Tech Drool

[catsittingstill]

Amazon has a new e-book reader out called the Kindle.  I've been wandering around the web trying to find out more about it.  For instance, it comes with its own wireless connection (apparently basically everywhere in the US) called Whispernet, (apparently through some Sprint data network called EVDO that works like a cell phone).  You can buy books from Amazon via this wireless connection.  Great.  But cell phone coverage doesn't actually work all that well in some places and I can't figure out how someone on a dialup connection can find out whether Whispernet works in rural Tennessee. [Later later edit--I found coverage maps at www.sprint.com.  If we're talking about their data network, there is theoretically quite good coverage around my home and Carson Newman, and lower level coverage further out from Knoxville.  Coverage at my Dad's house would be quite good, coverage at my father-in-law's house would be pretty much nonexistent.  Of course, Sprint might be being optimistic...] 

It's also possible to hook it up to a computer via a USB connection and transfer various types of text and picture files to it, including HTML, which would mean it would work with Baen e-books.  Great.  Does that work with a Mac?  Can't find a definite answer on that one. Later edit--you can download the manual for Kindle from the product page.  The answer is yes, it works with a Mac.  Oh, and that reminds me--it takes audible.com files and mp3 files and plays them over a speaker or through headphones.  Downside--256MB of flash memory will go fast if you start indulging yourself with lots of mp3s.  [Another, even later, edit--to use audible.com files you must activate your Kindle using (you guessed it) a Windows computer.  Which I don't have.  I suppose it might be possible to persuade a friend to do it for you, but dammit--I'm tired of companies treating me like a second class customer because I don't use Windows.]

The books you purchase include a backup copy stored online by Amazon so you can re-download if you deleted because you ran out of memory (not that you're going to run out of memory fast, by the looks of it, but eventually, if you don't want to shell out for SD cards, it could happen).  Great.  If your Kindle is broken/stolen/lost--or if you upgrade, can those backup copies be "attached" to a different Kindle?  Because I *love* the idea of books that take no space and can't be destroyed by flood or fire, but not if losing a book means losing your entire library.  Again, later edit: the manual talks about registering and deregistering your Kindle, suggesting that your Amazon-stored backup library can be deregistered from a lost Kindle and reregistered to a new Kindle.  Still a very expensive loss, but at least it doesn't take your library with it.

Another later edit--battery is user replaceable (doesn't even look like a big deal).  Content can be "moved" to an SD chip (nothing is said about copying, though; I gather if you move it to an SD chip it is deleted from internal memory, but if you could then loan the SD chip to a friend to use in her Kindle, that would make it possible to loan e-books, just as you can loan a regular book, which would be cool.

But I am seriously tempted to add this to my wish list.  Seriously.  Worst case of gadget lust I've had in a long time. 

  

Comments

[ericcoleman]

My comment about it here is the same it has been elsewhere

Try reading it in the bathtub, just once. And a book doesn't become unreadable when you bump it off the coffee table, or the nightstand.

I just don't get it myself.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You can't use it in the bathtub, true. I don't actually read in the tub much (back injury), so it isn't an issue for me.

The breakability issue is of more concern.

What I'm attracted to is

1) being able to buy more books without having to find room and money for more bookshelves. This is becoming more of an issue as I get older and accrete books around me like an ever thickening shell.

2) being able to take a lot of books on trips without having to carry them. Stacking them in the luggage so they don't chew on each other is a hassle and they're heavy.

3) let's face it, the instant gratification of being able to buy a book and get it in minutes instead of days.

4) I think I like the idea of being able to search your library for some phrase to cross reference between books. I'm not sure how much I'd actually use it, though.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

If I was going to read a book in the bathtub, I'd think I'd rather have an ebook inside a ziplock bag, and all I'd need to do to turn the page is push the button, rhan a paper book that if I drop it into the bath will also be ruined.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

See my last entry and comments respondents thereof. The consensus seems to be that Jeffty needs to head on back to the ol' drawing board on this one.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Gimme a cheap razor and I'll buy a whole lotta blades. Make the razor pricey, and I'm liable to be rather fuzzy faced. And then there's vendor lock-in... I can't put my Weber books (or anything else Baen sells or gives away) on this. And no backlight. El Jefe really did a whiskey-tango this time.

