I prefer reading books on paper (“pagebooks” in 23d century parlance). So I initially thought that Kindle (and similar products from other companies) was an interesting novelty, but not greatly important. However, some ancillary aspects of Kindle are making me reconsider. To wit:
1. Text to speech. Only a very small percentage of books are so popular that it makes economic sense to create a special audio edition. Kindle’s text-to-speech feature makes every book into an audio book, unless the publisher refuses to grant the rights. As a result, the number of available audio books is vastly increased. The Kindle reader is not excellent, but it’s pretty good. The “reader” has little sense of English, and often puts the accent on the wrong syllable. But the listening experience is no worse than listening to a very clear speaker whose native language is not English, and who therefore incorrectly accents “Wisconsin.” Kindle is incompetent at numerals of three digits of greater. “1990s” will be read as “eye-gee-gee-oss” or “nineteen-goes” or some other bizarre variant. But overall, Kindle creates a reasonably functional audiobook out of every pagebook, with no marginal production cost. Pretty nifty for those of us who might want to listen to a policy book that sold 3,000 copies in 1996.
2. Text resizing. Not a big deal for me now, but gigantically significant for older people like my dad, whose eyesight is not as sharp as it used to be. With Kindle, every book is instantly a large-type edition. As with audio, a special feature that once was available only for big sellers is now available for everything.
3. Newspapers! Daily subscriptions to the Irish Times, the Daily Telegraph, Spain’s ABC, and other great newspapers for a small fraction of what a print subscription would cost. And, for my dad, a large-print (via text resizing) version of the Denver Post and NY Times. I realize that all this is available for free on the web, but it’s nice to be able to read a newspaper while sitting in the garden, instead of sitting in the home office at the computer monitor.
4. Instant delivery. Back in the days when I wrote a bi-weekly column for the Rocky Mountain News, there were plenty of times when I was writing a column Tuesday night which was due Wednesday afternoon, and I discovered that the column would be improved by examining a book to verify a particular fact. Sometimes I was able to get what I needed via Amazon’s preview feature. But even better would have been instant delivery of the book itself. Only a tiny percentage of readers have an important need to have a book now, as opposed to 12 or 72 hours from now. For those readers who do need instant delivery, Kindle is fantastic.
As Wonder Woman might have said, the Amazonians are building the bridge to the future.
Engineer says:
I use the Kindle reader on my Ipod Touch. It allows me to carry books with me and read them whenever I have a few minutes standing on line, on the airplane etc.
June 24, 2010, 1:22 amLiam says:
As a Kindle owner, I cannot stress item 3 enough. Having the Washington Post wirelessly delivered to me for my morning metro ride to work is simply invaluable, and a $2/month subscription to Foreign Affairs (essentially $4/issue) is a steal. The instant delivery feature will also prove useful, I imagine, on long trips or airport waits where I usually waltz into a bookstore/newsstand.
Some other excellent aspects of the device:
-The device being linked to one’s Amazon account makes me much more likely to buy a book on a whim, since I get the suggestion and can order the book immediately. Perhaps just a means of overcoming my own laziness, but still useful nonetheless.
-Many classics with long-expired copyrights, such as the Sherlock Holmes stories, can be had for absolutely free. No more spending $5-10 at Barnes and Noble for “The Idiot.”
-For younger people like myself who have a small living space, having a full library stored on a single device saves a boatload of storage space (I have books stacked on my dresser due to a lack of shelving)
Physical paper will always be ideal, but the Kindle is a fantastic option.
June 24, 2010, 1:31 amMark N. says:
For me, #3 doesn’t seem all that compelling with the increasing availability of the internet everywhere, all the time, on portable devices. I can read the newspaper in the garden (or on the bus, or whatever) perfectly fine on an Android phone, or a 3g iPad, or whatever your device of choice is. I agree with #s 1,2, and 4 though.
June 24, 2010, 1:58 amG-tronymous Bosch says:
I got one as a law school graduation gift, and it’s sort of a life-changing little item. I can’t praise it highly enough. I’m spending more on books now, but also reading a lot more. Barry Friedman’s new book is on there, cheaper than the print copy. I find I read faster with the Kindle as well. I only wish I could have put all my casebooks on that thing.
June 24, 2010, 2:12 amRoger says:
G-tronymous, I am thinking of getting one for my law student girlfriend. Do law school textbooks come electronically such that you can put them on the Kindle? It seems like it would be a boon compared to lugging her huge textbooks around.
Alternatively, there’s the iPad. How does that compare as a platform to the Kindle, both for convenience of reading textbooks, and in availability of the books themselves?
June 24, 2010, 2:33 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
eReaders are invaluable for research. First of all one can search in a book or over several books or articles. Thus now you can find instantly what you want to know, what you don’t remember where it was, or the different parts of a book where the author discusses some subject. Then, you can have instant quotes by just selecting the text you need. This is much faster than taking notes yourself and you don’t have to type the quote over in your paper. Not to say anything about the fact that by clicking on a word one can search instantly in a dictionary or on the internet.
June 24, 2010, 6:22 amReaders are so invaluable that I take the time to scan all the books I cannot find in electronic form.
