Amazon is gearing up an eBook initiative, including a $500 eBook reader and a proprietary content format. As we prepare to be underwhelmed, PC World has the first take. The idea of an eBook has always intrigued me, but years and years have gone by, and it's generally gone nowhere. Sony already has one of these literary gadgets, and a quick look at it here tells me it's not designed by someone who really loves books. It's a cold, grey, fragile-looking tablet. My dream for an ebook reader: waterproof, durable, opens and lays out like a book, color screen, 30 hours of battery life, backlit for evening reading without a light, notes capability, wi-fi access & internet browsing, ability to add notes to word docs for editing, and availability of every book in print via some sort of online store. An eBook Apple might have come up with.
Update: more on the Amazon launch here. Looks like Penguin is one of their big content providers; Penguin of course has Penguin Classics, which would include lots of material out of copyright. Given the digital rights management issues around music, likely to be similar or worse with books, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon continued previous ebook efforts to emphasize a lot of non-copyright content.
Update: more on the Amazon launch here. Looks like Penguin is one of their big content providers; Penguin of course has Penguin Classics, which would include lots of material out of copyright. Given the digital rights management issues around music, likely to be similar or worse with books, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon continued previous ebook efforts to emphasize a lot of non-copyright content.
thanks for your comment, due to technical issues I didn't see it there when you posted. I'm really enjoying the kindle at this point - the ship has officially sailed on traditional books in my view, and there is really no turning back.
I resisted buying the Kindle 1 but I couldn't resist any longer when the Kindle 2 came out. And I'm so glad I caved in. I love this device. I'm still discovering all the ins and outs of using it.
Magazine and newspaper articles come to my Kindle every day or every week, depending. I bought over 100 books that were free or 99 cents, all the classics that I love, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and on and on. I also bought a few new books, and some favorite books like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, or The Glass Castle.
I read a lot and I will still use the library extensively as I can't afford to buy all the books I want to read, but the Kindle is great for the books I do buy, and once I got it set up with lots of reading material, I might now buy 1 or 2 books a month, at $9.99, which is no hardship.
I can surf the internet, though I haven't quite figured that all out yet, and I can put my own files on Kindle. I'm a writer and working on a book. I can put that on Kindle just to see how it reads.
I find the Kindle very comfortable in my hands, and easy to read. I sit in coffee shops reading it in the morning, and people sneak curious glances at it. I want to tell them, "It's great, you should buy it." I've had people come up and ask to see it. I'm glad to show it to them.
The $30 case that goes along with it makes it feel like a book and gives that added protection. The only drawback is that it doesn't stay closed, so I need to find a rubber band or piece of velcro to put around it, that is the only flaw I have found.
The Kindle is really fun to use and I'm having a blast learning to navigate it and how to use all its features. I can bookmark pages (the corner of the page actually "folds down" to look like a real book), highlight and save passages or quotes, which I can then put on my computer and send to friends to share. I have no regrets, it's everything I might have wished it would be.
ETA: I think some people don't understand that the Kindle doesn't have a backlight ON PURPOSE and I hope the engineers never change that. The e-reader is supposed to replicate the experience of reading a book, not a computer. A book doesn't have a backlight either. It's easier on the eyes not to have that light. I bought a $13 light that clips on (it's advertised with it) and that's great for lying down in bed or in darker places. But most of the time I have no trouble seeing the text in any light. It's also easy to make the font larger whenever necessary, like when my eyes are tired. And the lack of backlight saves on the battery. I can leave it on sleep for days and hardly ever need to recharge the battery. I can't say enough that I am so not disappointed in this product.