You can get a decent Palm for about a quarter of what he wants, and it not only reads books, it does a whole lot more...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Um. I have a palm. And I haven't been able to get it to read e-books. I have some on it that I downloaded off the Baen Free Library, but they display with all their html markup still imbedded, which is distracting.

Also, while the Kindle *can* read the Amazon proprietary format, it says you can also transfer text and html files (and some picture formats and some formats I don't know what the heck they are, like MOBI) across from a computer with a USB cable. So if that works with a Mac, the Baen stuff is all html, isn't it?

I don't mind the backlight--paperbacks don't have a backlight either.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Baen's stuff comes in several different formats, including one that works with a freebie reader you can get for the Palm. Ah. The reader is called MobiPocket, and it takes the ".prc" files.

Still. This thing reminds me of an iPod. Proprietary format, attempt at vendor lock-in, Yet Another Single-purpose Gadget.

What I really want is a Blackberry-form-factor palmtop that runs Linux and XFCE, for about $200. No, what I *really* want is that with an open API to a phone interface; I'd pay another benjamin for that. Then I could read books, surf web, maintain my colo'ed server, do email, and yak on the phone, and not have to haul *anything* else around. This would be made of win.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I had a quick look at the MobiPocket website and it doesn't appear to work with Palm TX, which is what I have. At least, that model isn't listed on the "manual downloads for people who don't have windows computers" page.

And Kip has an iPod and he has all kinds of mp3s on it from everywhere. It doesn't require that you buy your music from iTunes. It does require that you have either iTunes or Mac The Ripper software--is that what you meant by "proprietary format" and "attempt at vendor lock-in"?

I grant you that the iPod (recorded music) and the Kindle (books, newspapers, magazines and blogs--oh, wait and audio books and mp3s so I guess it does music too) are single use gadgets, more or less. But many people appear to enjoy and use the iPod, so maybe the Kindle will be enjoyable and useful also.

[mdlbear]

Something about the size of the Sony eInk reader, but with the guts of an XO plus bluetooth, would suit me just fine. Since the XO's schematics are online, it's only a matter of time.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I have read it, and will take it under consideration. I normally hesitate to be the early adopter of anything.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Looks decent, though in this age of laptops and smart phones maybe a bit redundant. Nice to see epaper finally being used. I'm glad it has an SD slot, because 256M just isn't that much. Sure, that might be 200 books, but once you have a device like this, there isn't any reason not to keep everything you own on it at all times. That's certainly what I do on my laptop (with a slightly trimmed collection on my PDA as well). It's nice to know I'll never lack for reading material.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

If it can take a 1 GB SD card, and if the file sizes I've been seeing are right, it ought to be able to store more than a thousand books on that, for less than the price of a bookcase.

[mdlbear]

1GB is only enough for half of today's Wikipedia.

[jenrose]

Ah, but only about 1/5 of Wikipedia is worth reading, so that's okay.

[mdlbear]

The trick is knowing which fifth before you start loading it up.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Interesting point, since the gadget is reported as having Wikipedia on it. Maybe that's handled by having some sort of easy link to Wikipedia via the wireless (cell phone) connection to the net. I haven't got that far in the manual yet.

The internal memory is (if I remember right) described as being only 256MB (just 12.5 times the hard drive capacity of my first computer, come to think of it).

On the other hand, the average file size of a book is described as being 800KB, which is reasonable, since we're talking about text files, so I guess Wikipedia must be really big.

I wonder if Amazon's Kindle offerings include a paper encyclopedia?

[mdlbear]

It's also reported as having an "experimental" web browser, so that would account for Wikipedia. Presumably the web browser is experimental because otherwise people would be annoyed when it doesn't handle the things like flash and PDF that they're used to seeing on the web.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted, but I already have the Sony reader, and I'm not dropping another $400 on another reader. I wonder if Amazon will sell me e-books that will work on my existing reader?

[mdlbear]

The biggest problem is that it's locked to Amazon, and has a business model behind it that is unlikely to work.

Go for the Sony reader -- smaller, lighter, and unlocked. See comparison at: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/11/amazon-kindle-v.html

Better yet, get the OLPC XO which can do everything the Kindle can, plus it's a full-fledged laptop.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I had the impression that to load books onto the sony reader you must have a Windows computer? Which I don't. Under those circumstances the sony would be--well, a bad deal for me; I can find much cheaper paperweights.

