Amazon Kindle E-Book Reader gets official

[MetalMat]

Ehh, not for me. I will continue to stick to regular books and spend the 400 bucks on lap dances.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Here's a question for you guys:

Do you think that you will miss media "hardware" in the future? Our books, movies, photos, music, and documents are all being digitzed with electronic readers, players, and storage systems. Eventually there will be nothing left to clutter up our living rooms, haha. I fondly remember flipping through my parent's record and audiocassette tape collection, or browsing through our bookcase of VHS tapes and DVD movies, or leafing through the book collection. Our kids will have the opportunity to live in an all-digital world thanks to Media Centers, Kindles, iPods, computers, etc. My wife likes not having the clutter of audio and video discs and whatnot, but she refuses to give up books. She prefers the experience of having a bound, published work in her hands, versus an electronic e-reader. I, on the other hand, like both. Although it's a bit creepy to think of my future living room as just having a couch and perhaps a flatscreen. No books, records, tapes, DVDs, photo albums, etc. to clutter up, or to perhaps enliven, our living environment.

How do you feel about it?

I embrace the digital age, but think physical media should still be kept around for those who like it. There's something to be said about the old book smell. The wonderful feeling you get when you just happen to flip exactly to the page you left off at. The feel of an actual written letter in your hand. Being able to look back at your old children's books - Clifford, Narnia, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - all tattered and well-read.

There will always be a place for physical media for the sentimental. For things that don't deserve sentimentality from the user, well, that's where digital can come in.

 

[xboxist]

I would love to have one, but as many people have mentioned already the price point on both the hardware and the books is just too high. Can't justify it. If I bought an e-book, I'd feel like I'm buying something substantially less than an actual book. They shouldn't be priced as near-equals. You could argue that you're paying for convenience, and to that I say bullshit. You already paid for convenience by plopping down $300+ for the reader.

 

[ChrisIsBored]

Although I have a hard time justifying spending $360 on this device I purchased one anyways, it should arrive near the end of the month. I used a portion of my income tax return, so i'm considering it a gift from the US Government. LoL!

Anyways, I'm a student full time and also work full time, but i'm going to soon reduce that to part time work due to the overwhelming nature of school. And while that chunk of money could easily go towards more important things ie. rent, food, alcohol, the possibilities of this device to free up the clutter of my existing library just absolutely thrills me.

I'm also in the process of moving at the end of this month, and at the moment I have 6 small boxes full of books. I consider myself an occasional reader who just never throws away a good book, but 6 boxes comes to a scale weight of more than my own body weight! So the possibility of getting rid of all that and switching to a digital format just makes sense to me (especially because I will be moving again within a year, and again after finishing my degree).

 

[ggnl]

Looks like a neat gadget, but I won't get one. I like books.

 

[lokiju]

Stanza is also the first program that has a built-in export feature especially for the Amazon Kindle. Your PDFs, Word documents, and other eBooks can all be exported to the Kindle's native format and copied over to the device using a USB cable. Get a paper-quality reading experience for all your electronic documents with this innovative new device!

Well that adds to the usability big time IMO.

From here at the bottom of the page.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

If it were possible to rent/borrow books on a Kindle I'd buy one n a heartbeat. I usually tear through books and rarely re-read them, so I've just been a regular at my local library till now.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: lokiju

Stanza is also the first program that has a built-in export feature especially for the Amazon Kindle. Your PDFs, Word documents, and other eBooks can all be exported to the Kindle's native format and copied over to the device using a USB cable. Get a paper-quality reading experience for all your electronic documents with this innovative new device!

Well that adds to the usability big time IMO.

From here at the bottom of the page.

And there are other places to purchase e-books from that are cheaper than Amazon that you can convert over. I'm not sure how good the converter is but I have read enough people recommending other vendors to assume that it isn't too much of a problem.

 

[Eos]

EVDO is not required to read the content. Users in Montana and Alaska have no EVDO and read books fine. There is no phoning home each time a book is opened.

There is no charge for using EVDO. It's free to use.

You can download tons of free books that are not pirated. Amazon is not the only location to get content.

.mobi and .prc are supported as long the file is not DRM'd. Most .pdf files can be converted and read on Kindle. There is still no charge to e-mail the file to Amazon, have them convert to Kindle format, then e-mail it to you or send wirelessly to Kindle. The e-mail back to yourself option has always been free. The wording is in place to charge for the conversion and wireless transfer, but it's not being charged at this time.

The battery life is very good. Up to 2 weeks on a charge with very little EVDO connection. This would be drastically reduced if a backlight was used. You couldn't read your DTB in the dark either. Sit under a light like before. To me, this is more of a book than an electronic device.

 

[QueBert]

I might get one could get me back to reading again. Too lazy to pick up a book and hate reading on a computer screen for more than a bit here and bit there.

 

[eplebnista]

Still too expensive for me to even consider buying it at the moment.

 

[blurredvision]

Quick question. Can you buy unencrypted e-books from other sites and put them on the Kindle 2 in order to read them? A friend is saying that he read that you could not, because a lot of book store owners are throwing a fit about how closed of a system it is.

If you can do this, how do you get them to the Kindle 2? Is there a memory card reader, or can you hook it up to your PC?

 

[PepePeru]

cool, but not 350 bucks cool.

i like the way books feel, smell. Nothing could replace that for me.

 

[Drako]

Originally posted by: eplebnista
Still too expensive for me to even consider buying it at the moment.

This.

When they are under $100 I might consider getting one.

