High-quality unboxing photos of Amazon's Kindle eBook reader - Page 2

I disagree. I want to see the things that Apple is killing before they are born as well as born and to die soon . lol , Kasper provides great entertainment this way ,, . much less,, the comments are funny and informative.

I agree. Most people here are spoiled by Apple's keen eye for design. But the kindle could be successful if the media is priced fairly and the next version is a little more appealing visually. The concept is good IMO.

I saw the Sony reader today, and the screen does not look as good as the Kindle's.

Did anybody else notice the similarity of the boxing between apple products and this product, besides the string on the front it's nearly identical with a book like opening and then the fact that the left side is like a packet for documents and the right is like a window to display the product? compare and contrast the boxing and then look at the attempt of amazon to use the success of apple's products to leapfrog their own, the "ipod of reading"? seriously?

terrible name.

i predicted this whole thing (and with a far better, already trademarked name!) for apple a while ago;

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=71238

If you consider giving $400 to Amazon no contract, then you are correct. I understand your point, I even own a Kindle and love it, but you have to remember I am locked into Amazon for my content. More locked into Amazon than I am with my iPod to the Apple iTunes store.

In your world, does money changing hands always mean there's a contract involved?

When you are locked in to that entity as the only source for content at a more than premium price on the initial purchase, it can be perceived that way.

No, in my world the exchange of money does not always mean there's a contract involved. I was just pointing out we have to look at this realistically.

Remember this uses e-ink.

E-ink Pros: This means no battery usage to view the screen and print like reading quality. I can't read a book online personally, but could read on this.

E-ink Cons: It also means that it has poor resolution, slow refresh, no color (at least until 09 they say) and problems with a touch screen approach...

Amazon has copied Apples simplicity in sales, downloading content, nifty extra features (bare bones web browser for free), packaging and a touch of advertising. I think this will influence other firms to do the same.

Alas, it made lots of design compromises and poor ergonomic and look and feel choices.

-too easy to click pages and makes noise
-odd keyboard
-funky tracker on right
-weird plastic feel
-white color (not as nice as Apple for some reason)
-Odd thickness difference between left and right sides
-weird book holder that doesn't hold book well

Apple would not have made those compromises.

So A for effort, B for execution. I'll probably still buy one. But do think version 2 might be an even more radical improvement (but how long before a new model comes out....)

Imagine traveling for a month in Asia and then Europe. Or a business traveler on the road M-F weak after weak. I can see the CLEAR attraction. For this reason, I will buy, but may wait a bit.

(I accept all the criticisms, but nevertheless, think this is a revolutionary product that is only a version or two from nailing it. Of course, Apple probably would have nailed it.)

One downside - may have to turn off for takeoff and landing...

ebay sales are brisk. They're going for $1,000 right now. This year's "Tickle Me Elmo"?

If I'm a tourist traveling through Europe (min of 6 weeks or it's pointless) and Asia (an additional 6 weeks or it's pointless) I am a complete moron if I'm spending my time reading digital books and not soaking up the experience I most likely won't see again in my life. I'd be busy taking photos, filming scenery, working on my laptop to create DVDs of my visits to famous historical locations, museums, soaking up as much local culture as I can knowing I'll only be able to review my memory and what I recorded with my digital camera/camcorder.

I, personally, would be writing in LaTeX my experiences and possibly put them into a novella form or general diary form.

As a business man, my time will be stringently focused on business dealings. Reading books on my pocket book reader is definitely a waste of time, though perhaps reading a book over the course of being there is possible. What's more possible is picking up a book or two on the cultures and keeping them.

As a business traveler on the train/tram or whatever, I'm busy reading for leisure or most likely getting some work done. Meetings and other distractions only make getting my work accomplished throughout the week harder to attain. Having time on the train/tram to get some of it done really tends to be what I have done in my past on such a situation.

My weekly schedule also definitely could include me zoning out to some MUSIC.

It's a niche product and always has been.

Yah...where was Sony's unboxing? It does MP3's too. The linkage to Apple is slim especially since it isn't OSX compatible.

If I were going to spend $399 on a Kindle over the Sony 505 I'd go spend $699 on an iLiad. WiFi. Pen enabled Wacom touchscreen. Takes notes on PDFs. Too danged expensive. Bit slow too. Maybe the next one will be cheaper and faster.

