Kindle

[cjsmith]

I finally figured out what the Kindle would be good for.

See, I read paperbacks. I wouldn't want to carry a Kindle around because it is larger than a paperback. If I know I'm going to be waiting a bunch, I'll just carry a book. Duh. I also wouldn't prefer to buy a Kindle-book because it's more expensive than a paperback. PLUS the thing can run out of batteries, or break if you drop it. AND it's got a $399 start-up cost. What's to like?

I figured it out.

Airplanes.

Every December I fly from California to Boston, from Boston to Louisville, and from Louisville to California again (or the other way 'round). Every leg of this trip has two flights. Every flight includes a bunch of waiting time in the terminal. I can easily wipe out two paperback books on one leg, often three if it's a long one or a plane is delayed (and when, in December, are they not?).

A Kindle is a lot smaller and lighter than NINE paperback books.

It's still not worth $399 to me, not by a long shot. But now I can see that it's worth more than zero.

Comments

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

Feh, I have six novels on a z22. That cost me less than 100 bucks, too!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Wow, what's its screen like? The thing Kindle did right was the e-paper screen. There's no WAY I'd read anything the size of a novel on an LCD.

[tattermuffin.livejournal.com]

My palm pilot is smaller than a paperback, cost me a whopping $150, and while books do cost me almost "hardcopy" prices (unless they're out of copyright, in which case I get them free at gutenberg.org) the Palm (which has more than just one use - calendar, games, etc) and batteries that last long enough for reading on flights across the US) still cost me less than $400 even counting in all the books I've paid for for it. I think I've got more than 50 books on it right now ...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That's better than the Kindle in every way EXCEPT the e-paper screen. My Palm's screen would be pretty hard on the eyes for a big novel. Do you find it tiring to read books on the Palm?

[tattermuffin.livejournal.com]

No, in fact I prefer reading on my Palm - it has a "dimmer switch" for turning down the brightness which I do when reading before bed (and which extends the life of the charge in the battery). I take it with me to lunch too - so much easier than bringing books to work, etc.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

My vision sucks (near and far), and I can see how a Kindle would help with that a *lot*. But I'm not ready to spend $399 just to start, y'know?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I hear ya. That's the early adopter markup, I'm sure...

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

That's what I've used my Sony EBook reader for, and I've been happy with it. OTOH, I haven't used it enough to justify the cost. OTTH, if you're on the fence, the Sony may be a plausible option--it has the nice electronic-ink screen, like Kindle (which is so much better than LCD you can't compare them), just without the wireless downloading.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'd skip the wireless downloading for a price difference. How big is the Sony physically?

It's hard to justify a lot of money for a device I'd use once a year, but if/when this sort of thing comes down in price, I could imagine owning one.

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

It's about the same width and height as a trade paperback, but about half as thick. I have last year's model--I'll bring it next time we're at the same social engagement--and I think the new one is similar. (The website says it's 7" x 5" x 0.5".) I tink the MSRP is $300, $100 less than the Kindle--but I expect they'll be dropping the price further, since it's Last Year's Thing.

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

Oh, and it does read plain-text files, as well as PDFs and RTF--though I haven't yet found the ideal way to format files for display, if I'm rolling my own instead of buying a downloadable. But regardless, this means free-text like Gutenberg is available. (If I can find an HTML version of the book, I open it in MS Word, bump up the text to 14-point, and save it as RTF--that works pretty well for display.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

WAY better, then. Cool. I ain't buyin' no Kindle.

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

Would you really skip the wireless downloading for the price? If you wanted a book for your Sony device, you'd have to pull out your computer to transfer the content. I guess that would be fine if you planned ahead, but being able to get content wirelessly would be awesome.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, you've absolutely got a good point. For me the main application is long long airplane rides, so I'd need to plan ahead either way. I agree that the wireless downloading is a great feature that I'd want if it were free. I just don't know how much I'd be willing to pay for it.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Unfortunate name.

Kindle sounds like 'kindling'

Scrap bits to start a fire?

A bonfire of books?

Fahrenheit 451?

I'd still prefer a simple novel to carry along with me on a flight or whatever. But I see that customer demand is so high, that those units are out of stock!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's the latest e-gadget craze. If it had an apple on it it would be $900 and would still be out of stock. There are days I'm glad I'm mostly immune to the early adopter crazes!

[wooddragon.livejournal.com]

Reading a novel on a Palm always seemed like a bad idea, though I have a nephew who did it for years. I'm still not a huge fan of reading on computer screens. I do some of it, but for more extensive reading, I prefer paper (and I'm an inveterate highlighter when I'm doing research).

But for the application you describe, it might be worth it.

And the name is weird...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The Kindle's "e-paper" screen is MUCH BETTER than other screens. I ran into a guy at the cafeteria the other day who showed me the NYTimes on it. The screen might be nearly as easy on the eyes as paper.

Highlighting, of course, is right out.

[eichin.livejournal.com]

actually the reason the older sony eink readers had keyboards *was* for highlighting, or at least bookmark-notes. (They also had "print to eink" - the reader couldn't handle anything particularly advanced, but there was a print driver that would cook anything you could print down to ebook format. windows-only, which was funny because the box itself was a somewhat-hackable linux box...)

