the designer of this needs to be locked away immediately. we must keep him from spreading his hideous aesthetic any further!

qed57

WTF? This is like "all apps should be run from the server" argument we heard a few years ago. yes, whoo hoo, ebooks. I know, snazzy NEW development JUST SO they can sell an ebook reader? Um, does it do anything ELSE but let you read ebooks? Can't we all already do that?

This is the perfect example of technology being created for an artifical need.

As if we all need digital photo frames. yeah, I'm going to go out and buy one of those right after I buy of these dumb things.

sanjsrik

Edit: The prices for books _do_ appear to be slightly cheaper, but they are listed deceptively: the Kindle listings show the "list" price, then the Kindlebook price, and it looks like huge savings. But who sells books at list? Of course not Amazon, so you have to go look up what Amazon would sell the print edition for, and then compare apples to apples, which reveals the savings to be there, but not huge.

This thing can make books so much easier to buy, which can drive an increase in book sales if you do it right. "Doing it right" includes recognizing the fact that the content can be cheaper since you should end up selling more of it.

I dunno, I tend to be negative, but I just want to find the people responsible, knock their heads together, and remind them that they can do better. I mean, the way we get and read books _will_ shift into an electronic format. These guys need to study the way it happened for the music industry, and learn from the mistakes there, before they just get shut out of the process entirely like we're starting to see with record companies.

CommenterX

I'm going to be honest: this is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen. The e-book reader idea as a whole is a fantastic idea. But it needs to JUST read books. It needs to be backlit. And you need to be able to just drag and drop files onto it. This device is such a joke...it's honestly not the iPod Touch off the top of my list for "worst product launch this year." Who the hell wants this thing? If you want to read all sorts of documents, and browse the internet, and read email, you get a LAPTOP. Not a $400 book. I just can't get over how fucking retarded this device is.

Charles

The device will fallback to Sprint's 1x wireless speed if EV-DO is not available in your area.

The e-paper displays are completely amazing. If you haven't seen one, go to a Borders or Sony store and look at the Sony reader. Most people will not believe that what they're looking at is not a printed cardboard mock-up until you demonstrate that the text changes when you push a button.

In terms of low-light, etc, it's exactly the same as the printed page in a paperback book. No light is emitted from the screen, it's all external light reflecting off of pigments on the surface of the "page" and so optically it's exactly like ink on paper.

Z.

Zoot

Am I the only one that's confused by the inclusion of a keyboard? It seems like a waste of space that could better be used for screen real estate or reduced size.

I know you'll need to type in the name of books to download them, but that'll be a fraction of it's usage and it would seem a virtual keyboard would suffice.

RalphWiggum

Needs to be free or very cheap. I don't know why they don't realize this. Charge for it, and it stays a niche product. Give it away, and it becomes pervasive, and you make up the profit in content and ad sales.

I mean, you'r trying to shift a _major_ paradigm here, and you think people will pay to help you do it?

Follow-on question: how is the book pricing? Do I pay less for ebooks since there are no printing and shipping costs and etc.? Shipping you could argue converts to bandwidth costs, but it should be much cheaper to let me download a book than to ship/truck one to me.

I would actually like to see this become a reality, tied into libraries and book stores and all kinds of things, but I hate how they have to try to squeeze _every_ cent out of it, and thus doom it to failure.

Also:

"Kindle also includes free built-in access to the world's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia-Wikipedia.org."

Yay! Now you can carry amateur-authored-and-edited information which is even sometimes possibly true though it may have no citations and is likely to be riddled with unprofessional author bias anywhere you go! Be the worst kind of internet-generation blowhard with ease! Amaze your friends!

What a missed opportunity there: what the hell does Encyclopedia Britannica have on the "keeping up with the future" table today? Paid web access that few people ever use, you say? Hmm...how about we offer reduced-price subscriptions to Kindle users? We get money, and they get our respected, professional knowledge source.

