Will Amazon Kindle Your Interest ?

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I’m very intrigued by Amazon’s new Kindle device.

Dave Davison, IT venture capitalist and visualization maven, is very high on the potential of Kindle:

“Amazon “kindles” a new fire in electronic book reading. This 6 minute video shows how you will use this new portable, 10.3ounce, paperback size device. Download your reading library via a wireless connection just like calling on your cell phone. This device and the kindle service will revolutionize the book, magazine,newspaper and blog publishing media space.”

Count me as an avid reader and collector of books but if Amazon has truly solved the ” reading online” problem that causes me to print out anything longer than a handful of pages, with a vision-friendly, virtual-paper screen, then I’d be keen to own a Kindle. Just putting all of my magazines on it to reduce clutter or using it to read on the treadmill instead of lugging books in my gym bag, would be worth it. I would also speculate that, if you buy an absurdly large number of books annually, as I do, a kindl could allow you to purchase strategically; some in dead-tree version and some virtual form, and accumulate a considerable cost savings.

I would also expect that, as a platform, the uses for Kindle are only going to grow.

Cross-posted at Zenpundit

5 thoughts on “Will Amazon Kindle Your Interest ?”

  1. From the looks of it, the one good thing the Kindle has is a good size screen. I tried reading in a PDA, your eyes will hurt after a while, I hope Amazon has thought of that.
    Also, I was trying to find (unsuccessfully) whether you can plug a keyboard to it. I don’t see myself learning to use those tiny little keyboards they design for these gadgets.
    I like the fact that you can also subscribe to blogs and that you have wikipedia and magazines.

    I would definitely buy one. Though I still think it is a bit expensive.
    I also think the market is probably asking for such a thing.

  2. Kindle is much better than previous products in this field, but I won’t buy it in this form, Besides having at least a A4 sized screen, it would have to be more versatile than it is now. When I bbuy a device, I want to be able to view any kind of text or graphics file on it, such as .txt, .pdf, .odt, .xls, .jpg and so on. It also would have to accept those files regardless of source, so I can view my scans, pictures from my camera, books I bought as well as those I downloaded fron Project Gutenberg and other sites. Etc, ect, ad nauseam. I also wouldn’t want to deal with DRM issues.

    Sooner or later, such a device will be available for an acceptable price. In the meantime I’ll be happy enough with books and magazines.

  3. This doesn’t help me too much for a lot of the books I read, which are mostly older texts, many of which are out of print. The $400 price point is too steep for many I would guess as well.

    What does appeal to me is how light the product is – many of the books I read are heavy hardbacks and while reading in bed my arms get tired at times – this format would help that.

    I am glad that Amazon is trying, however, and it can only lead others to improve upon it.

  4. Ralf brings up an excellent point about interoperability with different kinds of files; I’m a regular reader of think tank PDFs and I’d vastly prefer to download it to a kindle than run off reams of paper on the laser printer.

    Bezos can use this as a closed system or build in open-system capability while retaining amazon market leverage in downloads. The latter would be a smarter way to go ( 9.99 on NYT best-sellers will be a huge draw)

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