Kindle

Has anyone ever heard of or seen one of these before?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154 ... kinw_dp_gy

 

I have mixed feelings about this. It would be nice to travel and not have the extra space used since I'm constantly reading, but if it breaks, you've lost all your books. Also, I'm still trying to see if you can print. Since it can come with word, I wonder if you can print the books as well as your own material. Realize this is from a person who still does not own an ipod.

 

Thanks for the info. and opinion. I did read the new Kindle also lets you highlight and annotate, multiple bookmark, etc.

 

I too have mixed feelings. ; One thing to note, in theory you keep the books you purchased on their online site, but I read a report by an irate customer that bought a new model Kindle and somehow lost all their previous purchases. ; I don't know if that's true or not, but I would suggest caution until that can be verified.

I am FIRMLY against DRM protected content. ; It is designed to allow content providers to sell the same content to people time and time again. ; Or, to look at it another way, for Amazon to be able to force people to stay on their proprietary hardware because if they jump to Sony they lose all of their purchases.

The same has been the issue with DRM protected music. ; Say you bought some of the MS "plays for sure" stuff in the past. ; Well it doesn't play on MS's new Zune platform. ; DRM systems and formats are coming and going, they have limited shelflifes. ; Which is just what they want. ; I've heard many suggestions that the record companies are still regreting coming out with the CD format. ; It's a high quality format that basically lasts forever. ; Once they got over their initial "mp3s, OMG! ; It must be stopped or it will kill us all!" panic they realized that drm protected digital music was a way to sell restricted rights to music that they can sell to people over and over again.

But you can look beyond that. ; I've considered the Kindle strictly as a way to view my own content. ; In that way there's something else that bothers me. ; The basic $300 model does not have the ability to view PDFs directly. ; You have to send them in to Amazon, then they send you back a converted file that you then have to load onto the device. ; It's a free process, they at least don't charge for it (they have a different service that uploads the converted file to the Kindle directly, that does cost money), but come on.. that was just an excuse so they could come out with a more expensive model that can natively view PDFs, The DX model. ; At a price premium of $180 more. ; It's also got a bigger screen, but you have to see that that's a gambit to get people to pay for the more expensive model when the cheaper one is really all they need.

There is one very interesting thing about the Kindle, though. ; It offers free access to wikipedia through the cellular data link. ; For life.

I saw a web comic somewhere that made a joke about that, suggesting that it's like the Guide in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ; In that story the guide was an electronic book that was updated live by researchers in the field. ; Well.. okay, technically wikipedia forbids original research, but you gotta admit it's a similar concept.

I also want to comment on the display technology. ; It's very neat. ; It has no backlighting, so it's no use in the dark unless you want to use a booklight, but in well lit areas it's very neat. ; It really looks like print. ; The first time you hold one of these you'll take the reader and tilt it at extreme angles to try to see the print fade like it does with most LCD displays. ; And it won't.

The technology is what allows the long battery life, it only uses power to change the print being displayed, not to simply leave it displayed. ; But the downside is that it's slow to change, don't think this is anything like an LCD display. ; You see it blur and you see mixes of both pages while you're changing from one to the next. ; But it's really not an issue for book reading applications.

I should specify that I've never used a Kindle, this is from my experience testing out a Sony Reader.


I want one of those units.. I'd be willing to accept a cheaper model without the wireless, although the free wikipedia offer really sweetens the deal. ; But I have to admit that this is nothing that my phone doesn't do already. ; It CAN view PDFs. ; It can of course view wikipedia. ; And I can use it to read e-books in the dark, something I actually have found myself doing.

The big deal about these readers is that they have a larger screen which is better for casual reading. ; If I found myself needing (or wanting) to read large volumes of text from an electronic format more often I'd seriously consider getting a Kindle. ; I'm really mad at them for reserving native PDF compatibility for their expensive model, but I suppose I could deal with the limitation.

And if you're happy accepting DRM limitations with the understanding of how that locks you in to their platform for the future or else you lose your entire investment, at least it can be said that the e-books are cheaper than print copies. ; Which can't be said for online music sales. ; If you're a big reader you probably could save money in the long run going with a format like this.

But this goes back to what I said in the beginning. ; I've read books that belonged to my parents. ; I'm talking old, worn out, yellowed print copies. ; These things last. ; They don't get outmoded by new technology. ; If you build up a library it maintains its value. ; With e-books.. well.. you're not getting a book, you're getting a non transferable license. ; You can't loan it to anyone, you can't sell it.

One final note.. sorry, I know I'm rambling. ; My local library system has put an interesting twist on the e-book concept. ; They lend e-books, as well as audio files. ; And video, actually. ; They are of course DRM locked, but if I'm getting it as part of a library system I'm less prone to protest it. ; It makes sense there, it allows a library to go with digital distribution while still being able to lend copies to people. ; I haven't tried it yet, but it appears to support only computer viewing (only MS OS use, possibly, I see no mention of Macs in the system requirements) or PDA and smartphone use. ; So, again.. my phone lets me do something else that the Kindle wouldn't. ; Because Amazon gets no profit from allowing people to view library books on it. ; A proper e-book reader device would be better for such a use, my phone's screen is awfully small. ; But until I find such a device that would allow me to do that, I have no other option.

