More on Kindle2.
Georgia’s post on Kindle made some very good points. Interested readers may be willing to follow Ariadene’s thread a little longer and look at an article in Slate which discusses some features of the new version. Many people shared Georgia’s irritation at the high clunkiness quotient in the original product, but AMAZON seems to have gone a long way to overcome at least some of these dorky things, and the new item is bigger, thinner and sleeker-looking than Kindle 1. But, some of the other complaints remain in force. The gadget is still pricey, pegging in at about $350 US, give or take. And the DRM doesn’t seem any looser than on the last go-round. The Kindles, pere et fils, are will probably go into some kind of technology museum one day, but the technology in itself is only part of the story, and not really the most interesting part either. The Slate piece considers this side of things attentively.
Information Week published a long article on other aspects of the e-book movement, including a speculation that AMAZON may turn out to be the victim of its own success and wind up cannibalizing itself. There is some danger, to AMAZON, that the various hand-held devices now around in great numbers will be modified by their manufacturers to allow downloading of e-books. Why should you buy an extra gadget, one that’s pretty heavy and definitely not cheap, to read books on the commute or in the doctor’s office when you’ve got one with you that will do the same thing, perhaps not as well, but well enough for a few minutes reading here and there. This is the best that many people can manage nowadays, and this market may be the bigger one.
We’ll see.
