Kindle, Kindle, Kindle a Flame

January 4th, 2008 · No Comments

Ok so this post isn’t about starting fires and it isn’t about romance. If you guessed it is about Amazon’s Kindle then you would be correct my friend!

I first started seeing things about the Kindle shortly before Christmas when they released them. From the screenshots I wasn’t overly impressed at first but after going to the product page (see the link above) and researching the product some and watching some of the videos Amazon has I was impressed with the capabilities. I read a good number of books, almost always in paperback since I don’t want to pay the hardcover prices for books. E-Book readers such as those found on traditional PDAs have never impressed me much and my eyes start to hurt if I have to read an entire book on an LCD screen. Judging by the screenshots, technical specs, and actual reviews from users of the Kindle it looks like e-paper is the way to go. Instead of being backlit like a traditional LCD, e-paper technology actually moves physical objects around to match what it is displaying. This means it is a wholly organic viewing experience in the sense that it is not pixels being lit up but physical pixels being moved around. This allows for less eye strain and more readability. The down-side is that there is a small delay as the e-paper re-arranges itself from the videos i’ve watched.

I was sorely tempted before Christmas to get one of these for my mom to try out since she reads about 5 books a week (or more) consistently and is constantly checking things out from the library and buying books from online bookstores. The only issue is at this point is the holy grail of a device like this would be to link into the public library who could digitize copies and then “timecode” them somehow to expire after 2 weeks of checkout unless renewed. That functionality is not there yet of course since the libraries don’t have digital copies of books (at least none of mine do) so they can’t provide them to you. I’m sure there are numerous DRM (digital rights management) issues as well involved with that idea.

One issue that I thought would be silly about this type of reader would be obtaining new content since you’d have to hook it up via USB to your computer or have wi-fi or something all the time. Turns out, Amazon thought of that already and it uses Sprint’s Cellular network to provide fairly high speed internet almost anywhere in the U.S. According to numerous reviews i’ve read about the device it only takes a few seconds to download an entire book from Amazon over that network and you can subscribe to things like newspapers and magazines and have them automatically download into your Kindle.

Once they get back in stock and if I have money to spend, i’m planning on getting one to try it out. They do sell most of their best selling books in the formats for the Kindle for $9.99 so its cheaper than buying the hardcover but more expensive than your normal paperback. The biggest issue I see with the books they are selling is that they have DRM on them. That means that if for some reason down the road they decide you aren’t allowed to read those books anymore you lose access to them. At least with a physical paperback or hardcover I can store it on my bookshelf for decades and read it whenever I want.

Another issue I could see with the Kindle is I myself like to read books while taking a bath, I find it relaxing but I highly doubt i’d want to dangle a $400 piece of expensive equipment over the bathtub for fear of getting it wet. With books, you get a page wet the page curls or wrinkles when it dries - not a huge deal. With the Kindle, you get it wet it might short out and die and you are out your investment.

I’d be interested in hearing of anyone else’s experiences with the device before I take the plunge, but I can definitely see things moving this direction as this is what I see as the first step toward content delivery being like in the movie Minority Report where the news papers were updating with new stories in real-time. With the cellular updating capabilities in this device combined with e-paper’s ability to be printed onto foldable/rollable plastics the idea of a wirelessly updating newspaper is something that I think can be done successfully in the next 5-10 years.