Comments on: Why I won’t touch the Kindle 2 with a ten foot pole.

By: Matthew V

Matthew V — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:23:09 +0000

I’m not sure if I will purchase a Kindle 2 or wait for an e-reader that is more “open” but just as convenient. I do know that I will own some form of portable device soon.

I’m very fond of my personal library. There is no way I would give it up. However, I am also getting tired of filling my live with objects. Half a year ago I began getting rid of all the little things I’m not emotionally invested in and keeping (and purchasing) only things that really speak to me. In the case of my library, at least 25% of my shelf space was taken up with books that I didn’t really care about, I just happened to own them. Those are now in a local library. Today, every book I have represents who I am. I love it. I’ll never stop buying high quality copies of books that I truly love. I’m willing to go portable with everything else.

By: Tudor Gabriel

Tudor Gabriel — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:58:40 +0000

There is always Sony Reader. You can buy your non DRM pdf’s from any store. You’re not forced to just use the Sony’s shop.

This way you have a readable copy of the book sitting on your computer, in case your Sony Reader’s SD card is not working anymore.

By: Dank

Dank — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:20:52 +0000

I am very interested in the idea of a reader, one that will load a PDF or .txt or what ever I can throw at it.

I want a letter sized screen.

Is it going to happen? Probably not as everyone is so hung up over the idea of books that they are overlooking the utility of a device that will display and store things that were never going to be books.

Documentation that only exists in PDF or latex or HTML. Whats my option now? Dual monitors? A laptop?

I got flour in my GFs laptop keyboard because I was using a recipe I found online. Print it out? Give me a break.

I was real disappointed by the new Kindle, the Sony is not much better. Both are too small and the designs are so 1990.

What to do? How about just buying an E-Ink display and hacking up a prototype? The 6″ version is the only size available and they want $3000 for a dev-kit.

Not going to happen, and quite frankly they are going to fail if that’s their attitude on pricing for developers.

By: Kalid

Kalid — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:59:34 +0000

I agree with you regarding the DRM, but I think the price argument is less clear.

The ebook reader is a premium product (not an investment) so I’m not sure it makes sense to discuss how many books you’d need to “break even” on the device. There are numerous convenience factors in a digital format (search, portability, etc.) which an equivalent pile of books don’t have. The kindle (and ebooks in general) is still in the early adopter phase for people willing to splurge, and not about being cheaper than the alternative.

By: masukomi

masukomi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:14:04 +0000

Tim: Yes there is free content out in the world, however None of the books I want to buy are available for free. It doesn't matter how much other free stuff there is if essentially none of it is anything you want to read. It may as well be written in a dead language for all it affects me. The vast majority of my disposable income is spent on books, but I simply can't buy any of the books I want in non-DRMd versions. Not won't, CAN'T.

By: masukomi

masukomi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:08:12 +0000

Granz: there are no free versions of the books I want to read unless I’m willing to steal them, which I’m not, but even then most of them aren’t even available in some free pirated version either.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:07:47 +0000

Kindle is not totally DRM. You can purchase from Amazon or load files in text format via the USB cable. Hundreds of non-DRM titles are available from sites like iBiblio. Give the Kindle a chance – it’s completely worth it.

By: masukomi

masukomi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:06:44 +0000

Greg: Yes, the portability is great, until your kindle finally breaks and suddenly you can’t read ANYTHING you’ve bought, or their stop supporting it and you can only read the ones you happen to have loaded on it at the moment.

By: masukomi

masukomi — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:06:35 +0000

Jack: While you say “…my entire purchased library is always available at Amazon…” you miss the fact that this is entirely at the whim of Amazon. MS said the same thing about drm tunes you’d bought from them and then they dropped the DRM scheme they’d been encoded with. As for “… i should be able to get the data in another format if the kindle format is EOL’d” what you really mean is you HOPE you can get it in another format. There’s nothing in your purchase agreement with Amazon saying that they’ll go through the trouble of exporting your data if they EOL the product AND they probably couldn’t even if they wanted to because they don’t own the content. They just sell it. They’d have to get agreements with all the publishers to allow that.

By: justin kruger

justin kruger — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:00:23 +0000

You are forgetting that years ago we wrote about the travesty of giving up books in scifi, so now we are all on a plot to do so. It seems that all of the things we write cautionary tails of in scifi are almost more likely to come true.

The Kindle is very Fahrenheit 451. Just imagine if the government wanted to censor a book. The kindle does have the ability for amazon to delete remotely items on your kindle. Imagine what happens when the government starts poking around in what books you are reading, and feeding that into a prediction network tied to other criminals?

The fear of the masses will drive the government to protect them and make them lazy.