Amazon has a new electronic book called Kindle. It looks pretty good and has good battery life and can store a lot of books. The wireless Internet (limited to buying and downloading reading material) with no extra costs is a huge benefit I think. I like that they backup your data for you as well.
The one question I have that I don’t see is if you can give a book to someone else when you are done reading it. I could live with it not being on my reader afterwards as that only seems fair.
It is expensive though and I wonder if the $400 price will be a show stopper. Time will tell I guess.
Kyle and I were talking about the Kindle this morning. It’s pretty cool.
I have a hunch (but no specific information!) that you can’t share books, which is pretty crippling. It apparently shares the screen from the Sony Reader, which is an *amazing* e-ink display. I wonder what sort of DRM is involved.
Kyle and I wager that these things are going to be “hacked” in short order, such as having a general-purpose web browser and support for Project Gutenberg.
I wonder what sort of contract they have for the cell modems. It’s interesting because it mirrors an idea I had — tens of thousands of devices that would sit idle 99% of the time. My concern is, say, 5 years down the road — what if the deal falls through? My past thoughts called for trying to negotiate a rate like $2/month/device. I’m frustrated that there’s just no WiFi. I like the idea of not *requiring* it, but frankly, I’m within range of WiFi 95% of the time I’d be using it. I’d get a faster download, Sprint would have a (nominally) lower network load, and I’d have support if the Amazon-Sprint deal ever falls through.
You’re right on the price, though: it’d be a lot better if they’d bring it down.
Oh, what’s the deal with the crap at the bottom of your posts?
I’m playing with StatCounter – On my screen it is showing up with a little logo and a link to my stats. Are you seeing garbage?
I think our definitions of “garbage” differ. 😉
No worries; I just do a little HTML magic on the front page.