kindle2 - some thoughts on ebook reading

[Quinton]

In a moment of weakness and peer pressure (a bunch of my coworkers really like their original kindles) I pre-ordered Amazon's Kindle2.  It showed up yesterday and I've bought and downloaded a couple different things, most notably Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which I read entirely on the kindle.  After a couple chapters I largely stopped paying attention to the device itself and was pretty much just reading the book -- though every now and again I'd stop to fiddle with the device (new shiny!). 

This generation will not completely replace the printed page, but it's getting closer.  It's a lot better than the original.  Thinner, feels more solid, and the display refreshes more quickly (still flashes on refresh, unfortunately, but I found that as most people have said to me, after a while you stop noticing -- or at least stop being bothered by it).  The e-ink display is easy on the eyes.  More like reading a printed page than an lcd display.  It could stand to be slightly bigger and slightly higher resolution (smoother fonts), but is a decent size, just slightly smaller than a paperback page.

I think my largest complaint about the kindle is that it makes sharing books harder.  You *can* decrypt the .azw files (they're basically .mobi format and the crypto for that has been broken), so at least stuff you buy is not trapped forever on the kindle should amazon get bored making and supporting the product or should you move to a different ebook reading platform later.  I still think it'd be nicer if there was some kind of sharing or loaning built into the platform.  I tend to keep books forever or give them away, so while I'm annoyed that the ebook world doesn't give you a valid way to resell the content you bought, that doesn't impact me personally.

One of my main motivations for buying one of these was to simplify travel.  I get shipped off to Taiwan or Korea periodically for work and 12-14 hour plane travel absolutely requires books.  I like to bring a few books on a trip and they eat into the total volume of my luggage pretty quickly.  This critter lets me carry pretty much as many as I could ever possibly need.

The pricing makes buying new books much more appealing to me.  Hard cover not only costs a lot, but they tend to be unwieldy -- too heavy and bulky to hold and read comfortably.  The instant gratification of being able to buy something on amazon (either from the web or the built in store thing) and have it turn up on the device in a minute or so is pretty appealing.  The fact that they don't have a way to set a password is obnoxious though -- I'd never want to lend it or leave it laying around with basically the ability to buy books with a single click. 

I'm torn about the inclusion of the keyboard -- it is nice to be able to search for books or within books, and serviceable if you want to take some notes, mostly I feel it serves to add about 2 inches of extra height to the device that's not strictly needed.  Ditching the keyboard would bring the size down to that of a very very thin paperback with some margins for holding it without obscuring the content.

Overall it's a pretty nice device.  Still a bit of an early adopter thing, I think, with the $350 pricepoint and all.  It's got some cheesy DRM but you're not prevented from putting your own content on it and you can extract the paid content if you don't want to be locked in, so I can cope.  Overall construction is a lot nicer and less klunky than v1.

[gryeyes]

Is the new Kindle able to read PDF files? I thought i read you could switch between the kindle native format (i dont know what its called) and PDF files.

The technology is getting developed enough to be tempting. Maybe when we get some color e-ink displays.

[Quinton]

Is the new Kindle able to read PDF files? I thought i read you could switch between the kindle native format (i dont know what its called) and PDF files.

It handles the amazon format (azw) which is basically mobitext (mobi), as well as plain mobi files, text files, etc.  You can email a pdf to youraccount@free.kindle.com to get it converted and mailed back as an .azw (experimental service, does not work great with all pdfs, but did a reasonable job with the one I tried), or to youraccount@kindle.com if you want it delivered wirelessly ($0.10 fee).

The technology is getting developed enough to be tempting. Maybe when we get some color e-ink displays.

I don't really care about color, but if they could get e-ink to not flash on refresh, that'd be pretty awesome.  The new display is 16color grayscale and ~20% faster to refresh than the old one.  Also it does partial updates well enough that they ditched the secondary position indicator display in favor of just moving a cursor or underline bar around.

[Signe]

We're thinking about getting one, too.  Mostly for newspapers.  I love reading them, hate touching them.

[bhodi]

I hate the kindle. I'm pretty sure I've ranted about it in other threads, but here's why I hate it:

* Vendor lock in
* Heavy DRM
* No memory card slot
* Cannot lend books to others
* Does not support common formats. I'm not going to play conversion games to use my $350 device.
* Does not use wi-fi, instead uses cellular tech (another lock-in and it dies with the service!)
* Price point still too high for 'digital' books. I can buy a new paperback for less than $10. There are virtually NO production and distribution costs, so drop the price.
* Price of the device ridiculously high with all the above limitations.

