Kindle DX UnBoxing!

This Kindle DX arrived via US Mail just a few minutes ago, so I thought I'd share my first impressions.

The box it came is was identical in size to the box the 2nd generation Kindle came it. Zip it open down the side to find an inner box wrapped in Amazon's black alphabetic paper. Zip that open to find a stiff cardboard box that could easily be mistaken for a take-out casserole dish. Lift the lid to reveal a HUGE version of the Kindle 2. The keyboard on the lower edge was squashed to make room for the screen. Number keys have been combined into the letters. The DX is incredibly thin, and weighs in at 1 lb 2.9 oz, or 538 grams. compare that to the Kindle 2's weight of 10.2 oz or 289 grams. The only external difference around the edges appears to be speaker perforations on the bottom edge.

These last two pictures reveal what's under the DX in the box. You get a good looking beginners guide and a USB cable which includes it's own AC charging adapter.

No turning it on yet. This DX is for my wife, who's main plans for it is to subscribe to a few newspapers. She hopes the added size and resolution make it more enjoyable than reading them on the earlier Kindles.

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Kindle Books on Your iPhone/Pod Touch!

As rumored, Amazon has now released a Kindle ebook application for the iPhone. It took me 30 seconds this morning to find it and install it on both my iPod Touch and my Wife's iPhone. You enter the Amazon account that is used with your Kindle and you will immediately have access to all the books you had previously purchased on your Kindle. You can sort by Title or Author. You can GO to your most recent book/page. You can add, delete, or goto bookmarks, and everything you update in the Kindle app will be updated on your Kindle via whispernet as well!

If anyone doubted how well the Kindles new and old would do, you need to step back and realize that it's not about the hardware. Amazon make it's money selling ebooks. You can now shop for and buy Kindle formatted ebooks from your iPhone, and whispernet will keep everything synced between your Kindle-capable devices.

The Kindle application is free and available from the App store right now. Be warned, as I predict several hundred thousand people will be downloading it today.

Read Well!

Kindle 2.0 Unboxing

My Kindle 2.0 shipped on the 23rd of february via US Postal Service. It arrived well packaged and in great shape on the 26th of February. Thin is in! At just 1/3" thick, Kindle 2 is uniformly thin and much more portable than Kindle 1. It slips easily into a briefcase and won't wedge your stack. Is your brief case full of documents, weighing enough to strain your arm when carrying? Imagine every single page now living in your Kindle, and only needing the Kindle with you on a business trip. Sixteen is four times better than four. While the 4 gray shades of the 1st Kindle could show you crude photos and passable artwork if it was limited to linework, the 16 shades of gray supported on the Kindle 2 make photos reasonable, and permit artwork at least some range.

Details: The Kindle comes with a USB cable and an AC USB charger. A very nice touch as it allows charging from a wall socket or via USB from your PC.

New to Kindle 2 is a 5-way toggle. It simplifies getting around in menus and on the screen. Push it up or down or left or right, then push down to select whatever the cursor is on. Page buttons have been simplified and re-engineered to eliminate accidental page turns when picking up or holding the Kindle. The Volume control will be used more on this Kindle as it can now read your book to you via built in text-to-speech. You get a male or female voice to choose from. Along the top edge you'll find a headphone jack and the power slider. The bottom edge houses the proprietary USB jack. The Kindle is not as big as it appears in most online photos. I can slip this one in the chest pocket of my coat. It is 5.25" x 8", and only a hair over 1/3" thick. It weighs 10.2 ounces or 289 grams. For comparison my iPod Touch weighs 4.2 ounces or 120 grams. With the $30 Amazon Kindle leather case it is 9/10th of an ounce heavier than Kindle 1.0 is with the case it came with. Not a tremendous amount, but noticable. I'm guessing there is a larger battery inside. What, me read? I'm not an avid book reader, but do read several blogs, news articles, and magazines. I'm hoping the ones I prefer are available for automatic delivery to my Kindle. I also write some, and may see how well I do at self publishing to the Kindle store.