Island says:
In Russia, they sent you a new picture with a razor blade and tape to install the new airbrushed picture without the person after Stalin executed and eliminated people from his inner circle.
The Kindle makes this cumbersome and obsolete.
Now you won’t even know when they change your book.
June 24, 2010, 6:55 amHelen says:
I bought a Kindle for a good friend who is recuperating from serious injuries suffered in a traffic accident. Because she broke both legs, she can’t readily get out to a bookstore or library, but instant delivery makes books (of her own choice) available to her. Additionally, the unit is light and easy to hold (and she doesn’t have to hold it open) which is important because of her hand and arm injuries.
June 24, 2010, 7:26 amStruthius says:
Agree on all counts. I have the large-screen DX version and love it.
June 24, 2010, 7:45 amI also have the Kindle app on my iPod touch and Blackberry, and can go back and forth reading the same book on all three, with Amazon’s “synch” feature. Works great.
libertariansoldier says:
Except you need to have ready access to high speed internet, so less valuable in many third world countries. And if you have wireless, there is a great app for Apple products called Great Books that gives you access to many classics–including the greatest novels of all time, such as the Musketeer saga.
June 24, 2010, 8:00 amKharn says:
I have a Nook (B&N’s competitor to the Kindle) and absolutely love it. Except when I’m waiting for the plane to take off or land, so I end up browsing AirMall or whatever magazine the airline provides for those 30min. :-/
June 24, 2010, 8:07 amDarkmage says:
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before on the VC, but usually it’s at the tail end of the discussion so I’ll drop it here at the beginning for once: I have both the Nook and the Kindle and they’re very similar devices. For 90% of what you’ll be doing with them, they’re identical.
That said, I recommend the Kindle over the Nook. It’s lighter, the battery lasts longer, you can rotate to portrait viewing and Amazon’s electronic book selection is much larger. The Nook, OTOH, has a better audio player & web browser, is a sleeker design (no protruding buttons) and supports more file formats, including borrowing books from my local library.
Honestly, either device will serve you well.
June 24, 2010, 8:30 amMattC says:
I got one for my mom for Mother’s Day last month and I’ve used it a bit in helping her set it up. It seems great for pleasure/light reading.
I’m not so sure I would want to read a dense scholarly work or do anything academic on there. There’s just something about reading the word off the printed page that puts it in my mind/helps me understand it quicker/better.
June 24, 2010, 8:31 amBart DePalma says:
Kindle is a one trick pony. Spend another couple hundred bucks and get a tablet computer like the ipad which does nearly everything.
June 24, 2010, 8:33 amAlex S. says:
#1 and #2 are key for certain people.
#3 is irrelevant to me. I just have no interest in the structured format of reading a newspaper any more. Yes, I know that is ultimately self defeating as if everybody acts like me then the content won’t be there for me to read in my unstructured way, but it is the way it is.
#4 is the life changer. For voracious readers I would argue that every one of them has a need for books “now” and not in 24 hours when they can get to the store. That’s why we all have (or had) a stack of books next to the bed waiting for that moment when you finish a book and aren’t sure what you’ll be reading next. In this way the Kindle has actually made my book buying more efficient.
Before the Kindle I bought many books long before I read them for two major reasons, both of which go away when you have the ability to instantly buy them at any time.
1) So you don’t get caught with a gap where you’ve finished what you’re reading and don’t have anything of interest immediately available. Used to be that when I was near enough to the end of a book I had to carry my next book with me on the train just in case. Now I can wait until I finish the book and shop for the next (frequently prompted by something I see somebody else on the train reading).
2) So that you don’t forget about a book that was interesting in the moment but you wouldn’t be able to read for a while yet. Before I might see, say, a biography of former vice president Richard Johnson and say “well, won’t read that now but I am interested so I’ll buy it and get around to it later.” I’d do this because I’d know that I’d never remember to come back to that book in the future. Now I just put it on my wish list and only actually buy it if I am ever in the mood to read it right then.
The other big feature for me is that I have full text search functionality for almost every book I’ve read over the last 2.5 years.
The current generation of eReader is not for everybody (and if you can comfortably read on a backlit LCD screen then I’d recommend going the iPad-type route) but it has been a big life change for me and I could never have imagined giving up the paper book before doing so.
June 24, 2010, 8:54 amMattC says:
How do you experienced e-readers cope with doing dense/scholarly reading and research on a Kindle? Do you do it?
June 24, 2010, 9:00 amtbrookside says:
Libertariansoldier -
The Kindle comes with free Whispernet wireless service that allows you to download books directly from the device, without being on wifi or having high-speed internet available.
June 24, 2010, 9:03 amAlex S. says:
MattC: I probably wouldn’t do it on a Kindle. First, odds are good that the specific texts wanted wouldn’t be available in electronic format. Second, when doing research I generally only want to read a small part of a book and it would be cost-prohibitive to buy (though you can buy and cancel I suppose) every book I’m using for research.
Also, the one thing the Kindle is horrible at (not sure about other eReaders) is that it is not at all designed for quickly moving back and forth to different locations within a book. But if there are key texts that I will use a lot I might spring for those just for the full text search functionality.