[Tebonas]

While the technology is tempting, the DRM is unaccectable. My circle of friends share books like there is no tomorrow. Replacing it by something that makes that illegal is a step backwards.

[Samwise]

I read the other day that the Kindle has some sort of free cellular internet thing built in.  What's that all about?

Also, yeah, fuck not being able to share your books.  If I didn't care about being able to lend my books out at a moment's notice I'd just borrow them from the library.

[Signe]

It is a bit expensive and DRM always puts me off a bit.  Maybe they'll adjust things, including the price, or something better will come along.  I'd only be using it for newspapers, really. 

[kaid]

The DRM thing is annoying but some book publishers are doing away with it which could make the kindle and things like it more useful. If one likes scifi or fantasy check this link out http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm lots of free books for folks to read.

[Tebonas]

Free isn't the same as DRM-free, though. I want to buy my books so that authors get paid and write more books. I just don't want to lose control what I do with them after I buy them.

[kaid]

Actually the baen library books are not only free they are also not DRM'ed which would be pointless to DRM a free book they WANT people to read them and tell friend about them and share with them. Just read the home section of that page it describes what they are doing and why. I believe even for their purchased online Ebooks they are also DRM free.

[Tebonas]

I get that, I actually peruse Baen and like them. My problem is that if I buy a book from Amazon in paper form I can lend it to others, which is my right as buyer of that book. When I buy an E-book they take away that right. So they can go screw themself.

[Trippy]

I read the other day that the Kindle has some sort of free cellular internet thing built in.  What's that all about?

Cellular service is more widespread than Wi-Fi. With the Kindle you don't have to hunt for a Wi-Fi location to download something, you just need a cell connection. There's no charge to connect/download/upload/etc.

[kaid]

Yup to many current publishers are still thinking in terms of that as stealing and so try to lock their stuff down in crazy ways. As they point out on the baen page this is a pretty silly idea given that many people already are doing this in a form called a library. If libraries and sharing and reading books for free hurts book vendors then why are there bigger and bigger bookstores now. Used to be when I was a kid I had to hit the library a lot because it was the only place to find the books I liked to read as the local book stores were kinda pathetic. Now days there are many big book stores with huge selections. I would never have gotten into sci fi or fantasy books had I not had access to the many free books from the libraries and it just baffles me why more companies are not going baens route in this matter.

[Tebonas]

I see the difficulty in electronic form. Ebooks can be copied lossless, whereas if you go to a copy machine you get an inferior version of a paper book.

Easy solution for the Kindle - the lend button. Disables your copy of the book and sends it over to another persons kindle to read. That can be circumvented just as easy as DRM, but it gives me the feeling I still can share my library with others. And not get books back, thats half the fun of it 

[Quinton]

Yeah, the lack of a good model to lend or resell later is annoying.

I look at the kindle and amazon's store as a way to "rent" books indefinitely, which is certainly half-assed, but for a lot of content the convenience makes it reasonable for me.

I think the primary use cases for me are:
- being able to carry a bunch of books while traveling with no impact on luggage volume/weight
- substitute for the lack of 24hr bookstores

Since the crypto for the DRM is already broken and there are scripts out there to convert/extract the content, at least I can backup what I buy and read it elsewhere if I want.

I've heard some good things about Sony's e-ink e-book reader stuff -- anybody use one of those?

Either way, I'm not likely to stop buying real books any time soon.

EDIT: typo.

[Numtini]

I would never buy anything with DRM, particularly books, unless the price was trivial. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Ringworld and read a few chapters. That book was purchased almost 30 years ago and I am extremely dubious that anything I bought with a kindle would be available to me 3 years from now without a call to customer support and a lot of arguing, nevermind 30 years from now.

A low cost rental or a subscription service? That is a lot more appealing. I pay for the subscription version of Rhapsody and I love it. I feel I get a very good tradeoff in breadth of available music for the reality that I don't actually own it.

[Samwise]

I read the other day that the Kindle has some sort of free cellular internet thing built in.  What's that all about?

Cellular service is more widespread than Wi-Fi. With the Kindle you don't have to hunt for a Wi-Fi location to download something, you just need a cell connection. There's no charge to connect/download/upload/etc.

Can you do Web browsing over the cell connection as well?  That would make the Kindle worthwhile all on its own.  (I like the concept of cell internet but hate the concept of paying $60/mo for it.)

[Trippy]

Can you do Web browsing over the cell connection as well?  That would make the Kindle worthwhile all on its own.  (I like the concept of cell internet but hate the concept of paying $60/mo for it.)

It supposedly does have a simple experimental "text mode" Web browser but you'll have to ask Quinton about it. There is a charge to use it that way, though (not sure how much it is). The "no usage fee" stuff is for things like downloading books, browsing the store, using Wikipedia, and some Web searching (not sure how extensive that is).