Where thou goest memory slot? Kindle 1.0 has an SD card slot (limited to 2gb) which although hidden beneath the removeable battery cover gave you the option of changing out the content you kept on your Kindle. Kindle 2.0 has more internal memory (2gb), and as such can natively hold more books, but now there is no potential for increased or variable content without re-syncing Kindle with your PC.

Instant books! Whispernet is the name Amazon has given to the Kindle's ability to download content directly without needing to be hooked up to a PC.

Experimental? The Kindle has more potential than obvious from a first look. With ubiquitous internet connectivity it is natural to think it should come with a web browser. Amazon was gracious to put one there, although since the screen only supports 16 shades of grey at 800x600 pixels your web experience can at best be called "experimental". Only a fraction of the web will render perfectly on the Kindle, but it's there to use when nothing else is available. Audio playback capability is also included, and so MP3 playing is supported. The text-to-speech feature is also considered experimental. I'll chock it up to mean Amazon is still working on these features and we can expect them to improve over time. If I remember right, there should be a game and possible calculator hidden in the software. Hopefully there will be a few more suprises as well.

Should you get a Kindle? $359 and shipping is expensive. I noticed Amazon has some 1st generation Kindles for sale at a much lower price ($220) now. Kindle 2 is a significant improvement over Kindle 1. If you're an avid reader or technology addict (like me) then getting a Kindle 2 is a no-brainer.

I had to buy one. Be careful, or you'll have to buy one too.

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Kindle Review

I couldn't resist. My wife was threatening to buy another book, so I broke down and let her open up the Amazon Kindle I'd bought her for Christmas.

Nice box! Very bookish. The packaging looks very well thought out. Inside we found the Kindle on one side and the cables (USB and Power adapter). The leatherish cover was wrapped in paper and also included.

There have been several reviews stating that the cover is poorly designed and that the Kindle falls out/off of it easily. I think those reviewers failed to look closely. There is a stretchy strap attached to the back of the cover, and many have shown it being used to hold the Kindle to the cover. If the user manual is examined, you see a picture showing the strap is there to hold the cover closed around the Kindle, and not hold the Kindle itself. The cover has a stiff plastic tab that engages the slight recess in the Kindle back plate. With the Kindle inserted thoroughly this tab prevents it from sliding back out easily. The cover is not really ideal as a way to hold the Kindle while reading it, but is perfect for protecting the Kindle when you're carrying it. I'll give the cover an A.

The Kindle itself was smaller and thinner than I had expected. It fits nicely into the cover and together they make a very easy-to-carry package. Form factor? A.

Setting it up proved very frustrating. As it turns out the wireless service used by the Kindle does not reach into my house very well. The Kindle has to be registered at Amazon, which you can do on the device itself using it's wireless connection. That of course assumes the Kindle can connect. Since my Kindle could not connect well, my initial impression was soured with unexplained freezes and "Cannot connect, try again later" messages. I'd like to point out that I had tried to determine if my house would be within the network service coverage area Kindle uses, and could not. Obviously the network does not reach everywhere. I sent off an angry email to Kindle technical support and went to bed.

It is amazing what a night's sleep can do for technology. This morning I woke up with the suspicion that the computer and cabling nightmare in my office may not have created the best environment for cell phone service reception. I took the Kindle into the living room where very little technology lives, and found that the Kindle would connect.

Within a few minutes I was checking out the "experimental" web browser. There is a basic and an advanced version, and JAVA is supported with the advanced version. Web pages would not load as they would on your computer's browser. The Kindle browser does something with the text on any page it goes to to try and optimize it for it's screen. There are several default bookmarks already listed, and most of them look fairly decent. I'm guessing they were included as defaults primarily because of how well they looked using e-ink.

The Kindle Store is well executed. I'm not much of a book reader or buyer, but it appears that anyone who would be should be happy here.

My wife is the book reader, and she was primarily interested in getting books on the Kindle. Within a few minutes she had found, ordered, and was reading one of two books she had bought. Ecstatic would be an understatement for the joy she was experiencing. The great price of the books impressed here. Although they have been advertising top-selling books for $9.99, there are hundreds of books available for less than that. My wife found a book printed in 2000 for $6.99, that was still $17.99 for the hardcover.