June 24, 2010, 9:10 amPierre Corneille says:
Before I’d buy a Kindle, the following would have to happen:
1. The cost of a Kindle would have to go down below $40
June 24, 2010, 9:52 am2. The average price of e-books would have to go down to $5 or lower.
3. It should have the capability to download free ebooks from such places as “Google Books.” (Maybe the latter is already possible….I don’t know.)
J.T. Wenting says:
Got me a netbook using that reasoning, it’s way too cumbersome.
June 24, 2010, 9:53 amiPad is worse. Too large and heavy to carry around, screen is hard to read in direct light (like, outdoors…), can’t be used in even moderate temperatures (like, central European summers) for any length of time without overheating, way overpriced, and you’re stuck with Apple as the only content provider.
Christie says:
Roger – You can read, listen to, watch, and play games on your iPad. (Plus lots more with the purchase of other apps.) The Kindle allows you to read (or listen) to books and that’s pretty much it. My biggest complaint for both is that it is very difficult – as in you have to share accounts and passwords, and who wants to do that with a large number of friends and family – to share your purchased books. There isn’t a great price break, or any break at all, for the books that you buy. In my experience, the Kindle prices seem to be better but I haven’t had my device that long and have only purchased a few. Also, Kindle has a larger selection of books, but since you can use the Kindle app on the iPad this is less of an issue, giving you access while Apple works to add more selections to their online store. I’ve taken to using the preview feature to check out the book’s first three chapters and if I’m hooked after that, I hit my local library’s web site and hold the book. (I read a lot so this saves me a significant amount of money.) Also, the iPad is slightly heavier than a normal sized book and the Kindle. I still think it’s handier to read because you can lie down on your side and not have the book flap shut or have to use two arms to hold it open. I haven’t done too much outside reading but the screen has a tremendous potential glare factor, which would make reading dang near impossible. While in Mexico my friend was able to connect to the internet with her Kindle to buy additional books once she’d read through her stash. My iPad had issues with connectivity, which have been noted on several Apple complaint threads online and could not be resolved while on vacation. (Yeah, that sucked.) I could actually see myself owning both devices or perhaps the Sony eBook reader, which is the ebook device our library will loan books out to.
On a side note, one unexpected detriment to having the iPad was that my nearly three year old son was no longer satisfied watching the small screen of the iPod Nano while on the plane. And since I try to do absolutely everything to keep that kid quiet and happy when traveling, I had to hand it over and with it my form of entertainment for the length of the trip.
June 24, 2010, 10:05 amJ.T. Wenting says:
1) manufacturing cost is higher than that
2) would happen, maybe, if sales volume goes up high enough.
3) you can put almost any pdf (and I guess other formats, Amazon has a list) on there.
The only reason I don’t have one yet is the fact that it doesn’t support password protected, encrypted, pdfs.
June 24, 2010, 10:06 amDavid Sucher says:
Btw Mr. Kopel, have you heard of a device from Apple called an iPad? Also does ebooks etc etc.
June 24, 2010, 10:08 amSince you are looking into new technology it’s something to consider.
epluribus says:
Dumb question, maybe, but I’ll ask any way. When you download a book is it yours to keep, or does it expire after a specified time?
June 24, 2010, 10:33 amCarolinaJoe says:
I’m thinking about getting a Kindle for the text to speech feature. I love listening to books while doing chores and many of the books I’m interested in do not have audio versions.
However, as much as I like the idea of the Kindle and other such devices, I will always buy paper copies of books I value as backup references. Hard copies can’t be changed without our knowledge and they don’t break. heh heh – That being said, once I get a kindle, all my physical copies will probably remain on the shelves untouched.
June 24, 2010, 10:45 amTeeJaw says:
The text to speech and text resizing features are literally a Godsend for people with macular degeneration who cannot read print anymore. The decline of eyesight with age is a nuisance for most of us but for anyone who has been an avid reader it is quite demoralizing. I suppose (but don’t know) the iPad has the same feature. All this is good and will probably be even better by the time I need it.
Being able to carry several dozen books with you wherever you go is the feature I like the most at present. Also, the ability to create marks and notes of particular passages and transfer them to a computer is cool. It makes it easy to be sure quotes inserted into something you are writing don’t have re-typing mistakes and the quotes are accurate. If using a long quote the ability to copy and paste sure beats re-typing and proof reading.
June 24, 2010, 10:54 amLinus says:
I also got one as a law school graduation present.
A few things:
- Instead of Bar/Bri, I went with a cheaper bar prep course. Self-directed, and they sent me .pdfs of all my outlines and materials. They all went on the Kindle. Instead of carrying a heavy bag with a fraction of my prep materials on dead tree, I had a little gizmo with all of it on there.
- Project Gutenberg makes the Kindle an amazing magic super wonder device. Specifically, direct your Kindle browser here: http://freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/magiccatalog.html
and click the first link to download the catalog to your Kindle. Now read your heart out for free.
- Wikipedia. So nice to be at lunch discussing something and nobody knows about it, and I can pull up the page for some knowledge.
