Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Amazon Kindle: Kool or Krap?

November 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Amazon Kindle: Kool or Krap?

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Amazon today announced their eBook reader, known as the Kindle. It's a paperback book sized device that can store a couple of hundred books and download NY Times bestsellers for $10 a shot over the wireless EVDO network. You can also subscribe to magazines and newspapers. Since it's got wireless built in, and a thumb keyboard, you don't need to sync with a PC to get more content. It has a nice black on white display that works well in daylight, using the same E-Ink technology as found on Sony's competing Reader Digital Book which costs $100 less.

For those who travel a lot, I could see this being quite a useful device, since you don't have to bring two weeks worth of books on a trip.

However, there are some drawbacks. First of all, it's a proprietary device, which is ironic since under the hood it's running Linux. It's not clear whether you can add books from project Gutenberg. (You can email PDFs, Word documents or JPG's and then amazon converts them to its proprietary format.) And even though it's got wireless and you can get Wikipedia, it's not a great general purpose browser. There's no RSS reader. Also, you have to pay to subscribe to blogs. Though it's not much ($1-2 per month), it could easily add up.

And you won't be able to get any arbitrary blog, just those that Amazon choses to sell. (Would Infoworld rate? Maybe. GuitarVibe? Doubtful.)

But the big kicker: It costs $399. That's a lot of dosh for a gadget. Who knows though? Maybe this will be on the gift list for IT staff this holiday season. Or do we wait until version 2.0? If anyone has used one, give us the details...

Update:

Meanwhile, the blogosphere seems divided on this one. Guy Kawasaki likes it. (And why not, they're making his site Truemors available via Kindle.) On the other hand Seth Godin thinks they missed the boat by not including his books and blogs for free.

Posted by Zack Urlocker on November 19, 2007 12:14 PM

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