Amazon Kindle: Reading will never be the same again
After more than ten years of revolutionizing the way books are sold, Amazon is all set to revolutionize books themselves. Our new e-book reader, the Amazon Kindle launches today.
Read Jeff’s personal letter at http://www.amazon.com.
I’ve had the privilege of working on this project and it’s been an incredible roller-coaster of a joy ride.
You can get more info from Newsweek’s cover story on the kindle here.
In my opinion, there’s one feature that trumps things in Kindle’s favour. Free Wireless, For Life.
This means two things to me:
- You only have to pay for the books and Amazon will back it up, store your annotations and bookmarks at our site. You don’t lose your books even if you lose your kindle.
- Books will *never* be out of stock for the kindle and they arrive the minute you order them.
Oh and did I mention that I worked on this product?
Categories: Technology
Amazon, Kindle, Technology
Rather costly isn’t it? Considering that you can get a laptop for as little as 200 USD, what is the killer feature that kindle provides?
Yes. But consider that you’re not paying for the wireless access when you download a book. You’re only going to pay for the book itself.
May be that its cost will decrease soon..
Are u sure we don’t have to pay for the wireless access? I am a little skeptic on that idea..
Ohk, its requires something called “Amazon Whispernet”. And when will that come?
AFAIK, There’s no monthly plan payment for the wireless. This device is introduced in the US. I don’t know about how/when/if it will come to India
So, what was your contribution to the project?
And btw, will it support pirated/pdf books?
I refuse to comment on both accounts
LOL man.
It sounds cool, but unless it has another means of loading books into it other than from the Amazon store, its no good.
Average “Kindle price” of a book is, say, $10. 200 books. $ 2000 !!!
Laptop + pdf = free (if you already have the laptop
)
you can load documents by other ways too. Each kindle has it’s own email id so you can mail stuff to it. It also has a USB port which you can use to upload content.
Cool.
It supports Word docs! No word about pdfs on Amazons site though.
Pun not intended
So, the killer feature is the free wireless? I am assuming it has some kind of computing platform beneath it that can be hacked to make it a PC. Why would someone want to carry 1 more gadget along with them?
I like the electronic paper bit. It was used in one of the recent motorola phones, but it was B&W and it had `2′ lines of display which made it a failure.
Also, given the screen size, it should not require a keyboard. The iPhone uses some excellent UI techniques to make up for the on screen keyboard
One of the key features in the kindle is that you don’t need a PC for _anything_ that you do with the kindle. The Device *is* B&W and is designed to make reading as non-obtrusive as reading a book
I agree. Given that it uses electronic ink, it has to be B&W. And it suits it perfectly for as a book reading
But assuming, just assuming that someone out there finds a way to use the platform as a computing platform, would it be any different from say a hand held pocket PC?
Given that AMZN released it, there obviously is some USP, which I am missing. What is the killer feature of the product that justifies it cost? Wouldn’t I rather prefer a OLED based display showing me a full color display running something like WIN CE or Open Moko that I can program on?
I think it looks like a ‘futuristic’ mock up from the 80s. When Apple can come up with some really good looking devices, this is what Amazon tries to sell us?
@Prashanth, Aravind: Watch Jeff’s Kindle introductory speech. It answers all of your questions.
Just saw the video. I don’t get how it looks any different from the view of a B&W picture on a laptop, though. How about EVDO? Is it supported in India at present?
One thing I can say is that it would be awesome if Amazon let me have digital versions of the books I have already bought through my Amazon account.
Access to Wikipedia is free. But how about someone hacking wikipedia and uploading some content? [yeah sounds terrific but not improbable]
@vijay03:
You’ll have to see it to know the difference! And no, it’s not supported in India (not yet atleast! I guess :p)
@Vijay, Rave – EV-DO is quite prevalent in India. All the data cards provided by CDMA operators use EV-DO if i am right.
@Maheshwaran – What do you mean by hacking Wikipedia?
Why do u need to hack Wikipedia anyway? It said free access to blogs, so you point to content from there?
Kindle is back in stock at Amazon.