- Not that I’ve ever used Wikitravel, but.
- And I can read the VC on it.
Also, Amazon has agreed not to change or delete material from people’s Kindles. If a revision of a book comes out, and you have the old one, they send you an email, and if you want the revision, you can get it, or you can keep the old one.
(We should also remember that the whole 1984 thing, bad as it was, was in service of trying to avoid violating property rights. You all like that idea, right?)
June 24, 2010, 10:57 amMike P Wagner says:
My sense is that the iPad will be much more of a game changer than the Kindle. While I appreciate the fact the Kindle came 1st, it’s still (as I understand it) more or less only a reader. I read quite a bit, but I can’t see buying a Kindle.
There are some technical flaws with the iPad, but Apple will eventually get those fixed. I have a friend at work and I could eventually end up buying one.
The reader app on the iPad (from what I have seen) it top notch, and the ability to surf (which allows me to check web-based mail) with Safari, and the ability to play Netflix movies are pretty powerful incentives to buy.
For me, I could consider the iPad as a replacement for an “auxiliary computer” at home. Since 95% of what I do on a computer at home is surf and check email, an iPad would suffice.
I don’t think that a Kindle would be a viable “auxiliary computer” candidate. So if I want an “auxiliary computer”, and pick up an iPad, it’s pretty hard to justify the cost of buying a Kindle – it’s not so much a question of a Kindle instead of an iPad, it’s a question of a Kindle in addition to an iPad. That’s a much harder sell.
To tell the truth, the Audible.com/iPod link is the game changer for me. I love to listen to books on tape during my commute. I couldn’t handle an truly complex or difficult material, but that combo has been quite a blessing in my life. I have worked my way through most of Victorian literature, and and learning much that I wasn’t taught (or had forgotten) about American history. Like a lot of folks of my generation, my high school American History class focused so much on the Revolution and Civil War that 20th century history was covered in the last two weeks of the year.
To summarize, the since the iPad could be considered a replacement for a light duty laptop and has a very good reader, and the Kindle cannot be considered a replacement for a light duty laptop and has a very good reader, I expect that iPad will destroy Kindle within a year or two at the most.
I do expect electronic delivery of books to be a game changer, but I don’t think Kindle will be the vehicle.
June 24, 2010, 10:57 amLinus says:
Yours to keep.*
* Amazon has the ability to delete content from your Kindle. They did this once (for good reason IMO), in a fairly infamous incident, and got sued, and as part of the settlement they’ve agreed not to do it again. I happen to believe they won’t do it again, for various reasons, but I could be wrong, and anyway, it’s good to recognize that they can. So, I think it’s realistic to say that the books are yours to keep forever, but if we’re being cautious, it’s probably better to say they’re yours to keep indefinitely.
June 24, 2010, 11:04 amJonathan says:
LexisNexis was giving away a few KindleDX models in a drawing at the National Conference of Law Reviews and I happened to snag one. I’ve only had it for a few months, now, but I can’t remember my life without it, at this point.
Some of the things I like:
1. E-ink technology. Unlike the iPad, the Kindle and B&N Nook use e-ink, which consists of millions of microcapsules contain positively and negatively charged white and black particles that shift when a positive or negative electric field is applied. Reading e-ink is easy on the eyes (sometimes easier than real ink), so those with problems reading backlit computer screens shouldn’t have trouble with the Kindle or Nook.
2. Cheaper books. Not all publishers have gotten the memo, of course, that e-book production costs aren’t as high as pagebook production costs, but a significant portion of them have. You can get most NYT Bestsellers and newly released books for under $10 (and others for under $13), where the pagebook price is $20-$30. Before the Kindle, I hadn’t bought a new release that wasn’t written by my favorite author in years, and even then, I didn’t always buy them right away. I couldn’t really justify spending $20-$30 for a book that I wasn’t sure I’d actually like. I could justify spending that on an author I loved, but $30 is a pretty expensive chance to take on a new author; $10, not so much.
3. Changeable font-size. Seriously, even as a twentysomething, this is super useful. Some days I just want to make reading as easy as possible; so if that means cranking the font size up near maximum, so be it.
4. Search function, bookmarks, and notes. It’s the equivalent of scribbling in the margins and sticky noting the pages, with the all-too-valuable “find” function we’re so used to in an electronic age.
June 24, 2010, 11:07 amLinus says:
One other thing I haven’t seen mentioned: the e-ink display on the Kindle. I would not do serious reading on an e-reader without e-ink. The Kindle has it, the Nook and the Sony Reader, maybe some others, but the iPad doesn’t, the iPhone, the Blackberry – all LCD.
I already stare at an LCD at work, and I hate it. I don’t want to go home and curl up with yet another glowing rectangle.
To me, the iPad is in a wholly different category than the Kindle. Neither better nor worse. Worse in some respects, better in others, but a different device altogether.
June 24, 2010, 11:13 amJonathan says:
I’m also a fan of the free 3G mobile internet. I don’t always have access to a wireless hotspot when I’m traveling, but there’s nearly always a cell tower near enough to at least check my e-mail.
