ebook reader?

charlesp · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:27 pm Post subject: ebook reader?

Found this little bit... Sony has a new ebook reader coming out (in japan)that SOUNDS really cool... it's about the size of a paperback (I think), and has a hi-res easy to read screen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1197495,00.html
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Power of Cheese · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:32 pm Post subject:

Great just what I need. Something else to feed batteries. What ever happened to just killing trees?
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charlesp · Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:35 pm Post subject:

it looks pretty neet... but they'll have to get the price of the unit down a LOT... it's retailing for $220ish over there with books costing about $1.10-$1.65 each... if they got it down to $75-99 and had books that cheap I'd probably consider it an option... for most reading... now if it's something I want to buy and KEEP.. I want to kill some trees.

CharlesP
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charlesp · Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 4:39 am Post subject:

Looks like Amazon may get in on the e-book reader device business too?
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/
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charlesp · Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 12:27 pm Post subject:

Well, to dredge up the old.... Kindle is out now. Interesting product, ugly price, ugly design, but interesting product. The gyst is that it, much like the sony reader, uses e-ink to eek out long battery life, and you pay about paperback prices to buy digital copies of the books to use just on the reader. The Kindle costs $100 more, and is uglier, but has some cool features like built in EVDO (cell phone) so you don't actually USE a computer with it, you just "call" up amazon on the device and download your book in about a minute (you don't pay for the wireless connectivity though, that's included in the purchase price of $400, no monthly cost). It also has a little keyboard on it that you can use to make notes, etc.

I'm not sold on the kindle (couldn't they have paid SOMEBODY from apple to help them design one that looks GOOD?!), but it's an interesting step.

http://www.amazon.com/kindle
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jt752 · Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 12:45 pm Post subject:

I'll stick to the FREE donwload from M$ of their e-book software. And, yes, I know it requires a PC or laptop.

Beware of SONY, EVERYTHING they do is proprietory.
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TheMudge · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 9:35 pm Post subject:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9822429-7.html
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fiona · Master Tripper Joined: 23 Sep 2007 Posts: 260

Quote:

it will hold about 200 books.

Why not an entire library and a battery that lasts longer? Shocked

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charlesp · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 9:25 am Post subject:

well, it actually will hold an entire library if you put in a bigger SD card... as to battery, they last for a long time really... 10000 page turns is pretty good (which is I think what the sony one has), the Amazon one is supposed to last really well, especially when you turn off the wireless when you're not using it.
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charlesp · Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 11:07 pm Post subject:

Interesting thoughts on e-Books and readers (not that I agree entirely, but some interesting thoughts here)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071125-books-vs-documents-whats-wrong-with-so-called-ebooks.html
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ghostposts · Wordtripper Extraordinaire Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 495

The article at www.news.com is good news for me. I have Dragon Creed available at Kindle.

I've got a friend that reads books on his pocket p.c. Don't remember what kind, though.
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*Elle* · Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:51 pm Post subject:

This sounds cool. I want one. We should start a fund so that we all here on Wordtrip can get one. Smile

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charlesp · Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:40 am Post subject:

A) Kindle 2 is out and looks so much less ugly than the original
B) it's still not in my budget (to be fair the only things in my budget are dried beans, rice, and ramen noodles)
C)

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LinRobinson · Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:30 am Post subject:

My problems with Kindle have little to do with its (unneccesary) high cost or looks, etc.

The major thing is the monopoly aspect. Part of what you're paying for is the gear to wifi hookup to Amazon...it's an exclusive marketing tool, like a TV that only gets HBO. Many don't realize that it also has to be loaded within reach of a Sprint tower.

To reinforce the monopoly, the new Kindle2 has removed the memory car slot. The ONLY way to get books into it now is through Amazon.

It bothers me that the media are trying to make it the Walkman or iPod or eReading. There are better readers available (a few betters one have already been discontinued---remind anybody of Microsoft's path to empire?)
And they allow you to shop around for ebooks.

AND shop different formats. Do we really want to lock into a reader that can't show pictures? Or run links?
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charlesp · Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:37 pm Post subject:

A) the removal of the memory card slot is a bad choice, but as you can e-mail things to yourself on it, or transfer to it via USB cable, it's not like you can only buy things from the Kindle store. I believe people have bought the unDRM PDF to Wil Wheaton's book from Lulu and transfered it onto a Kindle.

LinRobinson · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:18 pm Post subject:

DRM is a whole different question from the amazon monopoly.

This is the only reader being funded and pushed by a retailer. That's interesting and a little disturbing in itself.
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charlesp · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:39 am Post subject:

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/04/the-rumors-were-true-you-can-turn-your-iphone-into-a-kindle/
And now you can buy kindle books to be read on an iPhone.

There's also a story somewhere (can't find it right now) on Hearst looking at making their own Kindle like device to distribute their newspapers.
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"Coffee is sufficiently advanced technology" - Merlin Mann
One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee." - Wally (Dilbert)

LinRobinson · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:38 pm Post subject:

This is a LARGE part of what's holding up the "digital revolution" in reading: everybody trying to glom a proprietary hold on the market.

