Breaking: Amazon Kindle Now Shipping

[Brandon Miniman]

I've been waiting for this day - the Amazon Kindle is finally available for purchase on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1195482230&sr=8-5).

Here are some details that weren't clear when the story first broke last week and was posted on various tech blogs. It uses SD memory, it doesn't require a service contract to download books wirelessly over EV-DO (Amazon must have an interesting contract with Sprint to allow this), you can download blog content, get access to Wikipedia, and get the newest issue of most popular newspapers (WSJ, New York Times, etc) beamed to your device so that when you wake up, it's ready to go. Something that is still not clear is the resolution of the screen.

The price is a steep $399, which is a $100 premium over the newest Sony Reader PRS-505. If the Kindle delivers on its claims, I'd say that the additional cost is well worth it. The Sony Reader has no wireless capability, and requires a computer for use. Also, at launch, the Kindle has access to two times more book titles than the Sony Reader.

This is truly a revolution - it is the first significant step towards making the paper reading medium obsolete, which is going to change our lives.

[cgavula]

I've been reading a lot about this lately.<br><br>I think it's interesting that you, as the consumer, aren't required to have the Sprint contract. Amazon maintains whatever contract is necessary. That may be part of why the device costs a bit more.<br><br>The things that are going to make this work are the same things that made the iPod take off - availability of content at a reasonable price, and a good "end-to-end" experience.<br><br>They seem to have the experience down make giving it wide accessibility and a high-res device (although a higher greyscale depth or color would have been nicer). The accessibility thing is excellent, though, especially for the newspaper/magazine content.<br><br>I see that Amazon is indicating there are currently about 88,000 titles available. How many titles does eReader, and/or Fictionwise, etc. have available? <br><br>The other question I have, is have they figured out the title pricing thing? They are currently trying to charge 2 buck a pop for titles you can get from other sources for free. If they try to charge full hardcover prices for titles that have already gone over to paper/trade, they will have a lot of trouble getting buy in. A quick look this morning lead me to believe they had a mix of pricing going on - some too high, some just about right, but nothing particularly low.<br><br>To get pricing/availability right they have to have publisher buy-in. That's how Apple secured pricing and availability for content for the iPod. If anyone can pull this off it would have to be Amazon. Has anyone heard about how much buy-in and cooperation Amazon has been able to obtain from the big publishing houses? This has a been a big problem in the overall ebook market. <br><br>Just a few stray thoughts on the subject this Monday morning!<br><br>--Chris<br>

[Jaime Rivera]

Well, Fictionwise has 43,194 as of today and eReader doesn't give out any statistics that I could find.

What I'm curious about is the file formating they'll use. If this reader has the ability to pull my old .lit and .pdb files, or allow me to read amazon books on my device, I could probably be a bit interested.

After 5 years and owning almost 120 titles, I've gotten use to reading books on my device and enjoying carrying all those titles on my microSD card. It sure isn't a close-to-book reading experience but it sure beats carrying an extra device or 120 paperbacks with some foreign language translating dictionaries wherever I go. My current dissapointment with ebooks are cases like Microsoft Reader dying on the Windows Mobile device platform. Though they state WM6 doesn't support it, don't ask me how, but it works for me with a couple of bugs. Unless current e-readers find a way to keep surviving the long run, ebooks will always be a risk for anybody's money.

Let's hope their right on this new concept.

[Brandon Miniman]

Chris - I agree, it's all about the end-to-end solution. Amazon are the only guys that could pull this off on a huge scale.

And for pricing, it looks like it ranges from $2-10. Considering that a physical book costs about $15, this could **** a heavy or moderate reader a lot of money over the long haul.

Jaime - you use your device to read books? Isn't that tough on your eyes?

[Jaime Rivera]

Jaime - you use your device to read books? Isn't that tough on your eyes?

Not at all. It is tough if you don't care for the amount of light in your suroundings though. I ensure not reading in total darkness, as anybody would have to with a regular book anyways, for everything to be safe for my eyes. Normal PC monitors do make my vision lazy, but after I migrated to laptops and TFT screens, I still manage to have 20/20 vision on every yearly eye check:D!

As an example, I just finished reading Dan Brown's "Angels And Demons" (yuk, ugly ending) which is a relatively large book in less than a week on my device. It's just so much easier to read a book like this one, find many Italian frases, and know you have an Italian-English dictionary available to help you through it. When you later learn ebooks are almost 50% cheaper than a regular paperback, you like it even more:D!

But again, that's just my taste.