http://news.google.com/news?q=amazon+kindleI was getting close to buying a second-gen Sony Reader; I'm a big fan of e-ink, you really need to see these displays to appreciate them. It's counterintuitive at this point to think of a non-backlit display as looking good, but e-ink looks more like ink on paper than anything else. Unless you are in the dark, have you ever had a hard time reading a newspaper? It can be brutal trying to read an LCD in direct sunlight, and would be seriously fatiguing to try to read a book on an LCD in such conditions, but e-ink has no such issues.
As one who has read dozens of books on a PDA, I'm totally sold on the eBook concept. I simply don't want books taking up space in my home and especially not in my luggage. And why kill trees just to read? My biggest beef with eBooks is that they usually cost the same as dead tree books; somebody is saving tons of money in manufacture and distribution and inventory costs, but it sure isn't the consumer.
I've been increasingly enticed by the Sony Reader at $299, but Amazon has thrown a curveball with their new product/service, the Kindle.
Some features:
- Buy books online, anywhere, over free EVDO access.
- Pricing from $1.99 for classics to $9.99 for new bestsellers (yes, stuff that is $30 in hardcover).
- Email .PDF and .DOC files to your unit's free inbound email address.
- Read blogs (not free, most of the ones I like are $1.99 per month)
- Subscribe to newspapers and magazines (not free)
- Free access to Wikipedia
I'm really going to be looking closely at this thing. Like most new technologies, crippling DRM will probably be the biggest tradeoff.
EDIT: In poking around various articles it seems that they are charging you a dime to mail a document or photo to yourself. It also seems that you can put .txt or .html on the SD card and read it, but you can't put .PDF or .DOC on the card, you have to mail those to yourself.
So basically the Sony Reader costs less and is much more friendly from a DRM perspective, but you won't have access to Wikipedia, $10 bestsellers, and newspapers/magazines.