You look at the jumble of formats a publisher has to put out to get an eBook on the market. Most are inferior to existing formats such as pdf and html and half of them are for special reader software that isn't even NECESSARY!

Yeah you can get a reader for your Blackberry, then get books in that format. But the blackberry ALREADY has a browser in it. So it can read an html file as is.

And all this R&D is being wasted on a bunch of 8Track projects that just subdivide the market, messing it up for everybody. (Newspapers are not the best model of smart financial management these days, nor are publishers)

Once a really cool reader by Sony or Apple or somebody hits the market and formats stablize, we'll see this thing start to happen.

What's a shame is that the Kindle is a fairly nice piece of hardware, just maimed by design following wrongheaded commercial grasping.
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flashgordon · Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 4:50 pm Post subject:

I'm a fan of the iPhone, but I still won't read a book on it. I just messed with a Kindle 2 and although it is nice, I just don't see why. I'd rather browse around for a paperback then surf Amazon and randomly hope that I get a well formatted kindle book. Still not as nice for browsing either.
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LinRobinson · Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:52 pm Post subject:

Ah... you're saying there are formatting problems? Interesting. I hadn't heard that before.

The press whitewash on this thing is just amazing.

Half the articles read act like it's the first reader ever put on the market.
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charlesp · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:48 am Post subject:

LinRobinson · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:30 am Post subject:

No, the tipping point in eBooks won't come from somebody like amazon trying to monopolize the market. We've seen that in the past.

It will come when the "new iPod" appears. It will be under $200 and not be limited to certain formats.

All these reader software/format things are just nuts. All you really need is a browser to read HTML documents. Duh.

The idea of trying to get the world to switch to your own format has never really worked. You end up with BetaMax and 8 Track and various scuttled Microsoft ploys.

The consumers will buy in when they are offered something that is to THEIR benefit, not the supplier's benefit. Which will end benefitting all suppliers in the long run.

This isn't even conjecture or opinion. It's history. (Not to mention common sense)
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LinRobinson · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:24 pm Post subject:

PS I have a sneaking suspicion it will be a phone. Not to meniton mp3 player, etc. A sort of Blackberry for readers. Why carry extra stuff?
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charlesp · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 8:29 pm Post subject:

Except that your example of an iPod refutes you "it's history" claim for open formats being the tipping point. The iPod was A big gun in the portable music market, but it was when they introduced the iTunes music store selling their proprietary audio format that locked people into using the iPod to keep using their newly purchased collection, that it became THE big gun in the portable music market (even though it was WAY more expensive than the competition).

The iPod always played mp3s, just like the Kindle will display PDF and HTML and DOC formats, but it was the easy digital delivery and purchasing of proprietary AAC, which gave the producers happy feelings about their stuff not being stolen, that made the legal on-line music market (and they've sold a few billion songs that way before going DRM free). Now you've got a lot of DRM free versions of music (amazon's mp3 store for example) because the producers didn't like to be locked into Apple, and what I suspect will happen is something similar when the Kindle has shown enough publishers that people will pay for digital content the producers will then start unlocking it for other eBook readers.

The Phone idea isn't unlikely per se, and the Kindle app for iPhone is a step in that direction (they're apparently going to be making for other devices as well), though I think the BIG dig against a blackberry/phone concept is that having read a few things on the iPhone and Blackbery, it's just not as comfortable to try and read any quantity of content on a small screen. For me I think the more likely scenario would be something in the Netbook realm which cost about the same (or less) than an iPhone/smartphone, are about the size of a large hardback, and have a large subset of the computer functions. Acer (or Asus) has demoed that dual-touch-screen netbook that could be used as normal netbook, or held open like a book and read. They're already working built-in wi-fi and cell in the netbooks, so if they tweak that technology a bit to allow for longer battery life it could be a Kindle killer (even though with a browser and mp3 player built in already the Kindle is going to make other people work for it).

The thing to notice on Amazon though is that, unlike Apple who keeps a stranglehold on "their market", Amazon has shown incredible willingness to market their competitors. If you go to Amazon and search for a product, they show the used and new people selling items cheaper than they do AND if it's a non-book product they usually default a sale to the cheapest people selling it even if they sell it as well. I'm not sure how they'd monetize that in a digital content market, but I'm not sure they couldn't come up with a way. Bezos tries to be very customer-centric in the company's decisions.

Secondarily an eBook reader will almost by design be a one-off market catering to a higher-end customer UNLESS the book industry figures out a way to drop prices on digital books to be consistently at the paperback (sub $ Cool

price range. Most people I know who are book lovers don't go buy every hardback they own at retail price. Most are used book store people who pick up a ton of their collection at sub $3 per book pricing. The main market for the eBook is going to be the business traveler who would otherwise be buying a book in the airport.
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C Clarke
"Coffee is sufficiently advanced technology" - Merlin Mann
One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee." - Wally (Dilbert)

LinRobinson · Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:58 am Post subject:

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