Can Amazon Kindle ignite the potential of ebooks?
Written: Apr 15 '08 (Updated Apr 24 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Wireless connectivity. The roller.
Cons: The basic problems of ebook delivery remain.
The Bottom Line: Don't hold your breath, the revolution hasn't come yet.
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| panguitch's Full Review: Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device |
The short of it:
Since some people don't like to read long reviews, here's the condensed version: The Amazon Kindle is a significant but not revolutionary improvement over previous ebook readers. It does some cool things. It's also expensive. And unlike an iPod, it's not cool enough for people to shell out just because it's cool.
Bottom line: if you like to spend money on tech toys you might want to try it. But if you simply like to read books, go out and buy yourself about 50 paperbacks for what you'd spend on the Kindle.
Pre-ramble:
For well over a decade people have been wondering when print would finally succumb to electronic. For a while the conventional wisdom was that nobody wants to suffer the eyestrain of looking at a computer screen long enough to read a book. Never mind the fact that millions spend their days glued to YouTube and MySpace anyway. A quick check shows I received over 1,000 emails in Q1 of 2008, and sent as many more. And that's just my work address. So it'd be nonsense for me to say I don't want to spend hours reading a computer screen.
Some argue that's not the same as cozying up with a novel. Perhaps. In any case, electronic paper resolves the issue. Rather than emitting light it simply reflects it, pretty much the same way real paper does. Composed of a sheet of white particles which shift forward or backward according to electronic pulses, epaper physically changes its appearance. In addition to obviating eyestrain, this also translates to enormous power savings.
As this technology advances it has been incorporated into a series of devices, dedicated ebook readers as opposed to cell phones or PDAs. I've had experience with two of these now, Sony's Reader and the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is definitely a step forward, but there's still a long way to go.
What the Amazon Kindle does:
The Kindle's display of text files and images is static. Instead of scrolling as you might with a PDA you "turn" pages. Pages turn a bit faster than the Sony Reader, and fast enough I rarely felt it took longer than turning a physical page.
Image resolution is good, 167 ppi, which is fine for text, though if you upload a JPEG it will be grainy in Kindle's four-level gray scale. The screen measures 6 inches diagonally, which is small but adequate. The contrast is decent, though not as good as most paper books--in dim light I often increased the font size, which is a snap. At times faint ghost images of the previous screen remained.
With about 180 MB of internal storage available to the user, the Kindle holds over 200 books. More if you add an SD memory card. In size and weight the device is comparable to a trade paperback (7.5 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches and 10.3 oz.).
Why the Amazon Kindle represents a new generation:
The big piece of functionality the Kindle introduces is web connectivity through the cellular grid, freeing the Kindle from dependence on PCs as intermediaries. Amazon's Whispernet service allows you to surf the web with a rudimentary text-only browser, to purchase and download books from the Kindle Store, and your blog and newspaper subscriptions will update with new content automatically. I downloaded a 500 page novel in just a couple minutes, and it's fun to see the Wall Street Journal update daily. There is no service agreement or fee for Whispernet, which is nice.
There are over 110,000 books, newspapers, etc. in the Kindle store. Sounds like a lot, but it's a pretty narrow field in practice, less than a Borders or Barnes & Noble, and less than a drop in Amazon.com's bucket. A month-long subscription to a newspaper like the Wall Street Journal will set you back $9.99, while magazine and blog subscriptions cost a buck or two. $9.99 is typical for books too, though novels will get down around five dollars while nonfiction will go past fifteen. In general, I found the prices higher than expected. It'll be a long time before many people are willing to pay as much for ebooks as for paper, notwithstanding the convenience of buying and downloading the book at will.
Through the Whispernet you can also upload documents to the Kindle by emailing them to your account as attachments. MS Word (DOC), TXT, HTML, MOBI, PDF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, and PNG are supported. This is a great feature, costing ten cents per file, and the files are certainly usable, if not always visually identical after conversion to the Kindle format. You can also upload audio books, though these and MP3's must be done with a USB cable.
Amazon calls Kindle's web browser experimental, and it truly is rudimentary. Still, it's perfectly adequate for looking something up on Wikipedia or checking your email. They also offer "Ask Kindle NowNow," where you can submit questions and real people will supposedly respond in about ten minutes. There's a limit of 255 characters per question, so don't expect to use it for serious research. What's more, I never got a response when I tried it (though the same question, regarding an Isaac Asimov quote, never got a response on Yahoo! Answers either).
The Kindle is also a significant stride forward in usability. It includes a full keyboard, allowing the entry of notes to accompany bookmarks, and for use in the web browser or the Search tool that searches your Kindle content or the Kindle Store. The next and previous page buttons are comfortable to use, however they're so large I'm often left feeling there's nowhere to grip the thing. I found this problem of where to grip the device most annoying when reading while lying on my back and needing to support the Kindle from the display side.