In any case, most of the e-books the library system has require full computer OSes. ; The PDA collection is relatively small. ; I'd suggest a netbook would be more appropriate for viewing them. ; And frankly.. a netbook can cost about the same as a Kindle. ; That's something else to consider.

 

Oh yeah.. I remember that story.

Legally I don't think I can fault them for what they did. ; The book in question was published illegally, the publisher didn't have the rights. ; It's an interesting question, though, what would have happened if that had been a print book. ; If I had bought a book in a store and it later turned out that for some reason it hadn't been legal to sell it in the first place.

It's quite likely they'd have no way to trace me down, if I payed with cash anyway. ; In that case it's academic, but what if I had, say, payed with a credit card or used some sort of frequent buyer card or whatever? ; I can imagine it being not too far away from, say, stolen property, or pirated works. ; The fact that I payed money for it doesn't give it legitimacy. ; Nor does the fact that I didn't know there was anything wrong with it excuse it. ; It doesn't put me at fault, but I'm not sure I'd be able to keep the book if it was tracked down.

Eh.. I don't know why I'm going so far to try to defend them after all the bile I spilled about the DRM and PDF limitations. ; But I guess.. if they hadn't had this ability and all those illegal copies got out into the wild Amazon might have been liable for tremendous damages. ; I'm guessing in the development period one of their lawyers woke up in the middle of the night from a fevered dream, having realized the potential exposure they faced if a problem like this happened. ; I would tend to feel that whoever tried to publish the work illegally should face the consequences.. but you know how our legal system works.. they go after the person who did it, and the people he did it with, and so on.

 

isnt someone taking amazon to court, because they deleted a book remotely at the moment?

 

That would seem to be a fair point, but, well..

Once again, we aren't dealing with physical property. ; Perhaps my analogy was flawed from the start because of that. ; We are dealing with a license to view something. ; This is part of the reason why I so strongly dislike this DRM model of distribution.

As a purchaser of a Kindle book you don't own the file itself. ; You own the right to view that file. ; I'm not sure about this, but I think most DRM schemes have some sort of ability to remotely revoke that right for whatever reason.


As a PC gamer I'm caught up in this same thing. ; I have, only grudgingly, started using a digital distribution system known as Steam. ; It's inextricably tied in to the Half Life 2 series of games, and I'd eventually decided I wanted to play that series through. ; Even though you purchase it on DVD you have to activate it online, much as you do Windows OS's. ; I have numerous problems with this, but the greatest is that if you read the fine print you see that the reserve the right to terminate your license AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON. ; I'm pretty sure this is one of those "just in case" clauses, so that they can do it if some unforeseen circumstance pops up that they didn't already have the legalese to cover. ; They can't just go terminating people's licenses for any reason, they wouldn't last long as a software provider that way.

But what this means is that if they have some reason to terminate my license, they can basically shut off my access to the games that I had payed for. ; The software is still on my system, but not only do I not own that (you don't anyway, even in normal distribution schemes all you have is a license), but I could no longer use it either. ; This is entirely legal, dislike it though I may. ; They don't have to enter my house, I am using their service and have agreed to their terms that gives them the right to do this.

I'd be curious to see what sort of fine print you have to agree to to set up a Kindle account. ; Given the fact that this capability is built in to the system I'm going to guess that it's reflected in the legalese.


I would say that the take home message here is that the opposition to DRM systems isn't just some hippy/pirate thing. ; They have real repercussions for the way we view personal property. ; DRM just isn't about preventing piracy, it's about controlling the market. ; If you buy a CD you have the right to, say, rip the music to a digital format and put it on an mp3 player. ; You appear to also have the right to do things like make a ring tone out of it and whatever.

Not so if you buy a DRM protected digital download. ; The media companies have bypassed the concept of fair use. ; The simple act of putting a protection system on the file means that they can dictate how you use it. ; You can thank the DMCA for this, simply breaking a "lock" becomes illegal, it has no bearing on whether you would otherwise have the legal right to use the media in whatever form you wish.

I'm not even commenting on the appropriateness of 1984 being the book that caused all the hubbub.

In any case, Amazon says they won't do this any more. ; Whether you trust them or not is up to you, but it does seem that this was a royal screwup on their part and they know it. ; They're trying to market the Kindle as a friendly reading buddy. ; To associate it with this kind of big brother style action will haunt them for years. ; I fault them for taking such action, but I think it was more of a clumsy mistake than a malicious act. ; In any case there are the lawsuits under way now, I do hope that they can set a precedent against this sort of thing happening in the future. ; But if the Kindle accounts were covered by the appropriate legalese.. I don't know if they have any legal ground to stand on.

 

WOW! I didn't expect so much feedback. Thanks for all the info and opinions guys. I'm not ready to buy one, but it certainly has possibilities if they clear up some of these issues.

 

Getting back to the concept of e-book reader options...

I saw a story about Sony coming out with a cheaper reader, priced at $200. ; It has a smaller screen and no expandable storage capacity, and no Sony models have wireless capability yet.

Also I just found out that Sony is letting their e-book readers use titles from the Google Books Project, over a million public domain books that you can download for free and use on Sony devices.