[Samwise]

Wikipedia + Google Maps would be most of what I'd want portable Internet access for anyway.

[schild]

I use a Sony E-Reader. The Sony stuff has DRM (the stuff that you buy from the store). Other than that, it's better looking than the kindles, is made of metal, and lets me load almost ANYTHING onto it. Not to mention the new ones are supposed to be pretty great (I have the second revision of the first edition).

[naum]

A couple of reviews:

http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/02/25/kindle-2/

On a contrary note, I have a Kindle 2.  I’ve been really happy with it so far, other than the PDF support being poorly documented (it claims to handle PDFs natively in some of the literature, but you can’t actually just plop them down on the drive — it requires passing them through Amazon or converting them yourself).  But it handles html, text, and some other formats fine when just dropped on it via USB — it’s a lot more open than the Kindle 1.

I’m surprised at the talk of the cost being too high.  For me, the comparison is to a laptop with a cellular broadband internet card — $1440 for a standard two-year contract.  The Kindle 2 doesn’t have a full web browser, but if you’re favoring text-heavy websites (news, blogs, mail, wikis), it’s perfectly sufficient.  Plus, it’s a nice screen and has many-day battery life.  All in all I think it’s a more-than-reasonable price for something that lets me read reddit on the street corner so as to better shout at sheeple about government conspiracies.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/1451062,ihnatko-kindle-2-review-022609.article

But there’s a lot here to like and the Kindle 2 truly nudges the platform forward. The Kindle is a Crazy Billionaire CEO project, just like Apple’s Newton MessagePad. Why was it created? Because Jeff Bezos wanted it. He represents the sum total of the argument for the Kindle’s existence. And if Amazon had stuck with the original Kindle design indefinitely, or if they’d given it a mere ceremonial makeover, you could have parked it in a museum next to Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose.

[shiznitz]

I read the other day that the Kindle has some sort of free cellular internet thing built in.  What's that all about?

Cellular service is more widespread than Wi-Fi. With the Kindle you don't have to hunt for a Wi-Fi location to download something, you just need a cell connection. There's no charge to connect/download/upload/etc.

Can you do Web browsing over the cell connection as well?  That would make the Kindle worthwhile all on its own.  (I like the concept of cell internet but hate the concept of paying $60/mo for it.)

Yes but it is clunky. I have managed to post on message boards from my kindle, though.

[CharlieMopps]

Yea, when they sell these things for $20, they're linux based, and I can buy the books directly from the author avoiding the publisher, I'll buy one.

I really don't feel like spending hundreds of dollars to buy a thingy that has the sole purpose of allowing me to give that company even more money.

Oh yea, and PDFs? Who still uses PDFs anyway?

[schild]

Oh yea, and PDFs? Who still uses PDFs anyway?

I do, for almost everything. They look fucking great.

[Samwise]

I read the other day that the Kindle has some sort of free cellular internet thing built in.  What's that all about?

Cellular service is more widespread than Wi-Fi. With the Kindle you don't have to hunt for a Wi-Fi location to download something, you just need a cell connection. There's no charge to connect/download/upload/etc.

Can you do Web browsing over the cell connection as well?  That would make the Kindle worthwhile all on its own.  (I like the concept of cell internet but hate the concept of paying $60/mo for it.)

Yes but it is clunky. I have managed to post on message boards from my kindle, though.

And you don't have to pay for the web connection at all beyond the purchase of the gadget?  I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.  I mean, it's how the world SHOULD work, but I thought we were still decades off.

[CharlieMopps]

Oh yea, and PDFs? Who still uses PDFs anyway?

I do, for almost everything. They look fucking great.

ok, yea, I grant you can make them look nice.

But you can't edit them unless the author allows you to (or you crack them), they are HUGE, and they require proprietary software to open.

[naum]

Oh yea, and PDFs? Who still uses PDFs anyway?

I do, for almost everything. They look fucking great.

ok, yea, I grant you can make them look nice.

But you can't edit them unless the author allows you to (or you crack them), they are HUGE, and they require proprietary software to open.

No.

PDF is an open format. You don't need Adobe. On Mac OS X it's built in to the OS (the whole display is PDF-like) and built right in to the OS is "Preview" application that will allow you to read PDF and even convert to other formats. And you can DL Skim, a nifty open source PDF application that enables you to annotate, add notes, draw on and save right in the PDF document. An free ebook reader application Stanza will also convert PDF into .epub (open ebook format).

I'm sure Windows users have application options similar to these.