 

[Eos]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Quick question. Can you buy unencrypted e-books from other sites and put them on the Kindle 2 in order to read them? A friend is saying that he read that you could not, because a lot of book store owners are throwing a fit about how closed of a system it is.

If you can do this, how do you get them to the Kindle 2? Is there a memory card reader, or can you hook it up to your PC?

Kindle can read .mobi (unprotected) and .txt .natively, doc and some .pdf after free conversion.

So, any file you already have in these formats can be transferred to Kindle and be opened. Either via e-mailing the document for conversion, then directly to Kindle or back to you via e-mail, and then transferred through USB.

Despite the FAQ, there is currently no $.10 fee for conversion.

 

[Deeko]

Got my Kindle 2 today. Its pretty sweet. I bought a couple of things yesterday, turned it on and it downloaded them right away. The screen is awesome - you know how most electronics have a plastic covering over the front, with a printed "fake screen" on it to show what the device looks like when its on? Yea....I thought the real screen was one of those printed covers, it looks that much like regular ink. Its so thin too - less than half the thickness of my G1.

 

[Kadarin]

I'm debating this. It's sort of a trade off between the convenience of being able to conveniently buy and read books without worrying about either space, nor about going to a bookstore, and the idea of DRM making me unable to format shift the content as technology, services, and file formats march onward. Forget the cost of the device... If I spend let's say $1000 or $2000 on e-books over time, how do I know for certain I'll have the ability to read them years from now? With a plain old book, so long as I have both eyes and a brain, I will be able to read it.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Kadarin
I'm debating this. It's sort of a trade off between the convenience of being able to conveniently buy and read books without worrying about either space, nor about going to a bookstore, and the idea of DRM making me unable to format shift the content as technology, services, and file formats march onward. Forget the cost of the device... If I spend let's say $1000 or $2000 on e-books over time, how do I know for certain I'll have the ability to read them years from now? With a plain old book, so long as I have both eyes and a brain, I will be able to read it.

This.

 

[blurredvision]

Eh, fuck it. Placed my order for a Kindle 2 today. The wife and I both read sparingly, but I mostly don't read because it's never comfortable holding a book while on the bed or on the couch. We both have wanted to start reading more, I'm thinking this will help tremendously.

Originally posted by: Deeko
Got my Kindle 2 today. Its pretty sweet. I bought a couple of things yesterday, turned it on and it downloaded them right away.

So did you go ahead and buy a couple of ebooks before you got your Kindle, then just synced them up when your Kindle arrived? I was wondering if it was easy to do this, as I just assume have a couple of books ready to go when I get the thing.

 

[zoiks]

Need a colored screen and under $100. For $360, they should be giving you all books for free.

 

[lokiju]

I was at Frys this past weekend and played awhile with the Sony PRS-505, PRS-700 and some e-ink reader by a company called Astak.

I was amazed by how crappy the screen looked on the new Sony PRS-700 compared to the 505, I have to think this is due to it being touch screen, which IMO is a useless feature for a ebook reader.

The Astak and the Sony PRS-505 had nearly identical looking screens both in size and quality but the Sony was the better one IMO simply due to having the ability to change the font size with dedicated buttons on the device.

Both retailed for $299 and both were on sale for $249.99 at Frys when I was there.

For the money, IMO this is the way to go since I have no need for the EVDO coverage since a large number of books I'd want to use would be technical PDF's anyway.

I think I might try and get approved for the Sony card and get the $150 $300 deal they have right now for the PRS-505 as long as it qualifies and get myself a nice looking e-ink reader for $150.

 

[Eos]

Originally posted by: peritusONE
Eh, fuck it. Placed my order for a Kindle 2 today. The wife and I both read sparingly, but I mostly don't read because it's never comfortable holding a book while on the bed or on the couch. We both have wanted to start reading more, I'm thinking this will help tremendously.

Originally posted by: Deeko
Got my Kindle 2 today. Its pretty sweet. I bought a couple of things yesterday, turned it on and it downloaded them right away.

So did you go ahead and buy a couple of ebooks before you got your Kindle, then just synced them up when your Kindle arrived? I was wondering if it was easy to do this, as I just assume have a couple of books ready to go when I get the thing.

You can purchase content for Kindle once it appears in the Manage Your Kindle page at amazon.com.

www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

Until the serial number appears, nothing can be purchased.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: G Wizard
cool, but not 350 bucks cool.

i like the way books feel, smell. Nothing could replace that for me.

That's the general consensus so far. They need to subsidized it to $99 or even $49. People don't read as much anymore because the Internet is so handy and entertaining. If Amazon wants to make this device wide-spread, I think all they need to do is chop the price down.

A larger-format model would be really nice for textbooks. And a touchscreen so you could easily flip back and forth through pages and keep multiple bookmarks easily.

 

[Deeko]

Originally posted by: peritusONE
Eh, fuck it. Placed my order for a Kindle 2 today. The wife and I both read sparingly, but I mostly don't read because it's never comfortable holding a book while on the bed or on the couch. We both have wanted to start reading more, I'm thinking this will help tremendously.

Originally posted by: Deeko
Got my Kindle 2 today. Its pretty sweet. I bought a couple of things yesterday, turned it on and it downloaded them right away.

So did you go ahead and buy a couple of ebooks before you got your Kindle, then just synced them up when your Kindle arrived? I was wondering if it was easy to do this, as I just assume have a couple of books ready to go when I get the thing.

I bought a couple of books & a newspaper subscription the day before it came - as soon as I turned it on and entered my email address it downloaded them all right away.

 

[EvilYoda]

So wait...I've actually been looking into a Kindle 2.0 for work-related reasons - the PDF support is limited? How so?