The Kindle seems to be "locked to Amazon" only in the sense that Amazon will be much more convenient to use on it--loading non-Amazon content (e-books in html or plain text) will be about as clunky as loading any e-book onto a palm pilot is now (in my admittedly limited experience). Now, there is always the possibility that Amazon will discontinue some of the presently-paid-by-Amazon services that go with it--if I had to pay monthly cell phone bills to have wireless connectivity for instance that would be a drag, or if Amazon started charging more for converting stuff into formats Kindle can use (they presently charge 10 cents per item to convert it and load it on the Kindle for you, or they will e-mail the converted file to your computer for free and you can load it yourself with your usb cable), they could conceivably make it harder to use some formats. But Kindle will read files in the following formats that you transfer over from your computer:

• Kindle (.AZW)
• Text (.TXT)
• Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)
• Audible (.AA)
• MP3 (.MP3)

So I don't see how Amazon could keep a Kindle user from reading .txt or .mobi e-books, even if they started refusing to convert .html ones.

I'm not sure what the XO is, and can't find my google window right now to look it up; does it use eInk?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Review here. There are rather more fees. Correction to my note below, "anything not public domain" is wrong; anything unlocked is correct.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with those. But those are all optional. It's not like the iPhone where if you don't pay the 40$ (I think) a month you have a very expensive and stylish brick.

I've been reading the manual and I've read all the stuff on the Amazon description page--so all this stuff is what the company says, and might be wrong. But bearing that in mind---

Sure, you can pay to get the New York Times. (Which you would have to do to get the paper version anyway, and the electronic subscription is cheaper) Or if you only read a few articles, and it isn't worth paying for it, you can use the experimental web browser to go online via the Sprint cell phone or EVDO network (no fees for this connectivity at the moment--I don't know whether Amazon is going to lose their shirts on that and have to change it though) and read articles with the (admittedly reported as being clunky) web browser, for free.

Likewise you can pay 2$ a month for the convenience of having a favorite blog downloaded automatically to your Kindle, or you can fire up the experimental web browser and go read for free. I wouldn't "subscribe" to many blogs--but for something like Pharyngula that I read every day, it might be worth it to me to not have to click through and wait to read the end of every article.

Plus, as the article points out, Amazon is going to need to fund all those invisible Sprint accounts somehow. Some comes from the initial 400$ price of the Kindle, the rest comes from Amazon charging Kindle owners for services (and only services they request--unless I'm missing something; that's always possible) that make their data gathering more convenient. Now chances are, if I got this, that I would be one of those stingy bastards who drag the system down by not buying these services--they knew there would be a few people like that. They're just hoping that other data hounds will subscribe to three or four blogs and a couple of newspapers and a couple of journals, to make up for pinchpennies like me :-)

Interestingly enough, the article writer seems to find this model a little offensive--perhaps because zie is a data hound and would spend a lot of money having all the sites zie reads automatically downloaded to and cached on zir Kindle. Zie thinks this invalidates the "no monthly fees" claim in the Kindle's advertising. To me, it's more like getting a post office box for "no monthly fees." If the post office doesn't charge you, there are no monthly fees and it seems a little odd to complain that the New York Times charges to deliver you a paper there. Especially since the author even acknowledges that a Kindle user can read free web content for free if zie is willing to browse the web like anybody else.

I can see that self-discipline will be necessary with this device; like a credit card, it makes it easy to spend a great deal of money without really noticing. But so far nothing strikes me as being either hidden or unreasonaby expensive.

[mdlbear]

The "easy to spend money" part is a good point. I wouldn't dare hand one of these to a kid unless it was password protected, and maybe not even then.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I'm with you there. Of course, I probably wouldn't hand an expensive piece of electronics to a kid without close supervision anyway, but you're right; nobody with poor impulse control should be playing with one of these.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Well, you sound sold. Me...I think I'd wait to hear what the publishing industry has to say; they're the ones it's going to depend on, I think. I also do not trust Sprint; all the cell companies are stunningly greedy, and the industry as a whole has a 40% customer dissatisfaction rate.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You have a good point about this involving being able to trust both the company holding the purchased content (Amazon) and the company controlling the wireless access (Sprint).

I like the idea behind the Kindle, I really do, but I worry about the ways it could go wrong.

I think Amazon will have quite a bit of influence in the publishing industry, for what it's worth, given how many books pass through their hands.