June 24, 2010, 11:16 amBobVB says:
Yes, it would be great if there was an e-ink color screen and someday they say we will have one, but until then the iPad will do fine for me. It has ’s iBook reader, Kindle, Barnes & Nobles, Borders, several for all the legacy format ebook formats, a couple textbook readers and any pdf you might have out there.
But in response to the iPad there has been a sudden decrease in price of the most popular proprietary e-ink books, so if I just have to read in bright sunlight for light reading from just one distributor I might pick one up when the price drops.
But make no mistake, tablet computers like the iPad and to the lesser extent the e-ink readers are paradigm shifters – its the frakin’ Jetsons man!!! Give me my meal in a pill and I’m all set.
June 24, 2010, 11:35 amBleh says:
I think people need to get used to the idea that the iPad and the Kindle are very different devices. The iPad has revolutionized the NETBOOK, not the E-Reader. The iPad is not a viable option if you are a heavy reader and you want to be able to read a book anywhere. You can’t read an iPad in bright sunlight (glare) and you can’t read it for extended periods of time (sore eyes from looking at a computer screen). On the other hand, the only place you really can’t read the Kindle is in the dark — oh wait…
When I was in Jamaica last month, all of my friends would have had to pay extra money in order to access their emails via their phones — but I had a Kindle and could do it for free. It wasn’t long before all 6 of them were reading their emails on my Kindle as well. (Someone should make a Kindle cover that reads: “DON’T PANIC”)
Yes, they are yours to keep. For the most part… (I doubt that will happen again, but it’s good to know that it could)
There aren’t too many of them officially available yet. Although, I’ve heard that there are sites online where you can download PDF versions of some textbooks (which could then be uploaded to the Kindle), but even those sites — I’ve heard — are limited to the books that someone has bothered to go out and scan. But that would be piracy of course…
Amazon has a large library of free public domain books. As someone else has mentioned you can now download Project Gutenberg onto the Kindle. And there are other options for getting free books on the Kindle as well — including uploading pretty much any PDF file to your Kindle.
———–
That said. My Kindle wishlist: (some of which are stolen from Prof. Bainbridge)
1) A memory expansion slot!!!
June 24, 2010, 11:42 am2) Easier navigation
3) Support for DJVU files (but of course that would just increase piracy)
4) A way to organize books into folders
5) More ways to sort books (e.g., genre, read vs. unread vs. partially read)
6) A touch screen (maybe someday)
7) Footnotes should display on same page as text (that’s a big one)
8) Better audio/music player interface
9) A built-in calendar with the ability to input appointments.
10) A microphone for taking voice-notes, would be cool, to make this a multi-purpose research tool.
David Sucher says:
Yes in theory you can keep it but you can’t do much else with it such as sell it or gift it. Nor is it easy to copy, quote, or print sections of an ebook (assume well within fair use).
Unless there is a practical reason to buy an ebook e.g. Travel or texts being updated, I’d stick with pbooks, especially used from Amazon.
We still have a ways to go with making as usable as a pbook. (And I am a big ebook enthusiast but there are substantial problems.)
But I am sanguine that such issues will get worked out.
June 24, 2010, 11:43 amLinus says:
But no harder than with a pbook, right?
Nook’s down to $149. Kindle’s down to $189. It might go down further. What I’ve heard is that Amazon is not interested in making money on Kindle units – they’re interested in getting Kindle units in people’s hands so they can make money selling content. Of course, they can also make money selling content on the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, PC, etc. Which makes me wonder how long they’ll support the Kindle hardware anyway.
IAWTC. Future is now.
June 24, 2010, 12:11 pmbyomtov says:
Yours to keep.*
How many books will a Kindle hold, and can you back up books to a computer or something so you don’t lose them if the Kindle gets lost/stolen, etc?
June 24, 2010, 12:12 pmLinus says:
The number I hear is about 1500. Obviously it’s going to depend somewhat on the size of the book, whether it’s illustrated, etc. It has 1.4GB user-accessible storage.
Yes. The stuff you buy from Amazon is automatically “backed up” (made available for redownload) by Amazon. The stuff you don’t buy from Amazon can be backed up on your PC.
June 24, 2010, 12:21 pmPierre Corneille says:
Thanks for the info on number 3; it’s good to know.
As for the first two points, I’m sure you’re right. However, I was just stating my preferences as a consumer. At this point in my life, and with the access I now have to very good libraries, the price of a Kindle would have to be much lower, or my income would have to be much higher, before I’d consider buying one. I would probably pay more for a Kindle if the price of books were considerably cheaper than $10 (which is what I understand the average price to be now). If they were, say, 99 cents each, that would be worth paying the current price.
If this sounds unrealistic, keep in mind that I supported Obama’s health insurance reforms despite all the very good arguments against it; so I’m used to hearing that criticism :)
June 24, 2010, 12:22 pmElliot says:
I got an iPad for my father who is over 90. His mind is sharp as ever, but eyes and coordination are not what they used to be. He uses the Kindle application on the iPad. The larger form factor makes it easier for him, and the Kindle app on the iPad displays more words per page in larger type.
