[FoRK] Re: Kindle first impressions

[Jeff Bone]

On May 5, 2008, at 12:04 PM, Tom Higgins wrote:
>
> IN the case of the Kindle the crux of the biscuit seems to be the  
> lock down
> and tie in to a service for much of what makes it it. The OS is not  
> so much
> the issue as is the fact that the things you are reading are  
> crippled in
> ways the previous method (dead tree) is not.
>
> My newly bought copy of Little Brother does not become unreadable if  
> my
> license key goes tits up or is revoked. Come to think of it the  
> author of
> said book has thought of such things and makes most of his works  
> available
> as bits under a CC license.
>
> My newly bough copy of Little Brother, or any dead tree book in that  
> case,
> can be passed down to another person to read (thus built in good
> neighborism) or I can resell it at such bookstores as Powell's,  
> trade it for
> others on places like BookMooch or leave it in the wild for a random  
> act of
> finding ala Bookcrossing.

Sure, sure.  I suppose my point is the lack of all that isn't so big a  
negative as to outweigh the benefits (to me.)

> It seems the KindleKindleStore has learned a lot from the iPod/iTunes
> economy. Sadly it seems many consumers have not learned from it.

Perhaps they HAVE learned from it, and just don't agree (with your  
line of thinking) about the relative weighting of the priorities and  
tradeoffs...  What's more likely?  That those iTunes using masses  
don't understand, or that they just don't care (as much?)

> The numbers here are telling. The Kindle costs about 400$us...for  
> this price
> you are able to read books and otherwise printed material BUT only via
> amazons terms.

Which are what, exactly?  I don't find it onerous for them to foot the  
WAN bill for stuff I buy from them but charge a tiny vig --- $0.10 ---  
$0.10!!! --- for transferring other material.  In what way is that  
unreasonable?  For xsakes, --> THIS <-- word cost me far more than  
$0.10 to write!  Can you understand that this sort of thing is an  
attempt to at least recover costs, not to say (ew) make a small  
profit, on providing a valuable service?  That it's not necessarily  
some horrible evil plan?


> Any comparison  is moot though because its the quality of the screen  
> and
> connivance that makes the Kindle...right? So why not a device that  
> has the
> screen quality without paying extra for the gift of being locked in  
> and tied
> down by DRM?

This is the part I'm sensing you're not getting.  For me, *the stack*  
--- WhisperNet and WAN-based instant delivery of purchases *from  
Amazon* --- is specifically where the added value is, for me.  I'm not  
a big fan of e-ink, though this device is a lot better than previous  
ones in terms of displays.  But it's some of the very things that you  
object to that is, for me, what makes the device worthwhile.

> What about a device that supposedly is connected to the great wide  
> world
> intertubes that does not charge you to read blogs.

Again, the experimental browser on the device has AFAICT full and free  
access to the Web.  It sort of sucks, and I'd like it to be better,  
and I'd like the device to support and opportunistically use Wi-Fi  
when available instead of WhisperNet.  But those are all nice-to- 
haves...  this device isn't primarily for that.

Besides which, this isn't a particularly good device for reading blogs  
for my workflow.  I tag and bookmark *almost every* entry I read...   
handhelds are read-mostly.

> So 400$ gets me

For me --- instant gratification from Amazon for (many) books.  That's  
it.  And for me, that's worth it.  YMMV...

jb