CibbuanoAmazon Kindle eReader
December 3rd 2007 02:01
What is it?
It's an eReader, which means you use it to read things that you used to read on paper.
Looking at it, you might think 'It's a small computer with an ugly monochrome screen', but it's not that simple. The Kindle, after all, uses ePaper, which means it's kind of like real paper. Once text is loaded on the Kindle, it'll always be on, without requiring any power.
Also, it's easy to read... my eyes get strained reading on the computer, but ePaper promises to be just like paper.
Without the dead trees!
The revolutionary part may be that the Kindle offers wireless access to the wealth of knowledge and information on the internet. You can subscribe to a newspaper and never have to buy a paper again, with each daily edition loaded automatically on the Kindle. As remarked on Slate:
"It's a remarkably seamless experience, the purest expression of Amazon's 1-Click approach to shopping. Roaming the aisles of a local Borders with Kindle in hand, I bought and downloaded Elmore Leonard's Up in Honey's Room in a lot less time than it would have taken to locate it in the stacks and make my way through the checkout line. I also paid $9.99, rather than Borders' $25.95 plus tax."
What the reviewers are complaining about is the expense of the thing. With a $400 price tag and all the subscription costs, the device is a very expensive piece of technology. As Joel Johnson on BoingBoing Gadgets points out:
"Worse, the $400 premium just to get the Kindle reader isn't the last fee you'll pay. I'm not talking about paying for eBooks from Amazon, which are priced typically at $10 or less, but for the additional fees tacked onto the data—the words—that are pushed down to the Kindle automatically. Subscribing to a blog via the Kindle service costs $2 a month. Newspapers run around $15 a month. All for information currently available for free via the web and RSS syndication, not from copyright violators, but straight from the publishers themselves."
The idea is there, but those fees are astronomical! Why? Johnson suspects the deal between Amazon and Sprint to provide the wireless access is keeping costs up. I think we're at the point where the backbone carriers are impeding the advancement of technologies.
Another flaw of the device is that it doesn't read PDF files, which is a ludicrous omission. Instead of PDF, you can read .txt files, as if you'd want to. You might as well get a tiny Asus Eee laptop for the same price.
Still, people are criticizing the Kindle because it's worth criticizing... this is probably one of the more important consumer devices in the past decade. Hopefully, we're all moving this way, reducing our need for newspapers made from trees.
Last weekend, my flatmate bought a Friday, Saturday and Sunday paper, which resulted in a huge pile of paper to be thrown in the 'recycling' bin. The Kindle goes past all of that, allowing you to have convenience and information in the same device.
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