NOV 28

What are some manufacturers thinking? I mean, $400 dollars for a device that looks like it's one of those cheap PDAs by Casio. $400 dollars and no colors. $400 dollars and not a double screen. It's absurd. In all honesty that looks like a $100 dollars device. $150 dollars max. Also, the books are not that cheap. 10 dollars for a DRMed copy of a bestseller is no bargain, since they can be had for almost that amount with discounts, and the paperbacks certainly cost less. No way you can see PDF. $9.99 books would be ok if the device did cost $100 dollars, because that would be a business model akin to the one used on printers. But they want to make too much money, and while I'm excited at the idea... I'm not making the purchase. Look out, since the same thing that happened with the IPhone will end up happening with the kindle; they will have to slash the price and offer rebates to early adopters. Honestly, it's all our fault, since we keep buying these kind of gadgets at absurd prices (IPhone, Playstation 3, Kindle, and all of Palm's Handhelds, which are outdated and have not been updated for about 2 years).

Too pricey and they nickel and dime you for every little thing that you might want to add to the machine. Why on earth would I pay $13.95 a month to pay for a newspaper I can already view on my pda for free ( cost of bandwidth)? Grrr Arrgh.

Again, I feel the need to expressly state that it's not just like a PDA, it uses something called "e-ink" which is an entirely new technology for screens (well, very very young at least, especially in consumer electronics) which turns this generation of e-book readers (Kindle, Cybook, Sony Reader, etc) into an Early Adopters gadget, which means it costs a lot. It'll move down a few notches as the second generation of readers approaches.

What I feel Amazon has done right here compared to other readers is the wireless internet and the keyboard. The only big thing I can see that is wrong with it is the fact that it doesn't do PDFs without you mailing them to yourself so they can be "fixed" in the reader. At least give us an off-Kindle converter is all I'm saying. This closing of the standard is enough to make me not want it, though. If the Cybook had a keyboard, I'd totally hit that.

Of course, I don't like the prices of any of these machines. I can't pay 400 anythings for any piece of equipment right now. But I'm not an early adopter. I know enough about first generations from experience (Canon EOS 300D and Sony HDR-SR1) to not jump on anything that's totally new. I'll give the readers a year or two and then we'll see how they are. Probably more polished and for half the price. Really, what I want is a Cybook with a keyboard. Let's hope their next one grants me that...

Actually, I'd like to see an e-book that was styled like a book that you actually opened. You could have to editions. One with a keyboard on one side, and another one with two screens, one of which could work as a touch-screen keyboard for when you wanted to go online. Otherwise, it would display the pages like any book, and when you wanted to change the page, you could either press a button or half-close and then open again to trigger the page-change. Would be a nice atmospheric thing. I think I'll actually go make a mock-up of that and place on my site... I'll get back to you on that one.

ALSO, (sorry about this) I'd love to see these keyboard-sporting e-book readers hacked and given a primitive Linux distro... something like Damn Small Linux. That would turn them instantly into an alternative for people who want an internet machine (albeit greyscaled) that can fit in a small bag or a large pocket.

Oh lord, I just thought of something else. Pardon me while I just go on to remind you all that this is a fantastic piece of kit for us Greens, considering that not a single drop of fossil fuels are being used to produce, package or ship these books, so it gives us the freedom of checking out any book we want to without making any more of a carbon print on the Earth, and if we don't like it, we don't even need to recycle, we just press Delete. That appeals to me. The Amazon price-point for e-books needs to come down together with the readers, though...

That's all for now. ^_^

Probably, but I wonder if the energy and materials used to create, ship, package, etc everything in the Kindle really offsets the use of traditional books. How many books would you have to buy/recycle, etc to equal the amount of energy used/required/expended, and required for the Kindle, or any e-book device. At least books can be recycled. I wonder also what the life expectancy of this thing, how easily it can be recycled, reused, etc. If it only lasts 2 years, can't be recycled, uses a vast amount of production energy/ material maybe it isn't worth it. (?)

Well, mostly all electronics can be recycled, and though I don't know what kind of materials are used in the Kindle, I would think it's quite possible to produce e-readers from the "green" materials.
The e-ink devices luckily don't use a lot of battery, so at least that's a positive thing.
I don't really know what the recyclability of the e-ink displays is like. I haven't really given that so much thought. Something interesting to have a think about, though.

Anyway, I made good on the mock-up thing, so I'll give you the link to the post I wrote about it on my site. Sorry, it's another wall of text because I wanted to introduce my friends to the idea of e-ink and e-readers before I ranted about my dream device. If you want to, you can just scroll down to the image and start reading from there.
http://magnulus.com/index.php?entry=entry071128-195209

books store carbon, giving place to new trees. as long as you don't burn the books, we'll be ok. look, the reader is cool, and I want to check out the e-ink, but the reality is this: i aint gonna read my ereader while in the bathtub.

more importantly: electronic books is a big danger to writers. writing book is a lot more work than writing a song. you can't even perform it and get paid for the gig.

I would think electronic publishing is GOOD for writers as long as they're paid fairly for each book sold, since there is no production cost involved, only editing, there's far less of a risk involved in publishing. I bet Amazon could even come up with a simple system for allowing people to self-publish their books in the Amazon system that wouldn't cost Amazon anything but bandwidth. Self-edited and self-published. Half the price of the "syndicated" books and half the commission.

Saying that e-books is a danger to writers feels like saying that electronic music is a danger to musicians.

Making an information source electronic is tantamount to making it free (in the long run). DRM aren't working terribly well. A musical group has other potential sources of revenue outside of sales. Recordings can be used to promote sales at live concerts. Do you really think that authors are in the same situation as musicians? Just be electronic publishing can be good for music doesn't mean that it has to be good for other media.

When authors of historical texts start drawing rock star sized crowds I'll stop worrying.

But what about publishing? You don't think publishing will be easier? You just latched on to my final sentence rather than looking at my actual argument. There are many ways in which electronic publishing can help authors out. Now, I haven't asked Stephen King or Terry Pratchett about their level of success within electronic publishing, but considering that King has made exclusive internet sales before and earned quite all right on them, even though there were simply plain PDFs, I should think it works well enough. For obscure writers, it's even better, since getting a publishing deal can about a lot more than just writing a good book. Now they can put their books out there electronically without paying a dime except for internet access and computers, stuff which they'll already have, anyway.

I got a PDA with Microsoft Reader and Adobe Acrobat last year, now I carry my entire e-book library with me, whenever I've to wait(traveling/queue/coffe break time,8 hours trip by bus,etc) just pull my pda and start reading and it's less conspicuos than carrying a "real book" around, better I can read many books simultaneosly, I do enjoy reading real books, but the pda gaves me the advantage of being able to read on those empty slots of time that show up in my schedule and since its always with me, no issue, downside is when I'm really into a big shift in the storyline and then I start running out of battery, that never happens with real books :)