June 24, 2010, 12:24 pmgladetariba says:
I had an Apple II and that was my last apple product. I dont like the grip that Apple have on the apps . There is no reason for that but an attempt to monopolize the market. Since i didnt drink the Apple kool-aid i will have a Kindle after the next rebate
June 24, 2010, 12:25 pmEMB says:
I like the Kindle a lot for recreational reading, largely because the print can be made as big as large-print pbooks (and because it doesn’t involve more staring into an LCD). I wouldn’t use it for academic work though; I generally either want a paper copy I can flip through quickly and mark up, or I’m just looking up one thing in an online source (I imagine an iPad would be just as useless as a Kindle for the former, but probably also just as useful as a full computer for the latter).
Public domain stuff is free, which is great. Brand new Kindle editions are often a lot cheaper than brand new hardbacks, but for older stuff, used paperbacks are often cheaper than Kindle books (even counting shipping), which is rather sad.
Actually, all these are pretty easy to do if you’re willing to break their license agreement and the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA. (Of course, personally I’ve just been using my Kindle for my own recreational reading and have had no need of any of these things, but I probably wouldn’t have bought the device if I hadn’t known this was possible.)
You could also just download a non-DRM-encumbered copy of the same work you purchased (where someone else has taken care of the anti-circumvention for you).
June 24, 2010, 12:32 pmProf. S. says:
Precisely my thought when I first played with an iPad.
June 24, 2010, 12:33 pmMatt Carden says:
As a Kindle owner (an purchaser of additional Kindle’s as gifts) #4 is a big reason for me- and those I have gifted them to.
However, the biggest issue for me is the ability to carry with me 75 to 100 text books, references, novels, papers and other documents without breaking my back or brief case- especially when travelling.
Additionally- and not maybe not commonly known- many “older” books or documents that have expired copyrights– such as “The Jungle Book” by Kipling, or “The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt” or “The Federalist Papers” are FREE on Kindle– or put more precisely, the cost is $0.00 (you still have to “buy” the book, but it is a zero dollar charge).
June 24, 2010, 12:46 pmUrso says:
I’d like to hear more on using Google Books. I’m really not interested in paying Amazon a bunch of money to read its titles when there’s a wealth of out-of-copyright works for free. Do you have to download the pdf to your computer, then switch it to your Kindle/Nook? Or do you directly download it to the reader?
June 24, 2010, 12:51 pmMatt Carden says:
The Kindle 1 had a SD card slot- which of course allowed for unlimitted storage- I keep MP3′s in my SD card to listen to as background music while reading– which you can still do with Kindle 2- but they dropped the SD slot from Kindle 2 and DX (unfortunately- I ended up buying a Kindle 1 on Craigslist so that I could have the SD slot).
The Kindle 2 is said to be able to hold 1500 books or so.
Kindle for PC (or Mac) is a free download from Amazon. All content on a Kindle can be backed up to a PC, and if you have Kindle for PC (or Mac) you can also “read” material there as well, and material can be “sync’ed” so that when you open “Patriot Games” by Clancy on your Kindle for PC, it is on the exact same page you left off on with your Kindle and vise versa…
Amazon does allow all purchases to be re-downloaded, so there is a “virtual” backup provided.
Currently, my understanding is that ONE Amazon account can have up to 5 Kindle devices– including Kindle for PC, IPad, Blackberry etc. This does allow for “family” sharing of books. For example, I have Kindle for PC on my Kid’s tablet PC and my wife’s tablet PC. All of us have access to the same “library” of books that are on my account. Of course, it is “trust” that prevents the Kids from making unauthorized book purchases, but overall, it has worked well.
June 24, 2010, 12:56 pmChristie says:
Wouldn’t sharing a book (paperback or online version) with a friend be a non-infringing use of a copyrighted work? For the ebook, I can see how making a duplicate copy to send out could be piracy but if I essentially give up my copy in order to share it with someone, how would that violate the copyright owner’s rights?
June 24, 2010, 12:58 pmMatt Carden says:
Amazon provides out-of-copyright works for free (or at least a VERY large number of them) on Kindle and they can be directly downloaded to the Kindle.
They also offer some “new” author works for free, or sometimes a “First” book in a series will be offered for free for a limitted time to encourage the purchase of the “next” book in the series…
June 24, 2010, 1:00 pmwordtypist says:
Not a big market but people cruising their boats up and down the coast are often in places where you can’t get free WiFi and definitely not print copies of the WSJ or NYT. The E-books are ideal for that. Nothing like waking up in a remote anchorage and having your favorite newspaper to accompany breakfast.
June 24, 2010, 1:05 pmmicrotherion says:
Biggest advantages of Kindle to me:
• Carrying around several books, so one is available for reading at any time.
• Preserving book marks, i.e. books always open to the last page read.
• I quite like the new “social” highlighting features introduced recently, although the Facebook/Twitter integration is not executed all that well.
• Amazon is making an effort to promote the “Kindle Platform” with readers for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, which is important given the DRM protection of their books.
