Forget iPad, should I get a Kindle?

A slew of new tablets and e-Books readers are due to hit this year, of course most notably the new Apple iPad. We’re lead to believe that 2010 is the year we really do finally start to say farewell to paper. There are plenty of skeptics on this one, a la “a paperless office is about as realistic as a paperless bathroom”– style thinking but we’ll see. I’m sure there will be plenty written about these topics (@granleese and @agreeves are no doubt already on the case).

But what of the Amazon Kindle, does it have anything to offer?

I was lucky enough to grab a Kindle shortly after they went on international sale in November last year. Two months, a dozen or so purchases and many free trial reads later, I feel ready to give some qualified opinion.

Out of the box (nice packaging, wonder where they got that iDea from?) I switched it on and was greeted by name: Simon’s Kindle. It’s pre configured to my Amazon account to provide an instant closed loop experience, somewhat akin to iTunes. The Kindle connects to the Amazon store over the mobile internet, so no need to ever hook it up to a computer (except via USB for charging, or if you want to drop PDFs - yes they are now supported - or Word Docs onto the device).

The telco provider in the US is AT&T and all the Aussie telcos appear to have an interconnect agreement. At first this wasn’t obvious, but after a problem connecting to the store a few weeks later I called Amazon customer service– see the screen below for the Telcos listed. [Enter ‘311’ from the settings screen to get this page.]

Back to the device, it feels a little ‘plasticy’ and from a design perspective is a bit dated. Most people who first see it also expect it to be touchscreen, but it has a small navigation button, menu and back button which are perfectly functional.

The job of the design in Amazon’s words is to make the device disappear when you read it, just in the same way as a book does. So does it do this?

The answer is an unqualified yes. The screen, albeit a bit small (I had the entry level unit, a bigger screen is now available in Aus) is brilliant for reading text. With zero luminence it means that the brighter the light, the clearer the contrast between text and background. Reading in direct sunlight on the beach is a breeze. This of course means that in low light you need a reading light! 

The e-paper screen draws almost no power until it redraws a page, making the battery life freakily long – especially with Wireless mode switched off. At least a week infact. As the screen refreshes itself it momentarily turns black, which is a bit disconcerting at first but once you cotton on to this behaviour, it’s fine.

The Kindle will hold 1,500 books apparently, which at 1.5GB storage means that the books themselves are small and suited to download over the mobile internet. Choice in the store is pretty good, with over 300,000 titles including many business titles, and of course newspapers (though no Aussie ones yet). I’ve had about 70% success rate, finding the books I wanted. It’s tremendously convenient being able to grab a book in the moment that you hear or read about it.

The device also provides free access to the Wikipedia site, and in the US can be used to browse the web. It also has a text to speech mode and will play MP3s, - neither with that much aplomb.

A few folk have asked me whether the Kindle would lower one’s carbon footprint. I found one answer here, the comments and discussion are quite revealing. For me, I actually think I’m reading a lot more, mainly because there are no barriers to obtaining content – the bookshop always being in my bag. So I’d like to believe that over time it will make a difference – lets just see how durable the device ends up being.

The main downsides to Kindle? 

They’re twofold in my mind: Firstly, books to me are gems that need to be shared, this is hard to do with Kindle – sure more than one device can share your purchase but they need to be linked to the same Amazon account and that’s just not that practical. Perhaps that’s another reason why the books themselves are quite cheap (approx. US$3-$18)... the argument to the publishers being not only a ‘digital vs atoms lowers costs’ one, but also that there’s zero pass-on readership with the Kindle model and that means greater sales.

Secondly, and this is a biggie for me, you lose the sheer non-linear ‘browseability’ of a real book – you can’t lazily leaf through an e-Book, looking for inspiration. Maybe over time I’ll master the controls and achieve this, but somehow I can’t see it.

That said, all in all, it’s an impressive device, clearly built with two related things in mind. That is, procuring e-books instantly and reading them. For anything else? Frankly, it’s a dog.

Will I keep one? Abserbloodylutely (and my wife is pretty hooked too).

Comments

[Sam Granleese]

Nice blog post Simon.

My 2 cents are:

1. iPad will mean apps become more widespread and widely used (instead of browser based, which is a strategic play against Google).

2. I think iPad is more of a play against netbooks/AndroidOS as a whole (a much bigger market) than the Kindle itself, which is a (incredibly useful and popular) one-dimensional product.

3. High powered 1024x768 sized graphics on a portable device give a great opportunity to developers of games, services, products to create mobile/portable experiences previously unimaginable.

[John Doe]

Hi,

am a complete Kindle devotee, and should be getting commission for all the friends that are buying them.

What they have done, for my money, is solve a number of problems in terms of book distribution and device readability. It isn't a competitor to the ipad, and is much better for that.

If you want endless reading between charges, rapid shopping and downloading, and great value to money it can't be beaten. And if you want a really readable display, again, it is the choice for the reader.

BTW - have two friends that bought the larger screen, both wish they had the smaller version, and with variable font size you can get both effects.

Great stuff