Click the image for a larger version:

As you can see, Barnes & Noble boasts a lot of Nook’s on-paper advantages, not just a second screen and Wi-Fi, but native PDF support, an SD card reader and a replaceable battery. B&N also points out that brick-and-mortar means try before you buy. Lending between friends is downright awesome, if it works. And a huge advantage is being able to read books on your PCs and Macs. I own Kindle books, but as I currently don’t have a Kindle, the ownership concept is a little bit abstract.

There are some more vague advantages: What exactly does an Android OS do for the user in this split-screen unique device? And what early adopter really sweats the dilemma to go with colorful back covers or not?

The truth though is that not much here makes Nook look bad. It’s a little fatter than Kindle 2, but it’s also substantially shorter, which may be a more significant physical advantage. Max battery life is 10 days, rather than Kindle 2’s 14, but we still need to know what that means for the LCD screen. There’s no text-to-speech, but maybe B&N just wanted to avoid the lawsuit Amazon got hit with, because the text-to-speech wasn’t accessible to blind people. And darnit, no support for Word documents. Guess you’ll have to Save As… PDF.

Seriously, how badass is this letter he sent to Amazon?

Paul Gowder
[Address omitted]

August 12, 2009

Amazon.com Inc.
Legal Department
1200 12th Avenue South
Suite 1200
Seattle, WA 98144-2734

Dear Sir or Madam:

On June 21, 2009, I purchased an Kindle 2 e-book reader from the Amazon.com website. I purchased this device based, in substantial part, on the expectation that it would be reasonably durable. In particular, I expected that it would be approximately as durable as is ordinary in the consumer electronics market.

Amazon.com advertises the Kindle 2 on the basis of its durability. Notably, Amazon.com displays a “drop test” video on the web page for this product. That video displays the device being dropped twice from thirty inches onto what appears to be tile. That video displays a fall with sufficient force that the device visibly bounces, and deliberately creates the impression that the device will function after impacts similar to that sequence of drops.

Despite those representations, the Kindle 2 is far less durable. On July 26, 2009, I dropped a messenger bag containing the device onto the sidewalk, from approximately two feet above the ground. It was dropped only once, and the messenger bag absorbed enough of the shock that nothing else in the bag, including a Macbook laptop, suffered any damage whatsoever. (Unlike the drop displayed in Amazon.com’s video, for example, nothing actually bounced.) Moreover, there was no visible damage on the exterior of the Kindle 2. Nonetheless, the Kindle 2 became completely unusable, with over 50% of its screen no longer able to display any text.

I called Amazon.com support and was told that, because of the accidental drop, you would not be willing to supply a replacement device under warranty. You did, however, offer to sell a new device at a discount, for $US200.00. I took advantage of that offer under protest, and explicitly reserved my rights to bring a claim against you based on the unreasonable fragility of the device and the misrepresentations in your advertising. It is that claim that forms the subject of this letter.

I am prepared to offer an immediate settlement of my claims against Amazon.com for a payment of $US400.00. That sum represents the $US200.00 replacement fee I paid plus $US200.00 to compensate me for the diminution of utility and value of the device as well as of the e-books I have purchased for that device, in light of the fact that the replacement device, too, can be expected to be far more fragile than advertised and prone to destruction under the slightest stress. This offer expires thirty days from your receipt of this letter. If you do not accept this offer, I intend to bring suit either individually, or, if I decide it is warranted, as representative for a class of similarly situated plaintiffs. At that time, I will seek the amount noted above, plus punitive damages under the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act, Cal. Civil Code §1750 et. seq., costs, fees, and such other monetary damages as provided for by law, including without limitation Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17200 et. seq., the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, and other relevant law.

Also, you have demanded the return of the broken device as a condition to the unreasonable discounted replacement offer which I accepted under protest. Your agent has informed me that you will charge my credit card for the full price if the broken device is not returned to you. I am considering seeking a protective order placing that device in the custody of the Court pending litigation. However, should I instead return the device, you are hereby notified that it is evidence in the anticipated litigation to which this letter refers. Should you modify, destroy, or resell the broken device, I will ask the Court to treat that as deliberate spoliation of evidence and make adverse inferences as appropriate.

Very truly yours,

Paul Gowder

And here’s Amazon’s response:
Pretty awesome. Just goes to show that if you put your somewhat-unreasonable request in an official-looking form and also threaten to sue, big companies will be happy to toss a token amount of money your way to make you go away. [Consumerist]

The international version will work in “over 100 countries and territories”, but Amazon doesn’t specify if there are any additional charges for using it in a place other than the one where you bought it. It also looks like AT&T is the one that will be providing overseas roaming coverage for the GSM version. [Amazon]

Update: Ah, here’s the bonus price.

Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are $9.99, unless marked otherwise. When traveling abroad, you can download books wirelessly from the Kindle Store or your Archived Items for a fee of $1.99

This is a found photo from a Facebook album, without context, which leaves some nagging questions: Is it a Kindle, or a Kindle 2? (The colouration up top screams Kindle 2 to me, but it’s blurry.) Did the couple know their nuptials would be blessed with the presence of His Holy Whispernet? Was the priest using the Kindle’s text-to-speech function? Why not? [9Gag via MakeUseOf via Digg]

Reader Shinobiwan wrote in with an e-mail received from “order-update@amazon.com”:

Hello,

On July 23, 2009, Jeff Bezos, our Founder and CEO, made the following apology to our customers:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com”

As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book. If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $US30.

Please email Kindle customer support at kindle-response@amazon.com to indicate your preference. If you prefer to receive a check, please also provide your mailing address.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

The Kindle Team

Is this little love note enough to make us forgive Amazon for practically stealing books from users? Not really, but we say take the $US30 check with grace and buy a used copy of the book for $US3. [Thanks, Shinobiwan!]

Make that 4707 consumers. I have no intention of even considering an eReader until prices drop under $US100. I still enjoy reading actual, paper books and I can buy them for next to nothing at a used bookstore or get them free at the library. Plus having a collection of them throughout my home looks good (and it makes me feel smart). eReaders don’t have the same appeal as MP3 players—so they sure as hell shouldn’t cost me more to buy. But what about you? How low do eReader prices need to be before you would consider buying one? [Forrester]

Vincent called it “a lovely little Linux box” when showing it off at geekfest Foo Camp last weekend. We’re not really sure what the practical applications of a Linux Kindle would be, but it’s an impressive proof of concept for sure. [Boing Boing Gadgets]

Aaaand we can’t not do a proper sizemodo, naturally:

The device’s total size will fall somewhere between the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX, and touchscreen controls come by means of a stylus, as was the case with the company’s previous Wacom-infused e-ink displays. Crave’s information is coming straight from iRex, who left plenty of blanks for us to fill, and precious few clues. iRex’s wireless carrier choice is unknown but probably not that important, but their choice of online ebook store—with “one of the large online e-book sellers,” apparently—is going to be crucial. Is this what Bezos meant by Kindle competition? Will iRex poop on Plastic Logic’s party? We’ll find out before Fall, when this this is due to ship. [Crave]

His complaints are many, and almost all justified: the grey screen is too grey, there aren’t enough books available, stuff other than the text (such as pictures) don’t come through well, its newspaper subscriptions leave entire articles out and reading on it just isn’t a pleasurable experience. Hell, he doesn’t even bring up the whole remote-deletion thing; that must have happened after they went to print.

All in all, it’s a pretty damning takedown of Amazon’s flagship device. Sure, you can dismiss some of his arguments (textbooks look terrible on the Kindle 2, but they probably look better on the DX), but taken as a whole, it sure doesn’t leave you wanting to buy one. And he discovers things I certainly didn’t know about it, like its shoddy newspaper conversion.

It’s enjoyable if you like reading Nexis printouts. The Kindle Times ($US13.99 per month) lacks most of the print edition’s superb photography-and its subheads and call-outs and teasers, its spinnakered typographical elegance and variety, its browsableness, its Web-site links, its listed names of contributing reporters, and almost all captioned pie charts, diagrams, weather maps, crossword puzzles, summary sports scores, financial data, and, of course, ads, for jewels, for swimsuits, for vacationlands, and for recently bailed-out investment firms. A century and a half of evolved beauty and informational expressiveness is all but entirely rinsed away in this digital reductio. Sometimes whole articles and op-ed contributions aren’t there. Three pieces from the July 8, 2009, print edition of the Times-Adam Nagourney on Sarah Palin’s resignation, Alessandra Stanley on Michael Jackson’s funeral, and David Johnston on the civil rights of detainees-were missing from the Kindle edition, or at least I haven’t managed to find them (they’re available free on the Times Web site); the July 9th Kindle issue lacked the print edition’s reporting on interracial college roommates and the infectivity rates of abortion pills. I checked again on July 20th and 21st: Verlyn Klinkenborg’s appreciation of Walter Cronkite was absent, as was a long piece on Mongolian shamanism.

The Kindle DX ($US489) doesn’t save newspapers; it diminishes and undercuts them-it kills their joy. It turns them into earnest but dispensable blogs.

Like I said, damning. His solution to people who want a digital version of their books? Buy an iPhone or iPod touch. I’m not sure I agree with that, as I’m stick a sucker for paperbacks, but it makes sense. Do we really need a device solely for reading books when so many of us have perfectly capable book-reading devices in our pockets right now?

But man, Amazon can’t be happy with the timing of this article, especially one of this scope coming from The New Yorker, a publication that is read by the heart of the Kindle’s potential customer base: well-heeled literary nerds. It’s pure coincidence that it dropped the week after Orwellgate, but it sure seems like the honeymoon is over with the Kindle. It’s just not the device that is going to convince everyone to jump on the eBook bandwagon. Sure, it’s got its fans, but regular books are still safe, for now. [The New Yorker]