I love the concept, the technology, the product design, the networking. My wife sees immediately how great it is to have several books with her, with the near-instant ability to order and read any new one whenever she feels like it. She bought a new purse solely to have a way to carry her Kindle with her all the time. That purse, of course, has a pocket perfectly sized for a Kindle.

Conclusion? If you have a decent connection, the Kindle is an amazing product. With no or little connection it will become very tedious very quickly. The Kindle concept makes perfect sense to me, and I'm not a book reader. The Kindle itself makes perfect sense to my non-technical wife who IS a book reader. Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)= 10/10.

I say the Kindle, this version AND the next one, will be/is a success. Get one if you can. If you really love a book reader, you have to.

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More Kindle Thoughts

It is very interesting to read the assorted reviews of the Kindle you can find scattered around the web. There are a few written by people who have one. There are thousands written by people who have only seen it on the web. Not surprisingly the "I don't have one" reviews almost all judge the Kindle as too expensive (not a bargain) and/or too ugly. Those who have one to evaluate have almost all been very impressed with the Kindle.

Is it too expensive? If you don't buy books, then yes. My wife is an avid reader and spends $500 or so a year on real books. Those books average $30 each, and add up to 17 books or so. I've already spent $400 for a Kindle. Kindle e-books will be $10 on average. If in the first year of owning it my wife buys 17 e-books she will have spent $170 but SAVED $340. First year: $570 spent - $340 saved = $230 relative cost. Next year (and each following year) my wife will buy another 17 books, saving $20 over the hard cover cost for a net savings of $340. There are other possible savings, and they all depend on how much one actually uses the Kindle instead of traditional methods of aquiring reading materials. If you really use it then it may in fact be a BARGAIN at $400. Yes, it would be a better bargain if it were even a little cheaper. So would everything.

Is it ugly? Apparently it looks better in person than in any photo of it on the web. I can believe that. For all we know those early photos of it were of early prototypes. I'll have my own to evaluate next Monday.

Will it succeed? Amazon has already sold out of their first shipment.
From Amazon's Kindle page: "Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. ".

My prediction? The Kindle will catch on. Those who get one will show them to their friends. The price will come down a bit as Amazon starts recovering development costs with e-book sales. E-book AND traditional book reading will increase. E-book versions of hot sellers might be made available one day before the hard cover book is released, inspiring Harry Potter fans and such to buy an e-reader just so they can read the latest release first.

Conclusion? Don't trust any review (including this one) by anyone who has not actually held and tested the device they are reviewing. Want to know how really good (or bad) the Kindle is? Stay tuned to this blog.

4D

Amazon's Book Reader

Amazon threatens to introduce a new digital book reader on Monday 11/19/2007. There are a few photos on the web of what it might look like.

I can't believe they'll introduce anything so ugly as this photo on engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/.
I've seen and held Sony's new e-reader: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16184&XID=O:sony%20ebook:corp_read_gglsrch, and if it had web access for downloading books I would get one for my wife, an avid book reader. I see the potential market when I scan the airport while waiting to catch a plane. The smart ones have brought a book to read. Of course these things will have to be allowed on planes.

The device would also need to have a "look" perhaps like a high quality book. Maybe a stiff leather cover you can break in, that folds back behind the "book". Less buttons and more page. Facing pages, perhaps dual screens. A touch interface that interprets finger swipes/gestures that book readers intuitively use to work their way through a book. I'd buy one if it was that cool, and even more so if it fit in a suit pocket.

I'll even go farther to predict that once we get the device right those brick and mortar book stores will fade away. The CD stores have certainly disappeared from the malls since the original ipod came out. Once we can buy our book media like we can buy our music, and even find free public domain books to read, we will. Of course the generations that grew up with real books won't give them up easily. Our children's children may never hold a real book.

My last prediction? E-reader and e-book both suck as names. No young person uses the terms LP or Record or cassette or 8-track when talking about their music. We mention MP3s and downloads, iPods and (generic) MP3 players, and some still speak of CDs. I'm not sure what it will be called, but stories you carry with you on your digital book need a cooler name. No, not iBook. ;-)

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