What does the 'Spy think?

http://www.techmeme.com/071118/p12#a071118p12

$399
6" eInk screen
30 hours battery life
Stores 200 books
EVDO built in for OTA downloads
Subscriptions for magazines and newspapers
PDF/text file support
Built in Wikipedia/Google News reader

http://gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2007/11/kindle.jpg

I believe that this kind of thing is the future. Wouldn't it be great to have all of your university text books on just the one, small device? And the books were searchable, annotatable, could adjust text size etc?

However, I think the price is a little steep. Especially considering books will be $9.99 a piece (i.e £7.99)

A friend of mine has the Sony eReader and its amazing for screen reading but doesn't have that nice integration with a store etc. Amazon might be able to pull it off.

The future of reading...not. And boy is it fugly.

I think that kind of device may well be the future of reading - if it was £30-40. The screen and battery life may be excellent, but for that kind of money I want something that does a lot more than just ebooks - especially since the books will probably be DRM'd and unusable on anything other than the Kindle.

And yeah, it ain't pretty.

When I was studying I remember having multiple books open, or multiple sheets so I could quickly refer to different things. Having 1 smallish screen isn't going to be practical for students, especially at such a price for a device that doesn't even replace a computer.

Books and paper are cheap, this is a huge initial outlay.

At least with mp3 players the market was similar, you needed a player and bought media. With reading materials the "player" and media are one and the same currently. That's the problem these things face.

hard to imagine them catching on really - just looked at pics, and agree it's pretty ugly - like something from the 80s.

with (portable) music, ultimately you have your headphones on, so whilst the format has changed, the act of listening hasn't really.

whereas that's not the case with books - holding a physical book in your hand while you're reading is very much part of it, far more so than putting a physical CD in a player before you listen to it.

Iain

The Kindle 2 is out in the US now. Typical the UK is ages behind in getting the cool toys.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons...pf_rd_i=507846

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/te...00/7879927.stm

Ugly and there is nothing to sniff. Oh the joy of sniffing mushrooms and other odours in books.

I think these look awesome. I really want them to come to the UK but I suspect it requiring a cell network provider and the publishing industries notoriously stupid rules around copyrights are preventing it.

From what I've read on them, there's no fees after the initial purchase and Amazon is responsible for all the wireless fees thereafter. If it comes to the UK there'll will probably be added fees (taxes).

i think the kindle 2 looks ok but not keen on the original one.
i think e readers are a good idea but the price is putting me off getting one.
around £100 and i would consider one but would not want to spend more

It's going to take a long time to convince me. I'm sure they will have niche uses but I don't think the mainstream is ready.

Anyway, I don't want a "book" that I can't read in the bath.

Prefer the look of the Sony one myself.

But ... I agree with what most people think. They're too expensive. The fact that I have no physical book is no problem with me. If I can read it, I don't care. Plus, our house is overflowing with books! If it saved us a bit of shelf space, it'd be fine with me! Problem is, 80% of the books we're overflowing with are the wifes, and she prefers a paper book .... I've tried!

I've used my media player as an e-book of sorts before. It can display notepad files and has a 4" screen .... I found stuff (once formatted correctly) was perfectly readable. No exterior lighting required was a bonus, as was being able to listen to tunes at the same time. Great on the train.

They're a good idea, but I do think they'll struggle to go big in the mainstream ... especially at these kind of prices.

I just can't see the Kindle 2 taking off, especially not at $349. I just don't see how it could replace the book, plus for news you can get most of it for free with a smartphone on the web. It is a hit in the tech community but I think that is only because the techies will buy anything that is new.

E-ink based devices (not specifically the kindle) are clearly the future of reading though, no one can deny that. The parallel with digital music is there for everyone to see. Who would have thought even 5 years ago that the CD would be essentially a relic and we'd be buying digital music from online stores to play on our tiny media players?

The technology is good (power consumption, the 'look' and feel of e-ink) and the idea is sound (a library in one device). Price seems to be the stalling point but then that will drop as these types of devices come into circulation - as with any new tech.

People who paid £350+ for one of the early HD based mp3 players - few. People who own an mp3 player now - millions.

Why have a completely different device? Why not build the technology into a phone or something? I don't want to carry around yet another device, plus the only time I carry books around is when I go on holiday.

lol

So now we need a combined:

Phone
Camera
GPS system
MP3 player
Video player
Internet browser
and e-book reader

Mind you. A lot of smart phones aren't far off that already!

Two obvious problems.

1. An e-book reader needs to be a reasonable size. Make the screen too small and people will not use it. Most people probably wouldn't be happy reading a book on a 3" or 4" screen.

