Amazon takes Kindle to the UK Amazon UK's front page is dominated today by a letter to its customers, introducing the "third generation of Kindles". In other words, Brits can buy Kindle e-Readers direct from Amazon UK, instead of the American mothership. That means UK prices - £149 for the 3G-Wi-Fi version and £109 for the Wi-Fi only version. This is …
How do you intend to transfer your existing books over to a Kindle?
The one thing that has plagued ereading devices are all the proprietary formats, DRM and tie-ins to single stores. And Kindle is one of the worst examples. At least Sony devices let you buy books from a variety of places and support a vendor / device agnostic DRM.
...but it's still ug-leee!
Especially compared to the PRS-505 which, in terms of looks, still leads the way.
My only REAL concern is that the books you buy from Amazon will only be readable on the Kindle - is that true? If so, it's not exactly what I'd call satisfactory.
The Kindle software for iPad (and other iOS devices, Macs and PC's ) is a much better idea. Having tried both, I find Apple's hardware is much nicer than the Kindle, and you can do more with it. I like the Kindle system for reading books, and that your notes, bookmarks, and whatnot are sync'd between all your subscribed Kindle installations, but I hated the hardware. Much prefer the iPad.
Since the iPad costs 4x as much as a Kindle, it should be nicer. And it should be able do more.
But you could buy a good laptop for the same price as an iPad and do *even more* with it!
So really, the comparison isn't fair. Try comparing a Kindle to a cheap Chinese Android tablet.
The iPad is a vastly more powerful device than ereaders but then again it costs 4x+ the price. It also doesn't work in direct sunlight, is much heavier, much larger and requires more frequent charging. Book reading should be seen as one string in its bow but certainly not its forte.
Ereaders have their place in the world, but they need to get much cheaper. Nothing about these devices justifies the hitherto stupid prices they have commanded. £100 really should be the maximum these things cost given the raft of netbooks, tablets etc which will be occupying the £150 range soon enough.
a seriously good piece of kit.
I am tempted to purchase the 3G edition and take it abroad, but I can't quite interpret whether they would charge me for the data or not. The US Amazon pages are pretty clear that there is a charge outside the US.
On a purely academical level, I would like to see the Kindle display books consistently with how they appear in the print edition or at least have a function to choose it. It is otherwise impossible to use Kindle books for citation. Note: This may have been fixed, but it wasn't available last time Iooked.
I understand the problem with academic references and how book are presented, but wouldn't most academic books on Kindle also be on Google Books, at least in snippet view? That way you can read the book on a Kindle (or indeed an iPad or whatever) and then search for the bit of text to cite in Google Books to get the exact page ref. As an academic, I often use Google Books to track down page numbers for citations.
All that said, I do think 6 inches sounds a bit small. (Cue jokes.) For reading text, I'd prefer something a bit larger. But I've not tried a Kindle, and I guess it'll make it portable, so it might well be a good trade-off.
Kindles are far, far more restrictive devices than other readers. You are tied to Amazon for all your purchases and support for epub and other common formats is poor. Why not wait to see if Sony etc drop their prices in response? Chances are that they will and you benefit from being able to buy books from numerous places.
As title,
Will look at the Elonex 710EB eBook Reader when it comes out (Due end of month ish)
LED touchscreen, plays video and mp3's, android o/s are ecen rumoured to do surfing.
Wireless and 8 hour battery.
If its as good as I hope the £120 price tag will be a steal.
The Kindle is just to tied to one place for my likeing
Yes, certain types of media will probably start using embedded video and similar - magazines and text books seem to me to be an obvious candidates. But for the bulk market, which is to say paperbacks, mostly novels, text with the very occasional static illustration seems the perfect format, which favours the current eInk devices like the Sony range.
However, it's possible that the market will change, and books of the future will be closer to films than books. But I think that would be a great shame.
GJC
Questions that I can't find definive answers for though are :-
- Other than downloading personal documents over 3G that Amazon has converted for you, and (of course) direct purchases, are there any other costs (Web browsing, and 3G roaming costs from outside the UK, for example)?
- Once stuff it put on the device, can you get it off again (or is it another iPod-like block-hole)?
- Is purchased content only usable on the Kindle (if you CAN get it off it)?
Any of thse could be a killer, which would be a shame because it does look rather good.
I couldn't bring myself to buy one from the US store, especially since returns and repairs would have been a major pain. Having it come to the UK is much better.
The new Kindle 3 seems nice enough, and might be worth a punt. However, I think I'd prefer the DX (which doesn't seem to be for sale on the UK store) and there's still no epub compatibility, which is a pain because the council library has just started doing free epub lending (DRM, naturally).
One of the major points about the PRS505 is the case - it folds over like a book cover, and it means you can hold it one-handed just like a book. The page turn is under your thumb, and it just works.
Without a case like this, I'm not sure the Kindle is so comfortable to read.
And I don't like the keyboard.
But a hundred and nine quid....give it a year, and it'll be less than a hundred, and I don't know that I'll be able to resist it at that price.
Yes, I quite agree - the ergonomics of the Sony are damn near perfect for the job, allowing the reader to forget about the device and immerse themselves in the book. It'll be interesting to see if the Kindle is as good.
My (admittedly brief) play with an iPad leads me to believe it doesn't allow the same immersion, and without that, it fails for me as a book reader.
GJC
Being a stickler for having my data in industry standard formats, all my music is mp3, all my videos are in H.264, and all my ebooks are in EPUB format.
This ensures the widest range of devices, software and services work with them. I have tried Stanza, Mobipocket and Kindle on my HP Touchsmart TM2 tablet PC, and I have plumped for Mobipocket, as it has the nicest interface and can import all my EPUB books. Stanza was poo and Kindle doesn't seem to support EPUB at all. Which is a bit like having an MP3 player that doesn't play MP3s but does play WMA files.
Kindle is strictly off-limits until they start supporting EPUB on the device (none of this emailing it to Amazon for conversion bollocks).
It's based on the venerable MOBI format and lacks many of the features that the more modern ePub format offers. It's really just HTML with limited CSS support. Amazon don't seem to be investing in improving it either.
It's shocking that Amazon are releasing a device that does not support the ePub format.
If you do buy a Kindle you should definitely checkout Calibre. It does a pretty good job of converting just about any format to any other. It does clever stuff like convert ePub SVG graphics into JPEG that the Kindle can render.
I don't care how cheap this latest Kindle is, while it is locked to Amazons' WAN storage.
I will only buy an ebook reader which supports private and local book storage i.e. SD cards and LAN storage. I will never accept compulsory WAN gateway storage access to any media device! I have confidential information I want to view on a ebook reader, but hell will freeze over before I allow this to be stored on a public server of dubious security!
I'd hang on a bit if you're planning to use Calibre to manage the new Kindle.
Chances are it'll work fine once the support's been added, but they've not confirmed that the new Kindle doesn't have extra lock-downs yet.
Here's the note on the Calibre forum: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92546
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