AFA Kindle goes, price needs to get under $100 to suit me. And the DRM is troublesome but having a persistent mobile EVDO connection is enticing…

[Engels]

PDF is used very heavily in academia for papers, studies, presentations, etc. Its a way of putting a final seal on a MS wod doc, xls sheet, etc. Nearly every downloadable document on my university department's website is in PDF format.

Also, regarding books and DRM, the simple fact is that if its data and that can be shared far and wide. Being able to share a book with your friends is nice, but there's little option for data-based books.

I mean, if someone can come up with some secure way of sharing data between select people that simultaneously prevents abuse by the l33t warez kiddies, I'm sure Amazon would jump on it. Regrettably, we ain't there yet, hence DRM.

[Logik]

...linux based...

This could not possibly be more apropos: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/video-android-powered-e-ink-display-kindles-our-e-book-fantasie/

Granted, it looks like the technology is still a ways off, but it's really awesome to see all the different things that people want to do with the platform.  For those too lazy to click the link, a mobile development group up in San Francisco has built a device which runs the android OS and displays to an e-ink screen.  Of course, there are some technical hurdles yet to be overcome--the screen has an annoying flash on each screen refresh for instance--but it looks promising.

[Quinton]

...linux based...

This could not possibly be more apropos: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/video-android-powered-e-ink-display-kindles-our-e-book-fantasie/

Granted, it looks like the technology is still a ways off, but it's really awesome to see all the different things that people want to do with the platform.  For those too lazy to click the link, a mobile development group up in San Francisco has built a device which runs the android OS and displays to an e-ink screen.  Of course, there are some technical hurdles yet to be overcome--the screen has an annoying flash on each screen refresh for instance--but it looks promising.

Android is not currently tuned for something as slow as an e-ink display -- we really want ~60fps capable.  That said, it's certainly possible to do some hackery to the surfaceflinger (the Android composition manager) to better support slow displays.

Also, Kindle is linux based (just not super open)....
http://blog.rlove.org/2007/11/kindle-powered-by-linux.html

[Jobu]

There might be some repeat info in here, but I have the first generation Kindle, I got it as a surprise present for Christmas and I freaking love it! The price tag may seem daunting, but it's not that far off from the larger iPods. When I got it I thought, "You bought this overpriced gadget?" and now I think it's worth it, definitely.

It can read other formats other than Amazon's DRM format. And you don't have to email or pay for it... it comes with a USB hookup so you can dump things straight from your computer. I've downloaded free ebooks that are text files, or plain vanilla MOBI files and they load just fine. The built-in wireless connection works great, it piggybacks onto AT&Ts cellular network, and is free always. The built in dictionary is great, the screen is easily legible.

I've read about 3x more than usual because of it. It's completely gratifying as an accessory to impulsive book choices. I don't have to make a trip to Barnes & Noble anymore, I just pop onto Amazon and buy something on a whim, wait 30 seconds, and there it is. The Kindle Store is also accessible through the device itself, so you can browse for new books while using it I guess, but it's kind of awkward. Older classics are a great deal, I downloaded the complete works of Nathaniel Hawthorne for $1.99, and Edgar Allen Poe for about the same. It's not that hard to find "warez" versions of some books out there too, if you have trouble finding something. I couldn't find an Asimov book anywhere, but downloaded a text file of it and got to reading it right away.

The feature I don't use much but look fun was magazine and newspaper subscriptions. You can go download today's copy of the New York Times or something for like 25 cents. Or Time magazine or whatever. Pretty neat trick.

So yeah, I think it's great. Thumbs up!

[Lounge]

I bought the first gen kindle for my wife about a year ago and she absolutely loves it.  In my quest to get content on it for free i came across the following two links that might be useful to anyone with any ebook reader.

* http://manybooks.net/
These guys take the classics that have expired copyrights and have a handy drop down to export to all kinds of e-reader formats.

* http://www.lexcycle.com/stanza
This program will convert pdf's to the various e-book reader formats.  For the kindle this is a very easy way to get a pdf on the device.  For the sony device (i'm not sure if later versions fix this) it will allow you to read a pdf and still use the built in font scaling.

[Jeff Kelly]

Apart from all the other disadvantages already cited I have two more gripes with the kindle.

1. Proprietary wireless (Amazon's WhisperNet over EVDO) and only usable on Sprint USA.
2. No availability outside of the US

[Quinton]

Apart from all the other disadvantages already cited I have two more gripes with the kindle.

1. Proprietary wireless (Amazon's WhisperNet over EVDO) and only usable on Sprint USA.
2. No availability outside of the US

Teardowns of kindle2 reveal space/pads for a SIM socket, so many speculate a GSM/UMTS version is in the works for other markets.