The Sony has the same e-ink screen with the newer controller for 8 shades of gray over 4 on the Kindle (better images). On the Amazon side they offer more font sizes. Sony has longer battery life, better design and is smaller. With the cover the Kindle is almost twice the size of the Sony (with cover) and its harder to clip a light to it.

All in all, Kindle's most important contribution to eBooks is moving the bar up a couple notches and increased competition a bit. The eBook to buy isn't the Kindle but its next competitor because the Kindle sucks for the price and limitations. And its fugly.

They should have added pen input and dropped the keyboard.

The look and design is questionable.. but it makes sense when you tuck it away in that black case. The screen looks a little too gray on these photos.. it makes me wonder if it's a good screen to read from. Anyway, great that this thing gets so much attention. Perhaps it'll help the e-book to get going so that regular people start using the technology. I'd be interested... but I'd prefer an on screen touch keyboard so that the size could be optimized.

Compared to the Sony, I think it looks very old fashioned but I agree that I'd rather use an iphone or even an ipod touch to avoid the contract. This company allows you to get magazines:

http://mac.blorge.com/2007/11/26/ipo...n-your-device/
http://www.zinio.com/nu01
http://www.Zinio.com/iPhone

Playboy, Penthouse and Macworld, can't get much better than that for an entertaining train journey.

That's the thing about the e-readers, they don't show pictures so they have extremely limited uses. The ipod touch also plays music and the battery life should be long enough to let you read through your entire journey.

If anything, Amazon should have teamed up with Sony to offer the stylish reader. I guess the keyboard was their idea for being able to search for ebooks on the device but I don't see people wanting to do that.

Is it just me or does this product, which is a good idea but has ZERO!!!! 'WOW' factor.

I remember getting my first Ipod in 2002 and It was a thing of beauty and it had a monochrome screen. I was not that impressed with the monochrome, but it worked well and navigation was flawless.

When I saw this new plastic wedge it reminded me of my first computer...from 1982!!



I think Amazon's heart is in the right place, put they really need to go back to drawing board on the design. It looks like it was designed in the 70's for a crap sci fi movie.

I am an uni student, and would rather carry the books. With a book I imaging it is much easier to annotate the text, place page markers, get colour diagrams (quite important in my field, as grayscale becomes difficult to see with so many shades often needed), etc..

Important disqualifier for all of you ridiculing it:

You don't read.

I see the readers being divided about this, even most of the people that like it seem to think it needs significant work. Personally, I don't like this cost-shifting to the consumer over the previous system, I want a better discount on the books if I have to pay hundreds for the reader, but the owner would only get a fairly meager discount on the media. The biggest justification for ever increasing book prices is the cost of paper and printing, that's gone. Couple that with the loss of the ability to trade, sell or give away books, even Amazon's pricing is a money grab.

I like the basic idea of the device, I just don't like the economics behind it.

You are complaining about the black and white screen and then said why not just buy the book? What books come in color aside from children's books?

Isn't a really high-res black and white screen preferable to a colour screen? Why do you need colour?

People are complaining about the wrong thing here. Who cares if it is "ugly"? Who cares if it has a black an white screen? The real complaint here is the keyboard - it looks like the device is trying to do too much.

I know i am being old here, but time has not arrived for a product like this, The current under 21's might uses these, but that I am beginning to really doubt this too since my kids who can get their school books on CD/DVD rather open the actually book to read and look things up even when I showed how much quicker it is to search and scan for what you need using an electronic copy.

I personally think devices like this meet a small group of peoples needs, I am not a book reader, personally reading does not allow me to get my information needs filled fast enough. But most people have a personal relationship with reading a book and being able to hold a book which has elements of being natural adds to the experience of reading. These devices make reading a good book kind of septic.

Do you? How many eBooks do you own and what do you use to read them?

I have quite a few but use my laptop. That's not optimal but I can't read Kindle books on anything BUT a Kindle. That's seriously uncool. I'd get a Sony before I got a Kindle. For $100 I can get quite a few books. For non-book reading I'd rather use a laptop or PDA or phone that can do color.


Or doing too little. This is what the Kindle should have been:



http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/features

The three things that make the iLiad even more niche is the price tag (into laptop range), battery life (a mere 12 hours) and slightly inferior eInk panel (not Vizplex).

iRex is thinking of opening up development of the iLiad further with company support. That should make it interesting but the price tag will keep it niche.

Oh, and it matters that the Kindle is ugly.