I guess I'm just thinking that if the Kindle works for two years, the wireless browsing alone would be a reasonably good deal, even if the whole deal evaporated at that point. I might make a point of buying the cheaper books for the reader, or concentrating on books where the searchable nature of the interface adds a lot of value.

I think I'm sold enough to put it on my wishlist, anyway, which is a little different from preparing to wring the money out of the food budget to pay for it. It helped when I found the coverage maps on the Sprint website and saw that Sprint thinks (at least) that we'd have good coverage at our house.

[mdlbear]

The XO is more commonly known as the One Laptop Per Child laptop; they're available at http://laptop.org/ for $400, of which half is tax deductible because it's paying for a second laptop to go to a kid in the third world. WiFi, mesh networking, and incredibly good power management. The screen is a bit strange -- not eInk. It's reflective monochrome in bright light, and color (at lower resolution) with a backlight.

ASUS has a little flash-based mini-laptop called the Eee; similar price and capabilities to the XO but without the dual-mode screen, mesh networking, and tax deduction. On the other hand, it doesn't look as much like a kid's toy. Probably not as durable, either.

I believe the Kindle also supports html and jpeg, so one could presumably use something like ghostscript to convert PDF files to page-sized images tied together with html. Awkward, but maybe doable. I'd rather have a multi-use laptop or PDA now, and wait until the price comes down a *lot* on eInk-based readers.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay, I wondered if that was what the XO was. It does sound interesting.

Kindle does support html and jpeg, but the user has to e-mail them (the html for certain, not sure about the jpeg) to Amazon to be converted (for free, but it takes about 15 minutes) and then either e-mailed back to the user's computer (free) or downloaded to the Kindle automatically (10 cents per item). However apparently there are (shareware?) programs out there to convert PDF to MobiPocket, which the user can then transfer to the Kindle by USB.

Of course, having to convert every PDF could potentially be annoying, but it's probably possible to script it so it happens in the background.

I'd really like to see some better pdf support--an awful lot of scientific articles are available as pdfs only.

[mdlbear]

The other problem with the Kindle as a PDF reader is that PDF is formatted for a specific page size, which in most cases is A4 or letter. Simply rendering it on a screen the size of the Kindle's results in something that isn't readable. And it's almost impossible to reformat PDF.

They're going to have enough trouble converting HTML -- many layouts just don't work on a narrow screen.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd be interested to see how well the web browsing works. And I see the PDF problem--the only easy way I see around it would be to make the viewing surface close to 8 1/2 X 11, which would make the gadget very large.

I actually like the idea of an e-book reader that opens like a folio with display pages to the right and left of a central spine. Maybe it would be possible to lay it flat and switch it to "8 1/2 by 11" mode to read PDFs. Though the break in the middle where the spine was might be impossible to ignore.

There's supposed to be a program that converts pdf to mobipocket, which is apparently an e-book format. But I hear it doesn't work all that well.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

mdlbear has the right of it, I think; the Sony PRS-505 is probably closer to what you want. The general problem with all of these, however, are the limitations on available content; anything that is not public domain is dependent on the supplier's deals with the publishers, which are apt to be limited, and of course truly obscure books simply won't be available at all. Amazon may get better deals with the publishers simply because they are Amazon or maybe not--the only thing to do is wait and see. Of the US cell phone carriers, Sprint has possibly the worst coverage, so that might be a problem for you as well.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Part of what makes the Kindle attractive is that Amazon has a *lot* of new-release content out there, probably because of its clout with publishers, as you mention.

If you could get college textbooks on it, that would be top notch. However I don't know if textbook publishers would go for it; I'm not sure how much of textbooks' high prices are caused by a lack of economies of scale and how much by the captive market. Though, even if they didn't give a price break, it might still be worth it to students for being able to carry a year's worth of textbooks (or a college career's worth) in one hand. Plus having all your textbooks searchable--that would be very useful.

Sprint having the worst coverage is a potential problem too. Rural Tennessee is not going to have the best coverage by any carrier.

[occams_pyramid]

El Reg doesn't think much of it. But then The Register is weird at the best of times :-)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Wow.

No, it certainly doesn't.

[mdlbear]

On the whole I agree with El Reg. Electronic readers will eventually make substantial inroads into the paper book, magazine, and newspaper market, but not until you can get a letter-sized sheet of the stuff for $10. It'll happen, but not this year.