Do You Kindle? Will You?

Yes I'll Kindle. Ergonomics are fantastic and its light weight. One thing most unacceptable is the DRM. You'll buy the books but you can't resell them, and you can't keep them forever, they'll "expire" after a fixed period. Why I'll still go for it. EOU, its the next iPod.

I saw that this past weekend on Amazon, and it intrigued me. But like you I am torn.

Does it have "smell-o-vision" to make it smell like a book store? If I look at the Kindle, does it remind me of my favorite story, or just an appliance?

Ahh! I think I'm not so torn anymore. Call me old-fashioned, but those crinkled pages remind me of the wrinkles on my face: Old familiar friends.

That being said, I would gladly buy a dozen and give them to charity, if it would help a child appreciate the written word and the magic of getting lost in a story.

I've heard complaints about the egronomics, especially about the placement of the page turning buttons. That's coming from the amazon.com product reviews, so go figure. Where Apple seems to excell at GUIs the Kindle seems to come up a little short. Plus the backorder time is going to go way into next year, apparently.

I'll probably get one, but I think I'll wait for MkII. And more time for reading....

My wife had mentioned this during her constant search for Christmas presents and I sort of had the same feelings as the rest of you.

It does solve one of my most vexing problems with electronic books... I can read in the bathroom.

But in my humble opinion, it still has a most important flaw, you don't accidentally read something out of order. I expect that non fiction, school materials, etc will have a pretty good internal indexing system so you won't "waste" time flipping through pages looking for an explaination. I've found that I have found out so many incredible things, by doing just that, that it justified the few minutes lost in the search.

Also, apparently version 1 won't make me a capachino or have a discount books section..

I wonder if it has bottom cooling vents... might freak out the cat when I rest it on her...

It's crap.

Any reason you feel that way?

Forgive my shortness. Oh, and the fact that this article is the very first I have ever heard of Kindle. Oh and that I do not own an I pod and hae maybe 50cd's and a dozen DVD's. And I ain't real fond of them new fangled motor carriages either.

I am a booklover. Period. The idea of some fragile little electronic device being toted around using batteries emmitting more radiation (smirk) and all that crap just burns me (pun intended).

It seems more and more people make stuff jus 'coz. But honestly if it gets young people to read more I am all for it.

But like I said before:
Crap.

I am a booklover. Period.

I agree with your position CR3 (though perhaps a bit blunt expressed ?). Nothing can replace ther pleasure of leafing through a good book. Many years ago my father gave me a book and on the inside cover he'd written " Good books are one of life's great pleasures". You either understand that sentiment or you don't -it's an attitude to technology. This Kindle stuff could be good or bad. Judge it by such stuff as the i-pod etc maybe. Don't care ,because I'm happy with books. I'll use the internet where I can, but I won't rely on electronic technology. One day it could all collapse and we'd be stuffed without knowing how to use basic resources such as books.

I can see plenty of advantages to e-books; perhaps the most attractive side for me is the ability to search. Whenever I'm designing to a specification, I'd much rather have the spec in a form where I can search & annotate a copy. Also, when reading fiction (e.g. an Agatha Christie) I keep coming to a point where I just know someone has just contradicted an earlier statement, or whatever, but I have to more-or-less re-read the first half of the book to find it!

However, until the cost & durability approach printed texts, I won't be getting a Kindle.

Just this morning, I bought a copy of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children for £1.29 from a Help the Aged shop. The copy was printed in 1982.

Don't think I will indulge at this time. I like to keep the books I purchase and mark them up with comments, reminders, cross references etc. for future review.

I have an acquaintance who borrows out of print books on various and sundry deep and/or esoteric subjects by way of an inter-library loan program. Scans them into a OCR program that converts them to audio. He then listens to them once or twice to absorb the contents and returns them. Sounds like a winner other than running into copyright conflicts.

There's a tactile pleasure to 'real' books that this thing doesn't appear to have. It could be good as a Newspaper or regular magazine maybe ? Sort of take into your local vendor and zap it's memory with the latest edition. Some kind of vending machine you put coins in and upload. Nah, I wouldn't but it even for that. Just how much electronic stuff to they think we can carry around. There's maybe an eco-argument about saving wood pulp, but I don't think I've ever thrown a book away.

NEWS ARTICLE ONLINE TODAY:
"Do you kindle?"

by R.U. Kindling

Since Westerners are sometimes referred to as "people of the book" --
meaning, people of the Torah and and the "Old Testament" and the "Also
Old New Testament" and "The Audacity of Hope" -- it makes sense that
we Western people like reading books, writing books, buying books and
even "kindling" books. Kindling books? Did I just write "kindling"
books?

Yes, there's a new word out there in the blogosphere, online and on
blogs and websites in most of the English-speaking world, and that new
word is a verb -- to kindle, and the ING form kindling -- that has
taken on the meaning of "reading on a Kindle e-reader device from
Amazon.com.

Don't believe me? Google it. That's another corporate name that was
turned into a popular verb. There are others, too: to xerox something,
and to facebook someone. Language is a never-ending story. And for the
people of the book, language is a multilingual affair, and while "to
kindle" has not yet made it into a real dictionary yet, stay tuned.
Words have wings, and Emily Dickinson might have said: "Language is
that thing with feathers."

Read More