John Holbo is wondering if the Kindle could be the one.
I’ve always wanted an eBook reader I could really want. I think most academics feel the same, probably most people do, who spend any serious time reading onscreen. And, like most people, I have sized it up as a consumer confidence Catch-22. No confidence-inspiring device, however snazzy, until a critical mass of customers settles. No settling until there is a confidence-inspiring device. It sounded, at least initially, as though Kindle was sure to be born a clinker: speaking selfishly, it wouldn’t have the sorts of features that would make it a wonderful thing for academics, as any eReader has to be. You wouldn’t be able to read PDF’s. (Total deal-breaker for any academic.) I guess they’ve worked that out; quite a few customers seem to be reporting in, happy. I don’t really care if the thing looks a bit homely and of course the price will come down eventually. Could Kindle be it? The phrase ‘bestselling eBook reader’ hasn’t had much occasion for use before now. It’s been the tech phrase I’ve been waiting to hear. Please report, CT-reading Kindle-owners, especially academics.
I confess, I too have been casting longing eyes at its box-it-came-in styling and thoroughly un-ergonomic design. I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks (the first one since last August), and I really don't fancy hauling the eighteen pounds of books that are necessary to keep me occupied for an entire week. Also, I am out of bookshelves, with no room for more; my apartment is a funny shape with not so much in the way of open walls.
Talk to me, Kindle owners--should I get my hopes up?
I can't help you with Kindle, but are you seriously considering getting entirely out of paper? A decent eBook reader would be useful but I am having difficulty imagining abandoning books (but maybe we should).
(The >400 square feet is not now looking so vast?)
(I notice that Krugman today puts the woes down to poor regulation.)
They still haven't delivered mine. Bring Moby Dick and Dante's Inferno and travel light.
It's good Megan. Seriously, it has displaced books and printed-out PDFs to a large extent in my life. Reading PDFs is pretty comfortable, too.
Within a month of owning one, I cannot fathom how I would ever do without one again.
Why not use your laptop? A lightweight laptop with a swivel tablet-style screen would be ideal for me.
(I notice that Krugman today puts the woes down to poor regulation.)
http://www.woodtv.com/Global/category.asp?C=69982&nav=menu44_2_11
i am largely inseparable from my kindle, i haven't read a paper book since i picked it up, and being able to read the wsj on the subway w/o hitting people in the face when i turn the page has been worth the price. reading one-handed is easy & purchasing is almost too easy -- i've picked up more than one book while it was being discussed or recommended. i <3 my kindle. i'm seriously considering shedding all (well a lot) of the books that have come to take over my apartment because of it.
that being said, its not a perfect relationship. the content isn't all there yet -- although the selection is huge, i often run into interesting books that aren't on kindle yet, and you need to be careful when ordering public domain work: i think some people are just mining the gutenberg project publishing it for a buck or two on the store. its just kind of a pain to get a collection of stories without a table of contents. and white is a stupid stupid color for an object that is supposed to be in your hands all day or thrown in bags & pockets and such.
I'll never give up my paper books; ebooks just don't do it for me.
It seemed foolish to me for the iphone not to have a good book reader with pdf capabilities. I often say that the problem with reading from a monitor is white background and black font is hard on the eyes. If it were black background and white font it would A) be just as readable due to the contrasts B) be easier on the eyes because it isn't a bright glowing white screen and C) use less energy which would expand battery life. Maybe someone will make this function for the iphone and the kindle will go the way of netscape? I mean I want to like the kindle as being like an ipod for books, but...
(I notice that Krugman today puts the woes down to poor regulation.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23736254/
Got one for my 14 y/o and one for my wife and I to share and I never get to use it. Occasionally cant find a book we want but we were adding at least 40 books a month to our library and space was becoming an issue. Its really too easy to download so be careful with your spending. PDF's need conversion which you can do very easily for 10 cents via kindle.com or free if you just download it back to your computer and then put it on your kindle. Browsing the web on it is doable but slow. The Wikipedia access is nice especially on car trips when we tend to argue about trivia and arcania.
Steve
I spend a ton of time reading on screen, and the whole e-ink thing is much nicer than LCD, so I have no problem with making the transition to an e-reader. I was excited about the Sony one for a while, and interested in the Kindle.
I decided that both had too many faults (different faults, if only someone could combine the best of the two readers...) for me to buy in right now.
To be fair, most people today would hate the original first generation iPod, so hopefully these two readers represent the beginning of a long line of improvements, and one day our reader will come.
A colleague of mine swears by the Sony Reader. Snazzier looking, no wireless downloads of books (is that really an important feature?) and, at the moment, less expansive selection of books, somewhat higher priced. But he says there's no substitute for travel and second home use.
Why not use your laptop? A lightweight laptop with a swivel tablet-style screen would be ideal for me.
Battery life.
My wife and I have one Sony and one Kindle. First of all, the e-reading experience is much better than you could get on a laptop in terms of eye strain as well as battery life. Also, the page turning effort is much easier - important in a highly repetive action.
The Kindle's easy delivery, annotation and lookup features are wonderful, and its screen is better than the 1st gen Sony. The page turning bar is too easy to push, though, and the wedgy shape and keyboard sometimes sit wrong in the hand for relaxed reading, and your palm can push the keys as well.