But no, we get Wikipedia.

CommenterX

... no .lit support?

Eeeeeeeh.

SeraSera

@Nijle:
Eink follows the same rules as paper-- it is opaque and cannot be backlit. You need a light to read just like a paper book.

flumbo

What about reading at night? do you attach some kind of light to this thing ?

I do a lot of reading before bed, and currently use a booklight. So if it's not backlit, how exactly do you read in the dark?

Nijle

Cant transfer books from PC to Kindle, no Wi-Fi, no color, its ugly, and no PDF viewing? I agree that if they threw in a couple of those things and cut the price in half this could be a hot product, but I just don't see what is so great about it right now.

Le0nidas

Too bad it's Sprint EV-DO only, and no wi-fi. Our community of 150,000 for some reason has NO Sprint EV-DO at all, but VZW's already upgraded theirs all to the new higher speed. So basically it's totally useless without Sprint coverage, since there's no way to download it to your PC and transfer; the books on the site are all listed as 'with free wireless delivery to your Kindle'.

LAME.

TVGenius

How's it do in low light condtions, aka a room with a desk or table lamp?

How long does the battery last (real world conditions, not as stated on the site)?

And seconding the University book thing (though I'm almost out ;) )

ocdude

Once this thing hits a price point of about $100, then it will hit the mainstream. Until then, it's a completely unnecessary luxury. And this is coming from a total gadget lover.

But I am impressed with the quantity of books available on launch.

redman042

This will SO be the Commodore 64 in a few years... save your $400 and wait for the cheaper, thinner, larger, brighter, color OLED touch-screen paper...

zarchitect

There's a *lot* of information at the Amazon site.

The devide appears to run Linux as there's a .tar download of modified GPL code included.

In fact from the surface this looks suspiciously like the Sony Reader in may respects, so I have to wonder if at least the software has a common source. It at least operates in a very similar manner.

It does *not* appear that you get to use the device for email. Yes, the device has an email address and you can send things like .txt documents to the device via that email, but only from email addresses (or address patterns) that you've authorized (so no $0.10 per spam with attachment, and no spam at all actually).

The license agreement says that the free wireless covers only the store etc. All other uses of the service may be charged, including web browsing. It sounds like at the moment web browsing is free, but if Amazon starts to lose their shirts on data transfer costs with Sprint, they are free to charge anything they like, discontinue the service, etc.

Anyhow, I ordered one to play with and we'll see tomorrow :)

Z.

Zoot

Wait, you can browse the web with no EVDO fees?
That doesn't seem right.
If it is... umm major selling point.

skeeveAGAIN

Any one know if you can underline/highlight or write in the margins? I'm in law school and I lug around about 25lb of casebooks everyday, so this would be a godsend.

ryan7107

well, at least this thing is aptly named.

Pixlmonkey

@astrocramp: i agree how about product comparison and a sizemodo!!

scarab

How does it compare to the Sony ebook reader?

astrocramp

@balloondoggle: The review said it plays mp3's. Read.

gokor

Imagine you're back in college - easier for some of you younger ones I guess - and you have four classes and a lab today. That's about 50lbs. of text books around $100 each. Is there a plan to tie this into university book stores? How about the refence books frequently refered to by many professions? This has potential beyone recreational reading if the material is made available.

balloondoggle

@Abouna: This sounds exactly like the things people were saying with the launch of the iPod and the iTunes store. It's going to take some time (just like the iPod), but I think this is going to take off in a big way.

PCJustin

Love the idea but how practical is this really?:

- can you sell your downloads? I can sell my books.
- $400 is lot, imagine how many used books I can get for that, not even counting the price of the actual downloads
- Unless you're researching something how many books are you really reading at once, and do you care if you can carry them all?
- 90,000 titles is not a lot. I already struck out on several titles, some of them not so obscure like an Umberto Eco book.

Abouna

Are any books included on the unit? I believe most e-readers give you "100 free classics" or something to that effect.

