Getting there. I still need it to be water proof before it is enough of an advantage over paper books to overcome the ephemeral nature of ebooks. I'd love to carry my fiction around in a more compact form when I go sailing, that would save a significant portion of my duffle bag space, but "water happens" (or pop/soda spills). Once it is waterproof I can read in a pool too!
Get me a sealed unit, capacitive touch screen, inductive charger, wireless data interface (wifi or bluetooth) and I'm ready to go.
I'd also prefer that a larger portion of the physical size be given to the screen, so either grow the screen or lose bulk.
But seriously, I agree about the bulk. I don't need mine to be waterproof, just be able to let me read PDFs (including password-protected PDFs). A color screen would be good too.
Let me plug it into my Mac and manage my own PDFs. That's all I need.
Someone, tell me what I'm missing here. Why does an e-book reader need a keyboard and other nonsense taking up roughly half of the real estate that could be used for adding more screen? This seems like the perfect application for a touch-screen since the majority of time should be spent reading or interacting with existing documents, something that isn't terribly difficult to do with limited navigation.
To me it just looks childish because there's so much bezel and cruft and no screen.
The browser is a BIG part of the Kindle. And, to be honest, this is not meant to be such a casual product. The interface doesn't matter so long as when you're reading text, you don't have to look to know what button to press.
I don't think this will kill the book, but I think it's great for people who read a ton and can't afford to buy every book. And libraries are good stopgaps, but they've got a much more limited selection and library books always feel skeevy to me.
The one thing this article doesn't mention that really surprises me is when it will ship. No speculation, nothing even to say they have no clue. Only Cnet seemed to admit to not knowing anything.
I guess that's what we get for having a non-Apple rumor surface: sub-par coverage.
It looks like they've solved one of the biggest problems of the first model, which is the fact that the bottom corners are both acute, so there is no easy and comfortable way to hold it for long periods of time.
Looks cool. Hope they lower the price, I know its worth it, but for a student who already needs to buy a lot of books anyway, it can soon become something you can live without.
Amazon should get the kindle in collages just like notebooks are, and make profit from the book sales when having a kindle is a must for every student.
You... apparently haven't used a Kindle before. Because... yes. You CAN load whatever you want on it from whatever source you want.
The PDF thing: guys, I'm sorry, it's overblown. There are good converters available for Windows and Mac, and you can EMAIL the PDF to Amazon to get it converted and emailed back instantly. You can even pay a buck to have it sent there automatically. The PDF format is not necessary. Frankly, if I can load Ulysses from Gutenberg as a TXT file and have it good enough to read without distraction, then things are pretty good. If you insist on chapter indexes and hypertext, the .prc is completely fine and basically works just as the PDF would have. It even displays images, though I didn't get a Kindle for that.
HN has a habit of dismissing what they don't like offhand. The Kindle is one of those suffering products. I speak now not as a "hacker," but as somebody who loves the written language, loves novels, even loves certain poetry, and the Kindle is wonderful for people who want to read books. That's what it's for. This isn't an enterprise tool. This isn't meant to help you with work. This is for literature, for novels, for people who like reading. And it does what it does STUNNINGLY well.
The physical limitations weren't really limitations. I dunno, I love the Kindle's original design. I'll have to use this one to see if it's still just as intuitive, but if you've ever used a Kindle, it's something where the design just makes perfect sense. You fall in love with it. I know I did.
And, between getting a mobile browser that displays fairly nicely, being able to mark up texts as I see fit, and having the ability to download The Complete Shakespeare for 99 cents if I need it (oh, and I DO need it), makes the Kindle basically an extreme orgasm of a literature product. I found ebooks online for books that have been out of print for 20 years, books that I read when I was younger and couldn't find again. Think of what it would be like if we moved directly from LP to mp3 with nothing in between for music. It opens up an entire world of literature for the casual/hardcore reader.
So... please. If you're going to diss the Kindle, diss things that actually make sense to diss. Because this is an excellent product, people happen to love it, and it also happens to be selling well, and we Kindle users aren't dicks like Mac users are yet. Don't push people like me into being sarcastic and abrasive. There's still hope for our entire userbase.
Get me a sealed unit, capacitive touch screen, inductive charger, wireless data interface (wifi or bluetooth) and I'm ready to go.
I'd also prefer that a larger portion of the physical size be given to the screen, so either grow the screen or lose bulk.