Downsides of the Kindle are that it’s black & white only, not backlit, and rather slow for anything but linear reading (search etc is available, but a bit clumsy). In the medium term, I expect to switch to an iPad, but I very well may continue to read Kindle books on it, rather than iBooks. Kindle has better battery life, but in my usage, that probably doesn’t make much of a difference.
June 24, 2010, 1:43 pmFantasiaWHT says:
Are you kidding? Native English speakers mispronounce “Wisconsin” all the time. We aren’t West of Consin, folks.
June 24, 2010, 2:00 pmElliot says:
“I’d like to hear more on using Google Books. I’m really not interested in paying Amazon a bunch of money to read its titles when there’s a wealth of out-of-copyright works for free. Do you have to download the pdf to your computer, then switch it to your Kindle/Nook? Or do you directly download it to the reader?”
Try Project Gutenberg or one of the sites that links to its databases. Some sites offer interface tools with different abilities. They have a huge collection of out of copyright works in electronic form. All Free.
June 24, 2010, 2:07 pmmikeyes says:
Oh, I don’t know about that, CONSIN seems to be in India so it could go either way. :grin:
(BTW, I live in WI too.)
June 24, 2010, 2:46 pmUrso says:
Those most guilty of mangling “Wisconsin” are, ironically, those who live there. “Wis-CAAAAN-sin.”
June 24, 2010, 3:18 pmJonathan says:
It depends on the model. The Kindle 2 holds roughly 1,500 titles; the Kindle DX holds roughly 3,500 titles.
This number excludes anything in your “Archive” as well. All e-books purchased through Amazon that you delete from the device are stored in your personal “archive,” a collection on Amazon’s servers viewable from your Kindle that you may enter to select a particular book to re-download to the device. This is an improvement over iTunes, where if your computer crashes and you don’t have a backup, you have to pay to re-download everything. Here, you only pay once. You can download it as many times as you want on up to five active devices (you can remove any device from the active list at any time).
You can also back the files up on your personal computer in one of two ways: (1) downloading “Kindle for PC” and sending all of your titles there as well, or (2) hooking your Kindle up to the PC with a USB cord and copying the files on it to a folder on your PC.
I have an external hard-drive and a folder on my laptop that I use to back up all of my e-books, including those from Amazon. I probably don’t need to do this, at least with Amazon titles, but it makes me feel better.
June 24, 2010, 3:23 pmarch1 says:
“But the listening experience is no worse than listening to a very clear speaker whose native language is not English, and who therefore incorrectly accents “Wisconsin.” ”
It’s not just syllabic emphasis that can be problematic. I am currently listening to “The Fabric of the Cosmos” by Brian Greene (an excellent book, BTW). The narrator’s enunciation and pronunciation including syllable emphasis are great, but his word emphasis is sometimes off in a way that hampers the listener’s understanding, presumably because *he* doesn’t understand what he’s reading. With a non-human narrator, I would expect this to be even more problematic – at least for awhile.
Of course this wouldn’t be such an issue fields whose domain knowledge is better known to typical narrators (or vacuous:-)
June 24, 2010, 5:07 pmlibertariansoldier says:
Urso, that is not mangling, that is the correct pronunciation, taught to us while growing up to ensure we are able to recognize each other after we all move away to escape the winters.
June 24, 2010, 5:08 pm“Does Kindle Change Everything?” | Little Miss Attila says:
[...] Dave Kopel. Gerard Vanderleun. [...]
June 24, 2010, 8:44 pmxyzzy says:
I wonder if those recommending Apple’s iPad as a book reader have actually read a book on the iPad. Glare is a real problem, and while the screen can show a lot of pretty pictures, it gives me a headache when reading text. The Kindle’s “e-ink” screen, on the other hand, is pretty much just like reading off of paper. Also, the iPad is much heavier than the Kindle, so there’s that to consider, especially if you enjoy reading in bed while holding the book above you.
I was an early Kindle adopter, and I love it more than I thought I would. It’s completely changed the way I read. It’s gotten to a point that I prefer the Kindle to real books. Note to publishers – if you choose to not make electronic copies of your book available, I’ll probably never read it.
Downsides are that you can’t lend books to friends like you can paper books, and you can’t resell them when you’re finished. I feel that eBook prices are a bit high as well – you can get a great many dead-tree books through the Amazon marketplace for just a penny plus 3.49 shipping, while those same titles sell in electronic form for 9.99.
Of course, there a million public domain books available for e-Readers through websites like Project Gutenberg. So that’s a plus.
I enjoy having daily news delivered to my Kindle, but I’ve found the electronic version of many periodicals lacking. (Mostly just a bunch of AP fluff pieces.) For that reason, I use the Calibre software package to aggregate news from various internet sources (newspapers, blogs, whatever) and deliver it to my Kindle each day. The legality of this may be a bit murky – I’d be interested to hear opinions on the topic.
I load the Kindle up with text versions of opinions that interest me, and use the annotation feature to mark passages. I can later access the marked passages via my computer – they’re stored in a simple text document. The Kindle isn’t great for note-taking, and there are times that I need to view & mark up many documents at once. For that, I prefer paper. Still, even for research, the Kindle is often an acceptable trade off for the convenience of being able to read anything, anywhere, at any time.