But I travel a ton, and not lugging around Ken Follett's latest tome in hardback - without the trade-off of backlit eyestrain - is sufficiently compelling. I've found I even read on a 5-minute PATH ride. It's so easy to pull the book out and get in a few pages. Fellow travelers are always fascinated.
One problem overall - airlines make you turn it off during taxi and flight (nonsense, as we all know). Taxi can be the majority of the trip these days....
I'd say this technology has nearly arrived. A little attention to ergonomics and Amazon has the right product to go mainstream with this.
Writer Jerry Pournelle has one and likes it. He's getting a Sony and will be comparing them shortly.
The ease of content delivery seems to be the Kindle's main advantage. If I was a mass transit commuter, I'd have one with a sub to the NYT or the WSJ. As it is, I'll probably wait for Kindle 2.0, although my wife tried to get me one for Christmas and my bithday is coming up ...
As a college student reading a 940 page book that is volume one of two I am very excited about the possibility of an Academic Kindle. The thought of being able to go away for a weekend or spring break with all my books in one small device sounds great. Even if the color diagrams came in a smaller paper copy book that you bought seperately it would be fantastic. I hope Amazon is looking into this!
I have used a Kindle for about a month now and I agree with Will above. If you like to read, if you like to read several books at once, if you like to read several lenghty books at once, you will get hooked on the Kindle without any doubt. A word of caution: since all it takes to buy a book is press a button, watch out for your credit card balance!
I've had my Kindle since Dec.4th, ordering on announcement day once I saw Bezos tell Charlie Rose about it on PBS. And I absolutely love it -- I can't imagine being with it, and bring it with me everywhere (literally true) I go, hoping to find a very few minutes to keep reading my latest (I have over 500 books on it so far). But as is my habit, I usually have several reading at the same time. Try carrying around several big books with place markers everywhere you go.
No -- my excellent Toshiba Laptop is NOT a substitute for it. Staring at a backlit screen is very rough on my eyes, plus I hate to work in the dark. The e-ink screen is much better for me, and it's not my eyes that get tired after many hours of reading. And I too put PDFs on it, which is much better than printing them or trying to read them on my compujter.
Yes -- I had looked at the latest Sony reader first, but decided against it fortunately, but the Kindle answered all the problems I saw with the Sony. And I really love the very practical design, and wouldn't want Apple to design it. By far the best of many best features is the wireless downloads of new books where ever I happen to be.
Charles Wilkes, San Jose, Calif.
Actually, the color question is a good one. Anybody know if full color e-ink is even technically proven yet?
If we don't even have the technique in prototypes yet, it's gonna be a long long time before you see mass-market products with it...
I am SO glad to have left the country for a semester - that kept me from buying one!
On the other hand, life woulda been MUCH easier if I could have brought more general interest books that way....
What is availability like for books other than trade books? ARE scholarly books available?
I've been using the Mobipocket reader program on various iterations of the Palm Pilot for about 8 years now - and I still like it. Right now I have a Palm T/X - it fits nicely in a suit jacket pocket and can be read one handed on the subway - and it's still easy to page turn. It's actually the only reason I stil have my Palm, since every other function has migrated to the iPhone. When/if Mobipocket comes out for the iPhone, the Palm will be retired. The Kindle is just too big.
You'll like it because you want it for the right reason. The point isn't that the Kindle is superior in every way to books on paper. It's that the Kindle travels well and saves shelf space. It is best for novels, which are usually light on illustrations, photographs, and maps. Serious economics books that rely on formulae with subscripts might be a problem. I travel often, which is the main reason I bought mine, and it serves the purpose well. I get more than a week's use out of a charge as long as I remember to leave the WiFi off, so I don't carry the charger with me on one- or two-day trips. One disadvantage: you have to turn off your book for takeoffs and landings.
I am sufficiently atavistic and downmarket that I get most of my pleasure reading from the public library. The Kindle has little relevance for me.
Have you considered listening to books instead on an MP3 player (or your phone)? My Zen weighs very little, and Audible will load up the Wall Street Journal or NY Times for me every day, although I haven't tried this yet. I can 'read' not only while commuting on the train, but also while walking to and from the station, driving, doing the dishes or laundry at home, or whatever. You could listen to books while traveling and not miss any of the scenery. Recently I listened to the Kite Runner read by the author himself.
Now that Amazon has bought Audible, I'm hoping that the selection will be even greater. There are also libraries that let you 'check out' audio files for free. This works better for recreational novels than for academic works, of course, but for fun 'reading' while commuting or traveling, I highly recommend audiobooks.
Also, if you like sci-fi novels, there are a ton of free or cheap ebooks available online. You can buy them in the ebook format at http://www.webscription.net/ and copy them over to the kindle without paying a fee (or email them to your amazon account and pay the 10 cents). The formatting isn't perfect, but the prices tend to be below that of buying them direct from amazon.
There is no DRM so if you want to switch to a different ebook reader, you can. The mobi format offers a free reader for blackberrys so you can don't need to have your kindle with you to read a book.