CColdsmoke

What's this "experimental" stuff?
Is it not 100% ready to be released? Are retail versions going to have this menu?

Are these firmware updates foreshadowed?

skeeveAGAIN

So how long before people start hacking other EVDO devices to use the Kindle's free internet access?

ryan7107

That "Heat" book is 336 paperback pages on paper, and the file on the Kindle seems to be 336k, so that's 1k per page for the proprietary format. Interesting.

bandit

At $399.00 it is an expensive tie-in to Amazon.

I would have liked it to work with WiFi too and be able to link up with documents on my home or work wireless network.

Toto

I love the packaging and the back of it.

Rain-man

How do 2page Pdfs work on the Kindle? Can you zoom in on a pdf?

jerfrank

does it support color images? (or any images in general?)

dazinith

There's a volume control in the pics, does it read to you? Audio/video compatible?

balloondoggle

Can it display PDFs?
If so, How does it deal with oversized PDFs?

Can it make a raw text file (aka project gutenberg) look acceptable?

Being able to display a PDF and scroll/zoom around a large one... and I'm almost sold. I don't see it happening, though.

styrofoam

Will EVDO enabled book will also work when traveling internationally? (I live in Canada and I think this product is worth some money if it works here in toronto). Or would I have to drive to border/buffalo to receive daily e-copy of newspaper on it?

vipul

Can the plether cover fold 360' around the back of the unit, or do you need to remove Kindle from the cover in order to hold it with a single hand?

bandit

Navin R Johnson

If there is pdf support will I be able to transfer it via usb from my computer or will I have to pay amazon to do it for me?

quickdood

Along the lines of the previous question, how does file conversion work?

phatpat

Does it have PDF support, can I transfer my own pdf documents to the device? Txt, doc, rtf?

quickdood

Can you underline text on the Kindle?

jerfrank

Is the screen ready "easy on the eyes?" Can you notice a difference between this and say, a laptop screen? Thanks.

mickleib

Where can WE see it in person? Are there no plans for it to be carried in brick-and-mortor stores?

bandit

Amazon, Bezos, et al. Please fix:

No wifi = bad
Charging to move content I OWN OR CREATED = bad (allow conversion on PC & transfer via USB = good)
No PDFs = bad
$400 = bad ($400 with 40 free books = good)
No UI for music playback = bad

titaniumtommy

Would a OLPC XO be better then this? They sure look nice and have pretty good battery life.

Thoughts?

benjpw

@Navin R Johnson:
How did you do that?

coolrepublica

I'm pretty interested in the EVDO aspect. Free wireless internet? Forever?

itchytooth

All Kindle All The Time on Gadget Lab

Review Paella: 8 Opinions on Amazon’s Kindle E-Book Reader on Gadget Lab

Good and intesting but a lot of "political" restrictions and its not yet done. Its needs wifi, a working dictionary, and a bunch of other stuff before i pay 400 dollars.

Gadgetlover

I like the philosophy of Kindle, but not the design or execution. This will be the wave of the future in some respect, whether it will be done via laptop, tablet pc, or Apple Newton I'm not sure, but I do think the Kindle isn't the formfactor to bring it. For starters it's ugly. Apple has spoiled us on design. I understand that you don't want a touch screen for something you'll read, but I would think if only the bottom part were a touch screen, you could do away with the physical keyboard - which, since it's utilized only for searches and wikipedia seems you dont' need to devote so much space to it - and you could do away with the ridiculous button that changes pages. A swipe of the finger across the screen should change the page. I do like the included wireless - for newspaper and blogs this device would be great. But are people so quick to do away with the traditional way of reading novels? I think people enjoy the tradition of buying a book, sitting in a coffee shop, and being able to amass a collection on their bookshelves. With this price it's a moot point, even first adopters like myself won't be convinced.