June 24, 2010, 9:19 pmDemensi says:
Kindle is good for ebooks that you can’t find in print. Other than that, I prefer reading paper.
June 25, 2010, 12:37 amDavid Sucher says:
I’ve read about ten full books plus hundreds of articles on my iPad. Works fine.
Yes, it is not good in sunshine. Not an issue for me as I don’t like reading books in sunshine.
June 25, 2010, 1:25 amCharles Collins says:
But you will never “own” a book again. Amazon will. And they can edit it at will.
June 25, 2010, 9:06 amLinus says:
I hear this claim much more than I would expect to, considering how obviously false it is. When I registered my Kindle, I never gave up my right to shop at bookstores (and the other places I buy DT books). And I have exercised that right many times since registering my Kindle.
Rather than saying that a Kindle owner “will never ‘own’ a book again,” maybe it would be better to say that the Kindle does not enable its user to truly own a book. Which may be true, but the Kindle is no worse than an iPod or a toaster or a sweater in this regard. Or, come to think of it, a library.
(Or a bookstore, depending on what we mean by “own.”)
June 25, 2010, 9:40 amA.W. says:
Here’s a point #5: you can create your own e-books pretty easily. So say you want to read the latest SC case over lunch? convert it to the ebook format and read. i mean it won’t be laid out nice and pretty, but the text is there.
As for being able to read papers, etc. okay my understanding is that many sites that are free are suddenly pay when you view it through kindle? in that case, include me out.
i will add that right now my blackberry does almost all of that. there is a kindle app and a nook app for blackberry, and i can also browse many websites for free. so my big issue is, what does the kindle do that my blackberry doesn’t. the big selling point, as i understand it, is the nice screen and e-ink tech. which sounds nice but its really hard to justify it at that price.
June 25, 2010, 10:48 amA.W. says:
Linus
What he is talking about is how the kindle will delete books from your kindle without your permission.
There was an incident like that a bit back. i don’t remember all the details, though. i think it was covered pretty extensively on instapundit.
June 25, 2010, 10:52 amElliot says:
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the huge contribution electronic readers make to domestic harmony. I think my wife likes my reader more than I do since what she calls “my little towers of books” are no longer growing.
June 25, 2010, 11:05 amLinus says:
No, I understood that. He’s also referring to the fact that Amazon has the ability to not only delete, but actually edit the content on your Kindle (I don’t know if they literally can edit the file, but they can delete it and replace it with a new file, same result).
The incident where they deleted content – they sold some e-copies of 1984, and it turned out those on whose behalf they were selling them didn’t actually have the rights to sell it. So, in order to protect the property rights of the copyright holder, they deleted all of the copies of 1984 they had sold, and refunded everyone’s money. Status quo ante, no problems. Except there were problems, of course. So there was a lawsuit, and a settlement, and as part of the settlement they agreed to not do it again.
I happen to believe them, more or less. Though not a libertarian, I’m going to play the Market card on this libertarian blog. Amazon has no direct interest in editing or deleting your content. The only direct interest they have is in profits. If doing this would lead to a net increase in profits, I’d be worried. But how could it? The PR hit, and resulting loss in sales, almost guarantees for me that they won’t pull a stunt like that again.
That said, if there were a book that I absolutely, positively, could not stand to lose, I would buy it on dead tree (pace Charles Collins’ assertion that such a thing is impossible for a Kindle owner).
June 25, 2010, 11:52 amMatt Carden says:
This all comes down to the fact that like software, electronic data is licensed- not purchased, and the “books” on Kindle are “software” and subject to an EULA…
Now, if we believe “string theory” (or what ever the lastest Physic’s theory d’jour is)…
In some parallel time-line, SCOTUS ruled in the early 80′s in IBM v. Gates (D.B.A Microsoft) that the purchaser or person that pays for software actually OWNS the software, and the Bill Gates licensing idea is null and void- case reversed and remanded…
Unfortunately for them– in that parallel timeline– they are still using Apple IIe’s and OS2 on 286′s and you can’t exchange software between machines, but Wyse dumb terminals are everywhere…
(Que the Mac and Linux people telling me I am wrong, and in that parallel time-line, Linux (or Mac OS-which is Linux based) inherits the earth)
June 25, 2010, 12:53 pmAnonn says:
The sound you just heard was that of a HUGE can of worms being opened!
June 25, 2010, 12:56 pmxyzzy says:
Mac OS is based on BSD, not Linux. For what it’s worth.
June 25, 2010, 1:08 pmMatt Carden says:
ibid :-) (and I stand corrected)
June 25, 2010, 2:03 pmMatthew says:
Just helped my attorney father decide which ipad to purchase to have on an upcoming vacation. Not sure what’s available for the Kindle but was amazed to see the complete Criminal, Civil and Family codes for Texas had already been released.
I agree with those that say the devices are paradigm shifters. I have a new media background in newspapers and if they do they things right, the devices could help sustain the viability of “newspapers” (if said media companies survive the massive debt they took on when they borrowed heavily thinking profits always get larger).
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September 9, 2010, 11:35 am