Insurance. It's called insurance..For less than the price of a book you can idiot-proof your vital purchase...Just the sort of thing I need..
Thanks for the good laugh. As to #5 http://www.informationweek.com/news/telecom/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600622
Amazon has the Black Friday deal, go and check it out. If you don't mind the older version, that is $89....
I will address my original own points later, but let's just say that price dropped from $3-400 or whatever it was originally to $90, so that makes a HUGE difference. Also although I am thinking of getting an ereader, I am getting something ELSE than Kindle. And I will never spend $10 on an ebook, I will get all my reading material for FREE. So for the price of $90 I get an mp3 player ($30 at least) and a reader device with no more cost ever...
So let's see my complaints about Kindle and how it changed. Mind you the original post was in 2007: Yes, Kindle didn't die a quick death but the reason is because most of my problems with it were addressed and features improved, prices dropped: 1. Price dropped from $400 to $189 with better features. Cheapest Kindle is under $100. 2. Books are still expensive and you can not transfer them with Kindle. But there are plenty of free books aviable to counteract that. 3. People still read less than before, ask any teenager how much they read. (beside Facebook) 4. Now this point might have changed and people eventually embrace new reading habits, although if polled I would guess most people still prefer a book. 5. Amazon came out of red (debt) AFTER my post, in 2008, so I was correct on that one.That happened after 13 years of being in business. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008259676_btamazon13.html 6. Still stands, and yes people do lose their technological devices. The average lifetime of a cellphone is like 9 months or so. But if you are losing a cheaper device it hurts less, specially if the stuff on it was free. 7. It is in color now. Let's add that some of them are water/splashproof, so no problem reading it by the pool. So most of my complaints were address by technological advances. The original Kindle most likely wouldn't have lasted as a profitable device without those changes. P.S.: It is funny when some of you bring up your PERSONAL facts (I like to read) when we are talking about people/masses.
Doesn't matter that the original post was in 2007. You were friggin as WRONG in your prediction as you could be. Of course things were going to change, like the price would come down, what new electronic device hasn't dropped in price as volume of production ramps up? The fact that you didn't include that obvious occurance when you made your prediction doesn't make your failed prediction any better. As to the other complaints you had, NONE are different than before. The price of the books remains the same and there were plenty of free books when the Kindle was launched. People haven't stopped reading. You were wrong then, you are wrong now. A lot of people like the convenience of having a whole library of books with them in a package the size of the kindle. OOPs was that a big miss or what? No you were not correct, you said Bezos is an idiot. You can only wish you were as smart (and wealthy) as he is. People don't lose things they care about, and the real value of the Kindle, the books you've paid for, aren't lost. Kindle is still just Black and White, so color has had nothing to do with the success of the Kindle. Arthur
Aluratek Libre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2WoVRsap9Q http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858653003 Just ordered it, no tax, no shipping cost, $89. Since it is also an mp3 player, basicly I am getting an ereader for $60. Slight difference from the Kindle's original $400 price...
Let's go back to the profitability factor: Wiki: "Kindle sales Specific Kindle sales numbers are not released by the company, but Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, stated in a shareholders' meeting that "millions of people now own Kindles."[49] According to anonymous inside sources, over three million Kindles have been sold as of December 2009,[50] while external estimates as of Q4-2009 place the number at about 1.5 million.[51] They are now being sold for $139." Now someone tell me why Bezos is so coy about sales figures? Because it is entirely possible that just like MS with Xbox, Amazon sells the Kindle at a loss (I also include development cost here) and makes it back on booksales. You have to provide a relative cheap and accessable device to people if you want to sell ebooks by the millions. For extra fun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-book_readers More economics, the development cost of Kindle: http://ireaderreview.com/2009/04/26/kindle-2-cost-analysis-real-cost-is-309/ Is Kindle profitable yet?: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2009273587_webamazon28.html?syndication=rss
So what? They sell razors cheap and make the money off the blade refills They sell printers cheap and make the money off the ink refills. They sell phones cheap and make money off the monthly fee. Amazon is profitable and clearly the Kindle is playing a role in that profitabilty. Just talking to my friends a LOT of people are going to be getting a Kindle for Christmas this year. The device is a clear winner, unlike your prediction of it's quick demise. Arthur
Yes, eReaders are getting cheaper for the common folks. If the price (tool + eBook) stays too expensive, then it can fizzle because rich people rarely read books (spend too much time marketing and making money)
So I got the Libre today and read it for 2-3 hours. It is 5 inches only, and its size is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is small enough to fit in a pocket and you could just use it as an mp3 player, while walking. But because it is small it means that you basicly have to turn the page all the time, every 5-10 seconds. It depends on what size of letters one uses, but obviously bigger letters mean more pageturning. Listening to music while reading is a big plus and the pages come up pretty much immediately. I read that Kindle has a flash each time it changes the page. The features are self explanatory, thus you can figure it out how it works without any manual. I still have to try it outside, if it is easy to read in the sunshine, but I think it is. I wouldn't use this as an all time ereader, but more like a travel device, when one wants to travel lightly or you can take it for a walk in the park. Also a good thing while on the plane. Or when waiting in doctor's offices. It is really easy to carry around. I loaded a few freebooks and music from the internet without any problem. It came with 100 books on it, mostly classics. Its original memory is only 100 MB, but one can upgrade with an SD card up to 32 GB. So all in all, I will use it as a travel device or when I take the dog down to the park and want to read for 15-20 mins. For more reading I would need a 6 inch device, like my netbook. Since I already have a netbook, I just need a bigger battery for it, and I am done with the ereader business. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So this is what it is, for the price, you get what you pay for. If you lose it after a year, no biggy, you can buy a newer one for cheaper. I don't think it will last for very long anyway..... As I mentioned, I won't pay for reading material, and I don't need wi-fi and such since I load everything from my computers...
Congratulations! Enjoy it! You might be interested in checking out MobileRead.com -- lot of information and FREE public domain books. http://www.mobileread.com/
I did another discovery today. I downloaded Foxit, which is a way smaller PDF reader than Adobe (actually uninstalled Adobe.) On the 10 inch netbook I can rotate the page of the book by 90 degree with Foxit and after pushing F11 that takes away the borwser or reader's head, so I get a full page of text, and I can read holding the netbook just like a book. The only difference is that the battery power isn't as good as an ereader's, but I guess that's what we give up for the extra features. Here are some other useful tricks if you use a netbook as a ereader: http://lifehacker.com/#!5468581/turn-your-netbook-into-a-feature rich-e book-reader Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Quick question. Why are so many modern books not already available for kindle? Today, a writer no longer presents his script to the publisher as a mass of typewritten pages. It comes as a CD or a memory stick, and downloads almost instantly into a computer. It is way, way easier and cheaper to put that script into kindle format than publish it on paper. Why do we not get modern books instantly on kindle?
Many of them are available. I can't think of one that I sought out recently that wasn't. But maybe I'm not looking at the same stuff.
Can you access thepiratebay with it? Does it play video? How about its sound? Play poker with it? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I use ereading as a secondary activity, the primary is still webbrowsing and playing...
Much of what I read, mostly in the philosophy and critical theory vein (that is, critical theory in the vernacular sense--I'd guess that much critical theory proper (Marcuse, Adorno, et al) is available), is kinda scarce in the Kindle format; though there are PDFs aplenty. I've been doing the conversion with Calibre (as per your suggestion) for some, but most read just fine as PDFs when turned ninety degrees. Regardless, I concur: the Kindle is awesome.