BigSlide

i have the sony one, and compared to that, this one looks cumbersome. Plus all that email jazz? I don't need a "book" that hooks me up to the internet. Plugging my reader into the computer and downloading books is much simpler, it would appear. My only problem: not mac compatible.. :(

cissyrene

So far I have seen no information about this thing's DRM scheme.
-What limitations are imposed on the user? Number of reads and/or length of time?
-Must all your purchases be stored on the unit, or can they be archived on a PC?
-What is the likelihood of losing everything if, say, Amazon decides to pull the plug on the current authentication server? "So sorry, your books are no longer viewable and will be deleted. And no refunds!"
Until the DRM on this thing is exposed and clarified, I will remain very wary.

RuralRob

So I ordered one. I logged in and signed up for Time Magazine trial, it said, your trial period is over, we are charging you NOW,,,
how is that possible, I dont even have the Kindle yet..

joelie1122

These should cost as much as a graphing calculator and be a standard device in all schools. I'm amazed that with all the advances today we don't have a reasonably priced E-book reader. 400 Bones? C'mon.

Not that i'm hating on books, but i'm moving across the country and theres no way I can take my whole collection with me. And I shouldn't have to.

smackswell

I've been wanting, playing with, ebooks for a long time. I've tried to use them on Palms and whatever small devices, but as with anyone who has even tried to knows, looking at a tiny backlit LCD screen screws up your eyes in a minute. Eink solves that problem. However flipping the screen is excruciatingly slow, and not only that, extremely annoying. Even with the latest generation. "Under 1 second" may in theory sound fast, but unless we get something like .02 seconds, its just too slow. The "its the same amount of time to physically flip a page" is asinine. You can literally flip through a book to find stuff as fast as you want. The refreshing of the screen is ridiculously annoying, the page first inverts itself before clearing to the next page. This makes any form of scrolling impossible. That said, I'm really looking forward to the day ebook becomes really mainstream.

HexiumVII

Sorry, this is dumb. I buy a number of PDF eBooks. Sure, I could struggle and convert them to HTML or Text, but why bother? For $400, connecting via USB and loading up a PDF to read on the go should be the LEAST of what the damn thing can do. $400 just to get charged for basic operations is silly. End of the day, I'd rather browse my digital comics on my iPhone, than spend ANOTHER $400 for a larger screen and oodles and oodles of limitations. I thought my iPhone was bad for requiring me to set up a server on my home machine or e-mail PDFs to myself. Kindle takes it even lower by charging me. Sure... $99... maybe. $400. You're on crack. If Apple had released something like this (specs/pricing), you better believe there would be such a howling and gnashing of teeth. It's nice to know Amazon is finally spending its good will.

Cleverboy

Color, touchscreen, 8.5x11, Video & MP3 enabled, applications, 1/4" thick, durable, $199

That's what it will take for eBooks to work.

NeoPoliticus

@NeoPoliticus:
And MULTI-TOUCH, ftw.

Cleverboy

It's a good first attempt. But they have learned nothing from Apple. There were many mp3 players before the iPod. But Apple was the first to make one beautiful. This thing looks like a toy. An ugly toy.

Many good comment too on missing or badly implemented features. Too bad Steve already wasted the iBook name on a crappy laptop.

Needs Wi Fi.

gary_7vn

@NeoPoliticus:
Not gonna happen. Video playback probably would need backlighting, which we do NOT want for books. I'd just say, get rid of the extraneous stuff. We all have 2-3 devices (ipod, phones, psp etc.) that already play music, we really don't need another music device to manage. Video, again, ipod, psp, phones suffice.

Just make a good book. Improve the refresh rate and contrast. The background looks a bit too gray. Improve the text formatting options. Get rid of DRM or at least establish an industry-wide format. I love my current Sony Reader, but improve the "book" aspects and forget about MP3s, video and other non-book things...

berribrand

So what about if you transfer .mbp files to the Kindle via USB? Do they show up?

mathew