The keyboard is an obvious plus, but one of my favorite usability features was the roller wheel on the side of the screen which works like a one-dimensional mouse for selecting menu options. The power and wireless switches are oddly located on the back of the device, though this only bothered me when I had the Kindle in its case and had to slide my finger between the case and the Kindle to switch it on and off.
The headphone, USB, and power ports, along with the volume controls are convenient, and the back of the device slides off to reveal the slot for an SD memory card. The little internal speaker is quite capable of playing MP3's or audio books at a decent volume, though the sound quality is low. Personally, I don't read with music playing, so I didn't experiment much with this feature, but I did find it frustrating that it would only play MP3 file format, and only one of the MP3's I loaded. I expected it to play random tracks, but it always played the same one. Also, I'm surprised Amazon isn't offering MP3's from the Kindle store.
Why the Amazon Kindle does not represent a turning point:
Books, a simple solution for a simple activity, have changed very little since Guttenberg. They hold a distinct advantage over ebook readers which cannot help but complicate things with batteries and formats and buttons. So as easy as the Kindle is to use, as much as it's a step forward over other readers, it's still not as easy to use as it is to open a book and turn its pages.
It might be argued that the Kindle makes up for this in added features: bookmarking, writing notes, an included dictionary, being able to store hundreds of books, being able to search, play music, and of course, surf the web, check your email, and download more books. It's a long list, and I have enjoyed playing around with the Kindle. But the bottom line is its primary function is to read books. And while I don't mind reading ebooks on the Kindle, I still prefer the physical experience of reading a paper book.
Understand, I'm not a Luddite, well, maybe I am--I've never owned an iPod, a PDA, or even a cell phone, but at least I'm not the kind who has never really read an ebook but claims with knee-jerk energy that ebooks will never replace paper. I read newspaper, magazine, and academic articles online all the time. And I've read full-length ebooks, for pleasure even. I read the bulk of Greg Keyes's 600-page The Briar King on the Sony Reader, and I've read the whole of Kim Stanley Robinson's 500-page Red Mars on the Kindle. (Incidentally, the latter included maps and diagrams which did not display well at all.) I've done the time and can say that reading an ebook on the Kindle is not at all a bad experience. It's just not as comfortable as reading a paper book.
Perhaps more importantly, the economics simply don't make sense. The kindle is going for about $400. That represents a significant initial investment. And then you still have to buy the books, which aren't cheap. So while techhounds and gadget geeks might make a strong showing as early adopters, the average Joe is going to continue buying paperbacks at $6.99 a pop.
Advocates have compared the presumed leap of ebooks over printing to the adoption of printing over manuscripts in the 15th century. Both revolutions faced resistance. Both new technologies offer functionality the old technologies lack. The key difference in this analogy: printing produced books more cheaply than manuscript copying. While the potential for ebooks to be cheaper than print seems just over the horizon, right now it's impossible to see with a $400 initial investment standing in the way.
I also have doubts about the significance of the Kindle's supplemental features, or their relevance to the reading experience. For instance, "Ask Kindle NowNow" is basically a retreading of services like Yahoo! Answers. There's no reason not to develop this functionality, but it will never be a primary driver of success (especially if people like me never get a response when they try it).
Using Kindle to download books or search the internet will cut into your battery life. Listening to music will cut it even faster. The battery will still last for hundreds of page turns, but this increases the chance of running out of juice in the middle of a book--highly frustrating. I intentionally ran my battery down once just to see how long it would last (about four days, including use of the Whispernet, but not playing music). Even though I knew it was coming it irritated me to be cut-off mid-sentence.
So the added functionality can actually inhibit the Kindle's primary function. Books, the incumbent technology, remain simpler, cheaper, and more reliable.
When will the revolution come?
Because of the initial price barrier, no ebook reader will ever make significant inroads in the book industry. An ebook reader will succeed only if that initial barrier is reduced to a middling amount, or if it can be camouflaged by some sort of installment plan, service agreement, or subscription. Perhaps a Netflix model would work. You could "lease" a reader for free, and for a small monthly fee you would have access to a library of ebooks and newspaper subscriptions, but could only "check out" five at a time, or more at a higher membership level.
What is more likely to succeed is a hybrid product, resulting when epaper has advanced far enough in refresh rates and color displays that it can replace LCDs in common gadgets like phones and PDAs. A smart phone that could run applications like a PDA on an epaper screen that could be manipulated and written on with a stylus. That's something people would be willing to pay money for upfront.
Yet even then there is a potential obstacle, what might be the underlying reason why so many people say they don't see themselves reading ebooks. Reading is a focused activity. All the functionality that might make such a device more generally appealing would also offer more distractions. Some people can't sit down and read a book unless they turn off the TV and computer. If their book was the TV and computer, would they ever actually read it?
- Panguitch
A few more thoughts on the Kindle, ebooks, and electronic publishing (in case you haven't had enough yet): http://andyspackman.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/amazon-kindle-and-the-difference-between-jeff-bezos-and-johannes-gutenberg/
Recommended:
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