDFs as much as the next guy: for printable documents. The whole point of a Kindle is to replace printable documents. The thing deals with text, not pages. It doesn't do columns or word art or math formulas or anything involving putting specific characters in specific places on a 2-D bounded space. It shows you text. It doesn't do tables well, either. You can use Amazon's email service to convert PDFs to Kindle's AZW, but that program has to guess about the text flow on the PDF page. Depending on how the PDF document is put together, the result may be readable or may not. The converter does a decent job with simple formats, but columns and footnotes and margin comments confuse it. A device that displays letter-sized formatted documents like PDF, PostScript, or (to a lesser extent) Word docs is a very different machine, and won't be of much use to Kindle's target audience: people who want to read books while they travel without having to carry books around.