2. Emotional attachment. The comparison to music is a reasonable one but the jump is totally different. When music was vinyl only, portability wasn't really an option. One the walkman appeared, we all had a small box we could put music on, it just got smaller and more capable over the years. Books aren't already at that stage. I also have to agree that books do have a certain charm. We have a library wall, custom built, in the bedroom. It takes up an entire wall and does actually look really nice. The wife uses most of it, she has more books, and one little e-book reader sitting on a little shelf ...... nah ..... it's just not the same, and I'm about as big a gadget-fan as you can get.

They have a long way to go yet and I can't ever see them replacing books on the scale that MP3 has replaced CD's.

An e-ink screen is a totally different thing to an LCD. Try reading anything for a length of time on a mobile phone - even larger screened devices. Awful on the eyes. Hell, I wouldn't even want to sit and read a book on a regular computer monitor. E-ink is easy on the eyes as it mimics regular paper and it only uses power when you refresh it.

It's not necessarily about portability either. Imagine not needing to have a book shelf full of heavy books at home.

I do think sancheeez has a point in terms of people's emotional attachment to books. There is something about holding the actual thing. Saying that, when digital music first came around I was one of the people that preferred to buy a CD so you actually had something physical, the artwork, the booklet etc. A few years later and all my existing CD's are in the loft and I haven't bought one for at least a 8-12 months.

It's a change yes but in the end nostalgia only lasts so long.

I have done.

Read plenty full books on my Cowon A2 .... which has a 4" screen. PLayed around with the settings a bit until I was happy with it, brightness down and white text on a black background IIRC .... my eyes were fine with it.

Apparently there are more people who have an e-book app installed on their iPhones than there are owners of standalone e-book devices (source). So - assuming at least some of them use their iPhones to read books - there is a market for phones that can also be used as books. The advantage, as others have said, being that you only need to carry one device in your pocket.

I've tried the Sony Reader and found it a bit slow and unintuitive, basically un-booklike in look and feel. But it's very useful for those who need to work with large text documents, because you can carry a huge text around in your pocket; no need to print it or carry a laptop (although you can't edit it on the Reader). I've also heard that publishers are more supportive of the Sony device because they don't want Amazon to get more power in the book market.

There was an interesting article in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago which suggested that e-readers had failed to take off because there is no threat (or only a very small threat) from piracy. This makes digital books very different from digital music. The record companies (so the argument goes) had to progress digital music because people were buying fewer CDs and instead using illegal download or file-sharing sites. But book readers are different. They can't just log on to a file-sharing site and download a whole book. If they don't want to buy a hard-copy book they can borrow it from a friend or go to the library, but that has always been the case, so the publishing companies aren't noticing any plunge in profits like the record companies did.

In the comments under the article, someone else pointed out that another big difference was the cost of the hardware. MP3 files can be played on fairly cheap players, but e-readers are far more expensive, and (so far at least) the e-books aren't any cheaper than the hard copies, so you're never really recouping your investment.

Still, I would love a Kindle

The thing with that though, is I assume the actual app is free .... in which case yes, loads of people will download it, install it, ........ and then never use it.

And the numbers on there are small potatoes. A 20,000 book library is not even a drop in the literary ocean.

And I still think the small screen will put people off. My wife is an avid reader and she wouldn't even contemplate reading a book on my media player which has a slightly bigger screen than the iPhone ....

Oh .... and to the guy who reckoned you can't get books on file sharing sites? How wrong you are my friend ..... try looking for books on things like torrent search sites, you'd be amazed! As you say though, nothing like the volume of downloaders to put a dent in book sales ....

I agree that reading from the iPhone screen for long periods wouldn't be that great. I just get the impression that there are so many devices that are trying to fill these so called gaps which don't really need to be filled. I also don't believe that people who are avid book readers are going to be drawn away from the actual book anytime soon.

I have been trying more audiobooks recently. If they have a great narrator then it is a great way to listen/read books, plus it fits around my busy life. You can listen in the car, on a packed train, in the middle of the night when you don't want to wake your other half by turning the light on.

The Kindle might be coming here in time for Christmas...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/262333/k...christmas.html

Maybe if it was £40 I would get it, but never at that price!

A couple of cautionary tales on using Kindle:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...digital-rights

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/91...m-kindles.html


Personally, when I go on holiday I have enough to worry about with chargers for phones and cameras. Last thing I want to worry about on the beach is the battery on my "book" going flat.

I also think the worry of theft would spoil a lot of holiday relaxation and reading time - it's more likely that someone would be interested in a Kindle rather than my battered copy of the latest paperback that I'm reading...

However, I am soon to be a mature student and as such the thought of having all that possible research at my fingertips does sound appealing. But not however at a plus 100 pound price point. Drop it to 99 or less and I might look at it again.