The Kindle is a lovely idea, brought to us by the people at Amazon who thought that everyone should be able to order any book in print in the form of atoms. And later, any music, movie, or shoe that could be obtained throughout the world. But the Kindle falls short of Amazon’s typical high-sheen polish on its Web site. The portable electronic book reader has a great display, a persistent Internet connection, and a huge selection of books you can purchase–and that’s where its best features peter out.
The idea behind the Kindle is that you should be able to have an optimal device on which to read. A laptop screen might be terrific, but it’s battery intensive and not the right form factor for extended reading. An iPhone might have a crisp, high-density display, but it’s too small to read extended documents, especially for enjoyment.
Enter the Kindle. The Kindle’s screen is the same density, size, and type as the Sony Reader–about 170 pixels per inch–but the Kindle adds a keyboard, network connection, and larger library to Sony’s line-up. (That’s the same screen display density as the iPhone, by the way.)
They also boosted the price. The latest Sony Reader costs about $300 retail; the Kindle weighs in at $400. Sony throws in 100 free classic books (i.e., out of copyright titles); Amazon’s comes with a welcome letter from the founder.
The keyboard, network connection, and library really are the big distinguishing characteristics, but only the library holds up on examination. I’ve worked with a Kindle for a week, and it does live up to its claims of easy portability, high legibility, easy access to content, good network performance, and a wide array of available subscription periodicals and purchasable books.
That’s only part of the story. The Kindle works best when you think about it least. Its clunky graphical interface is hard to avoid, as is the awkward hardware. I don’t like the Kindle design, which has an unfinished feel to it. It’s very easy to bump the large buttons on the device’s left and right edges used to navigate. Even after a week, I’m still skipping pages and then having to page back.
The keyboard is terribly designed and impossible to type well on. A BlackBerry’s keyboard is substantially easier to use. And the network connection from Sprint Nextel, while everywhere and high quality, is only slightly better than having a much cheaper Wi-Fi radio. These days, with Wi-Fi everywhere we might be sitting long enough to read, the Kindle’s network connection is convenient but not de rigeur. Amazon could have cut a deal with Boingo or another firm that aggregates Wi-Fi to allow the same kind of delivery in which Amazon pays Sprint some percentage of each delivered sale.
The display, using E Ink’s latest technology, can’t refresh rapidly, showing a disturbing flash for every page change, which E Ink reports takes about 3/4 of a second. It also means you can’t move a cursor on the screen, and selection is made through a strange combination of scroll/click wheel and an iridescent bar that selectively reveals a kind of cursor used to select a line.
If we look just at the content, there’s an impressive amount available. Where Sony claim over 20,000 ebooks, Amazon lists over 90,000. Pricing is aggressive, with most titles between $6 and $10, even for the newest books. (Amazon is apparently taking a beating on its newest titles, as conventional publishers discount ebooks based on the current edition: if hardcover, Amazon is paying a discount on the hardcover price, that means they lose a few dollars on each book; paperbook titles, costing less, can produce actual profit.)
The content you buy can’t be read elsewhere–at least for now–and you can’t simply import or convert HTML, PDF, or other non-text formats, having to instead go through an email-based ripping process that creates a locked, proprietary document that you then manually copy via USB to the Kindle. (You can have Amazon copy the files over the cell data network to a Kindle, but you pay 10 cents per item for that convenience.)
This makes the Kindle a one-trick pony with a limp: even Sony lets you read its ebooks on a Windows system as well as on its device. Should Kindle not pan out in the marketplace, it seems like you’d have a dead digital format, something like a laser disc. When Adobe introduced its product activation for the Creative Suite set of software, they also guaranteed that should the company fail or otherwise be unable to activate software, they would unlock all the software, making it possible to continue using in the future. There’s no promise about the future accessibility of Kindle content. Adobe controls the Creative Suite copyright; Amazon has no rights in the works it resells.
The Kindle winds up then, in my estimation, being a luxury gift for a frequent traveler. I expect a few million regular travelers form the core early adopter market for the Kindle, and will find it meets their needs despite the awkwardness, because it’s much better than the alternatives.
As someone who used to put in tens of thousand of air miles a year, I know that you’re always scrambling for change to buy an expensive copy of The New York Times, or dragging around several books in luggage if you want something to read while on the plane or in a hotel room.
A business traveler wouldn’t balk at spending $20 to $30 a month on periodical subscriptions that they could have delivered as soon as they’re published, and an essentially unlimited library with the addition of a cheap 2 GB Secure Digital card. The Kindle holds about 200 books with its built-in storage, and that would take a long time to fill on its own.
This holiday season, if you know someone who spends several days a month away from home and office on trains, buses, and planes–but not so much in cars–the Kindle could make a welcome gift. But remember to include an Amazon.com gift certificate, too, so your happy recipient has something to read.