(The kindle, on the other hand, has a keyboard so that you can shop for more books over the built-in amazon-funded EVDO connection... really, market-wise it's a direct port of the iPod model, to books, except for the "rip your existing collection" part :-)

As for free stuff, as I understand it Amazon does have a free service to convert a document, send you back the converted form, and let you upload it via USB. They also have a for-pay service where you send them a document and they convert it and send it over-the-air to your kindle directly; similarly you can get some online sources that way (probably how the NYTimes got on there.) There are also people already selling converted Gutenberg books for $1 or so, because there's always a market...

Early adopter type that I am, the kindle doesn't interest me, not so much because of the DRM, but because I can't sanely feed it my existing library :-) However, I'm likely to get one for my mom, simply because she reads a lot the sort of pop/mass market books that amazon will *have* for this... and because she doesn't have to buy (rarely available) "large print" editions, she can just crank up the font size.

(It also looks like they don't have any cookbooks for it yet :-)

[mithriltabby]

I have over 6700 books at home, and am running low on space to keep them. I just want to get a good ebook reader and start converting my collection to digital form...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I've become more ruthless, I suspect. Rob and I together have gotten rid of a lot, and now we have something like five hundred linear feet of books... um... okay. Maybe I have a lot. :-)

Another problem, of course, is availability of titles in the appropriate form.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

er, maybe closer to three hundred feet... Dangit. Now I gotta go count bookcases.

[layer.livejournal.com]

i tend to read trade paperback not mass market so it's about the same size and i really like the idea of being able to just download another book when i finish one which is inevitably shortly into a very long wait.

but you're right. $399 is a lot. especially when you can get just about anything from the library for free with a little notice.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no "library borrowing" is another downside.

I'm sure the price for similar stuff will come down. Early adopters always pay top dollar. But it needs to be WAY down.

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

does this mean you're doing the CA-MA-KY circuit again this year? you have my number, so we definitely need to try to get together! maybe with ericainohio??

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

We sure are! I do have your number. The KY part of the circuit is complicated this year by the arrival of my parents -- yeah, they're coming from MA to KY to meet Rob's parents for the first time ever. (We never did the marriage ceremony thing.) So for a day and a half we'll be 100% in Family Mode. Then we'll do whatever we need to do to help Rob's folks around the house (she's not particularly big/strong and he's like eighty and in a wheelchair). And then it's quite possible we can do a get-together!

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

well, we can give it a try, and if it works out, great! if not, well, we'll try again another time, or during a non-holiday time. January brings a fresh batch of vacation time for me!

[ken_r]

Have any time to spare during the MA part? It'd be nice to see you...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I might, indeed. I should cobble together some kind of group thingy.

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, $399 will buy a lot of new and used books. AND it won't read PDFs, probably won't link to Project Gutenberg (getting people to pay per book is part of the plan), and with DRMed books, when the device breaks down years from now you won't have any hard backup. Compared to a book you can really sit on and still read.. Well, you probably thought of this too.

On the other hand you won't run out of room storing eBooks on bookshelves! But still you can't lend a copy to your friend with "You HAVE to read this!"

So I dunno...

It'd be cool, if, whenever you buy a hard copy of a book, that it'd come with an e-book (in the format of your choice) for FREE... ya know?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole DRM versus backup capability thing is another serious problem. I don't have an iPod, either.

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

You can email files Word documents to yourself. I imagine you could save the Gutenberg titles in that format and send them to yourself...

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought. But then I've spent a lot of time flying back and forth across this impressively large country.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*nod* Big place. Whole width of continent. Long flight. *nod*

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

deyo reads on his Treo, which has a small screen, but he likes carrying around the internet access, library, and phone all at once.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

So would I, but I am guessing I'd have a heck of a time reading on that screen.

I might get a Treo soon. My company has begun supporting those, which means I can ditch the random RTSP-capable phone I bought when I joined.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad ePaper has finally hit the mass market (I've been waiting for it forever), but I refuse to support anything that has DRM baked in.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a serious problem. I don't own an iPod, either. Sony eBook, perhaps, as shoutingboy mentions.

[the-gadgetman.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing from the iPod comments you object to DRM in principle (which I totally understand!), so be aware the Sony also uses DRM. But, like the iPod, it also supports non-DRM formats.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that the iPod could support non-DRM formats. Is it iTunes that won't give you anything but the DRM format? It's been so long since I even considered looking, I've forgotten!

[firecat]

iTunes has some stuff available in non-DRM formats.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking it might be good for students with textbooks, which are big and bulky sometimes and not always needed in future years.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Good point!

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I can see your point about how it would reduce luggage volume, but I can't stand reading anything lengthy on any type of screen, be it LCD or CRT. I'm a tree-killer because I'll print out long scientific/academic papers from their PDF versions because I don't want to stare at a screen to read them. I don't know if it's a vision thing or what.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the special e-ink screen is WAY better than LCD or CRT. I don't know if it's as good as trees. I suspect not. Almost nothing's as good as trees. But it's a lot closer!

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

I TOTALLY want a Kindle, for just the reason you described. Plus, the newspaper/magazine thing. I have way too many paper publications and would love to be able to carry around one device. Making notations, highlighting, etc., are also very appealing features.

I had my eye on the Sony device, but it's still too expensive and the Kindle looks like more of what I'd want in such a device.

Guess I'll save up my pennies and hope the price drops soon...