Kindle will die off. There isn't a real market for these devices. Amazon has a ton of work to do to get the masses even interested in Kindle and its all uphill.

Nearly everyone I know (including myself) who read books, read them once. Yes. Sometimes you do read a great book more than once, but in general its only once. There are far too many great books to explore out there. I have no use for a book after I read it. I usually either give it away or keep in on a book shelf to collect dust.

People share books. Fiction titles in my family are sometimes read by as many as 10 people by time it makes the rounds. This isn't possible at all with Kindle and probably won't be.

You turn your mind on to read books. You don't need your brain on to listen to music or watch something. This is a fundamental difference between books and other media. In any given day, I can listen to 25 different artists throughout the day. I can't do the same with writers. This is the beauty of the iPod.

Kindles books are simply too expensive. This is digital media people! They needed a subscription service for this thing out of the gate. They also needed a way for people to buy chapters of books (especially tech books). The iTunes Store is successful because I don't have to buy an entire CD for one song. Why should I have to buy an entire book.

Dave

DISAGREE. First, try 22 hours getting to Asia with a connection or two in airports and let me know precisely the experience one soaks up on the plane or in the lounge (when incidentally half the time the shops are closed).
Traveling by train, you can only see so many cow fields before you might take up a book.

Also, I personally like the mix of people watching, reading and sipping a glass of wine in a European piazza and relaxing some afternoon.

I apologize for the fact as well that I am a fast reader and knock out a book or two on a long plane flight or in a given week... Clearly I am culturally shallow to think reading is good for you and that having to pack 4 books alone just for the planes and airports is a hastle. What a fool I am for thinking about trading all that weight in books and space for a 10oz device that fits in my nap sack).

This will not be a niche product in 5-10 years. This will be all of our children's textbooks and many of our books.

Is this like high quality consumer porn? For those who get their rocks off to product launches?

Ta, da da da. Da da da da. Ta da da da, da da da da, boom chicka, boom chicka boom chicka boom...

No truly illiterate consumer of cheap pulp fiction would go for this anyway, it would be too much effort to flick the page as your cetacean 400lb form buckles the innersprings of your sofa, the groaning metal obscuring the last expiring meow as the cat fails to move out of your way fast enough.

That's what AudioBooks are for.

I am just trying to imagine missing the pleasures of browsing bookshops, inhaling the smell and look of print and paper mixed with the aroma of my third cappuccino!

Nahh, it does look sexily like my answering machine! and there is the satisfaction of having taken lazy acquiescence to commercial propaganda yet another step forward.

I agree, which is why I wrote "ridiculing," not "criticizing."

I've simply been baffled by the stupidity of most of the anti-Kindle posts I've read. The explanation, of course, is that there's not as much overlap as some might think between the audience being targetted by the Kindle and the audience being targetted by gadget blogs and gadget discussion boards. Sorry, LOL-ers--you're not really who they're after. Not yet.

People have never noticed that major novels and nonfiction works tend to be... Thick? Heavy? Internet commenters will hem and haw over an HP laptop being half an inch thicker than a Macbook Pro, but they can't understand why I'd rather carry a Kindle in my shoulder bag than a five-hundred page hardback?

I read Anthony Powell's Music of Time novel sequence this year. Eleven thin books, or four incredibly thick ones. I opted to check out the eleven thin ones from a college library individually rather than lugging around each of the larger ones. Either way, I'd rather have bought them via a Kindle. The likely cost would have been more like a surcharge for avoiding a trip to the library/bookstore than a purchase cost.

Problem: I don't know the cost. Because those books aren't available for the Kindle yet. But they likely will be far sooner than they'll be available for the other eReaders. Content is everything with these things. It doesn't look like the latest aluminium whatever from Apple? Pretty irrelevant.

I am confused, does that use a LCD or eink for display? It does not look as white and black as eInk would so I assume it is a LCD. Not very attractive for a ebook reader.

E-ink and it is super easy on the eyes. Easier than an actual book. Its not really that ugly after you own one for a week.

Its so UGLY that its design engineers should be punished to such an extent that they should not dare to create such a design in future.

Sachin Dhall

This is probably my twisted humour, but with a name like Kindle it would be funny if it had the exploding laptop batteries in it!

Oh and its ugly and I don't want one, the Sony one looks nicer and seems to be a nicer size (the Kindle looks big to me)