1) Ann Althouse doesn't like the Kindle because the gray-on-gray print is too hard for her to read. E-ink is basically an electronic etch-a-sketch, so the screen is not perfectly white because of the magnetic particles behind it. Or so I understand it.
This bothers me not at all, particularly since you can resize the text--a feature I find more useful than black-on-white when I have forgotten my glasses. But I know a lot of older readers complained about contrast during my previous website's brief foray into dark-gray text, so if you think this might bother you, you should definitely borrow someone else's for a test run before you take the plunge. I would be surprised if this troubles anyone under forty who isn't legally blind. But it's a good point.
This, however, is not:
The truth is, I hardly ever touch the damned thing.(But please, if you buy one, buy it through this link so I can get a percentage of the $359 purchase price. And I'm saying that mainly to prompt some skepticism about rave reviews of the Kindle you might be reading in blog posts with Amazon Associates links like that in them. So if you appreciate that little lesson in skepticism, but still want to buy a Kindle, reward me by using my link.)
Most bloggers have Amazon Associates accounts that generate a fairly trivial amount of revenue. Perhaps Instapundit makes a fortune off of his, but the rest of us--and I've had one for years--get enough money to buy a nice electronic gadget once a year, maybe. This is hardly worth jeopardizing my relationship with my readers, my reputation, and my salary in order to push worthless crap.
The Kindle is, for me and the friends I have bullied into buying one, the best thing since the MP3 player. For other people, like Professor Althouse, it's apparently a dud, which is not surprising--no one likes everything (thank God!) But the commission on the one or two Kindles they might sell through their website is not enough to push many bloggers into praising the thing without merit. Most of them would make more money for hour popping nuggets into the deep fry down at McDonalds than hawking Amazon merchandise.
2) This seems like the most useless product ever. Can someone explain?
3) Amazon guarantees that if the price drops on an item within thirty days of your purchase, they will refund the difference. For big-ticket items, it is worth checking the site two or three times a day just to see if the price has dropped. For example, if you bought a Kindle during the last thirty days, they just knocked $40 off the price. Go email them about it.
4) Holy cow, I'm living in the future!
Can someone explain?
Just as a guess, with maximum charity towards Belkin, I guess it could be useful if you liked to use your laptop out in the living room a lot, but you wanted to be able to put it away somewhere close instead of leaving it on a seat or on the coffee table (like it usually is at my place.)
I wouldn't buy one for 50 bucks but I might make one out of something this week, just for fun.
Can someone explain?
It's a padded magazine rack to put your laptop in when you're not using it. I might find a use for one if I were ever, you know, not using my laptop.
This seems like the most useless product ever
Not even close.
How about this?
Is "sprung" really considered acceptable as the past tense of "spring" in the U.S.? Do English teachers fail to grind their teeth when arriving home and being told, "Honey, I shrunk the kids?"
Hi, Megan. I know you can enlarge the text, but I care a lot about the aesthetics. It just doesn't look good enough to me. I didn't say it was "too hard" for me to read. I said I want a crisp, clear, high-contrast page because it's easier to read. Given a choice between a Kindle and a book or my computer screen, I never pick up the Kindle.
The argument for the kindle that just might work with me is the advantages for traveling. Insofar as I can arrange my life to avoid having to travel (do not get me started on modern airport screening), I would rather not own a Kindle. But the ability to check Gmail and the ability to read books without having to carry a stack of them is a very nice feature of the Kindle.
So, preference for books aside, a Kindle is coming close to being purchased for this reason alone.
I also found Tyler Cowen's comment about skimming vs. direct reading a deal-killer for me - for now. Kindle is still a bit too expensive to use for the quantity of contemporary-or-public-domain fiction I read. Most of my reading is not available yet.
Kindle 2.0 will probably be there, but that'll be awhile.
Here's my post on the device - even mentioning your inspiring little talks on the subject.
Where do you set your laptop down in the living room? Amidst the pile of books on the coffee table? The Belkin product is just meant to be a tasteful place to stash your computer where it can't be knocked onto the floor.
I'm not going to buy one, but it's not a stupid problem to try to solve.
LOL. Did you just call Althouse old?
Re: the Amazon price guarantee: I just bought a new TV and it dropped twenty bucks shortly after I paid for it. They totally refunded my price difference and were quite happy to do so. And if you'd prefer to talk to a real person instead of using email, make sure to check out
this piece by Tim Noah.
The FAA is the deal killer for me. I fly. A lot. And the FAA forbids you from turning on the Kindle until you are in the air, and above 10,000ft. Often, that means that you are allowed to use the Kindle for 40% or less the time you are sitting in the seat, whereas a book can be read for 100% of that time.
Althouse looks so old I stand next to her just to appeal to the youth vote. Perhaps it's the booze.
And she's like a stinkin' panhandler with all her begging for money.
I'll buy one when you don't have to pay $2 to "subscribe" to an RSS feed.
Does anyone use libraries anymore? That to me is obviously the biggest drawback to the Kindle. I can't figure why I'd want to pay $1000 a year for content when the library is free.
With a bit more memory, the Kindle will become the portable Library of Congress that Bruce Sterling described in Heavy Weather.
A few comments based on 1 month of Kindle use.
1 - The contrast is as good as paperbacks are these days, IMHO. Trades and hardbacks still have good paper, but I'm seeing really cheap, thin, and rapidly yellowing paper appear in more and more mass market paperbacks.
2 - The complaints about handling it ("always hitting the next page bar") are largely mitigated by use of the cover that comes with it, in my experience.
3 - Weight and handling compared to physical books? Weighs less than most hardbacks and trades, more than some paperbacks. I find it easy to read lying in bed and require only one hand to hold the Kindle, and hit the page key to flip pages. A book can require 2 hands to read in bed.