The kindle has been fun to play around with. I’ve enjoyed reading it for an hour or two each night for the past week. Once all the weird technical glitches went away (after a reset and a full recharge of the battery), i haven’t had a single issue.
That being said, i don’t want one. And here’s why. Not all books are available for it. The front page of amazon’s website says there are over 230,000 books ready for the Kindle. But you know what? Just at random i picked three series i’m either reading or have recently read, and none of them were available for the kindle. In fact, most likely they aren’t available in electronic form at all. Why is this? Publishers don’t like to publish their really popular books electronically (some paranoia about pirating, which is stupid because most of the books they try to protect are available via pirated avenues before they’re published anyway if you know where to look). And of course there’s the ever present DRM to consider. Kindle uses a propriety format (and i’m sure it’s loaded with DRM) so if i wanted to transfer all of my kindle books to some other reader a few years from now, i couldn’t. That being said, it’s a great device, and it might be great for you. Check one out for yourself if you get a chance and see what you think.
One Response to “A nice place to visit … but i wouldn’t want to live there”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Two comments.
1. The kindle can read mobipocket books and you can get a ton of those from http://www.fictionwise.com/.
2. My brother gave me his Illiad (http://www.irextechnologies.com/) last month and I’ve just begun to use it to read stuff on it. Some things I like and others I don’t, but so far most of the feelings I have are positive. Of course I’ve been reading ebooks on various devices for over 5 years now and have built up a collection of books…including the run Tor had on free books for a while there. Drop me a line and maybe I can recommend a few to you.