Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device | Hacker News Reader

Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

amazon.com

64 pointssdfx61 comments

Does Amazon offer any sort of "buy the book get the ebook for less" type deals? As someone who likes the convenience of downloadable goods but also likes both the aesthetics and security of a physical hardcopy, that sort of deal often strongly appeals to me (and is decently common in music and video games, especially with indie and sold-direct-from-artist situations).

I don't know how much it would appeal to most people, or how much of a weirdo it makes me, but I would love to be able to purchase a book and have it shipped to me, and also simultaneously get the instant-read "disposable" Kindle copy downloaded immediately while I wait for the shipment to make its way to my home.

Nope. The big question seems to be what forward protection we have against potential obsolescence/abandonment of the format/platform.

OTOH, the basic format is just HTML3 shoved into an old-school Palm database (.pdb) format (!). There's some sort of encryption/DRM/whatever on top of that.

Being protected by encryption/DRM sort of makes the fact that it's just HTML moot, doesn't it?

That's one reason I'd like to get a hardcopy as well as the digital -- the unlikeliness that the digital copy would be remotely portable without cracking the foramt.

That said, I don't entirely care about that aspect. I doubt I'll lug my Kindle library around from ebook reader to ebook reader, but I'd probably be more likely to buy a Kindle here and now if it would initially piggie-back on top of my current reading/buying habits, instead of trying to change my whole chain of expectations and behaviors in one fell swoop..

with Audible in its repository, Amazon could easily offer customers the chance to pay extra, say $10 to $20, to buy a book in all three formats (print, audio, digital) and save you the hassle of re-buying a book in audio or for the Kindle that you already own or want to purchase in print-format.

Sadly, not available outside the USA. What an utter miserable oversight.

And, I wonder what would happen if the Kindle supports music. Might be a very worthy competitor to Apple.

Well, one of the kindles strongest features is that it can connect to a cell network and receive documents really quickly online. Amazon has to negotiate a similar deal with an evdo carrier everywhere else for it to be available everywhere else. Not a small task i imagine.

And Kindle vs iPhone isn't a real competition. The iPhone may be a very nice generalized device, but it can't replace the kindle for reading. Specialization and focus still wins out.

I know it's not easy, but it's not impossible either. Besides, every country with mobile coverage has one or two dominant players which means that the number of deals might be manageable. They can gain more efficiency if they reach multi-country deals with multi-national carriers such as Vodafone or (please god no) Orange.

And I was thinking the music-supporting Kindle might be an entertainment device to rival the iPods not the iPhone. Imagine a device with books and music: it would be an awesome mobile entertainment device. They already have most of (all?) the necessary hardware in the Kindle 2.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't both Orange and Vodafone GSM networks and not CDMA?

Certainly not Vodafone. I don't know of any CDMA carriers over here in Europe.

While the kindle's proven to be a big sales hit for Amazon, I think it's likely that a hybrid video/music player will win out as an entertainment device over a hybrid text/music player for most consumers

An other reason could be the need for publishing contracts for eBooks. Amazon has to provide a sufficient amount of ebooks on their marketplace to make the kindle a success.

I would think adding wifi will be good enough for most international users.

Right now, Amazon has an incredible way to market the kindle. It doesn't require a computer or anything from the owner (beyond an outlet to charge once or twice a week if you have EVDO on OR once or twice a month if you dont).

This is something that very few, if any other companies can claim. Not even cell phone companies can claim this - Verizon needs AT&T or Sprint or whoever in order to allow people to talk to everyone else.

Adding wifi support removes this claim - you're now dependent on the person's ISP (internet connection), router manufacturer (provides the wifi) as well as a few other misc things. That takes away from the simplicity of the device.

As far as I know, to buy a kindle you have to log on to amazon.com with a computer (or iphone =P).

Amazon could provide both a wifi and an EVDO connection. Wifi chips probably are very cheap on scale these days.

If the EVDO connection is available in their area, great. Use that. But if it is not, users can figure out how to set up the wifi connection. They have to figure out how to set up the wifi connection in their notebooks anyway.

I am an international users from Italy, and I was very frustrated to learn that apple cannot open internationals markets not only for the ability to download content from everywhere, but also because it does not have the rights to sell 90% of the ebooks outside US.

Actually there is some very good evidence that a generalized device for ebooks actually can win out. I'd recommend that anyone interested in ebooks read this article.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-fut...

No. Actually, it's quite easy.

Just put a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/whatever3G modem inside and let the user pay for the bandwidth. That would also make the device cheaper (you don't have to pay for the lifelong bandwidth usage of the device) and available in just about every human settlement on the surface of Earth that has phone coverage. Most carriers have an unlimited data plan available.

Going EVDO-only is remarkably dumb.

That Amazon removes a layer of complexity (in this case, billing) is a huge plus. If I had to pay $30/month to use the Kindle, I probably wouldn't have bought one.

The fact that it's not available in other countries doesn't have to do with technical limitations of the over-the-air functionality since you can just download books to your computer and copy them to the device over USB.

The problem is the same as it has been for other content distribution systems like iTunes, where the publishers/other big-brother-ish entity decide what Amazon (/Apple/whoever) can do with the content.

Amazon says to pengiun books (or whoever) "We want to put your books on the Kindle." and pengiun tells them where they can go... Eventually they start convincing people -- but start throwing 'Canada' and the like into the deal and it gets a lot harder.

In short, what I'm saying is that eventually Amazon will convince the powers-that-be that the kindle is a profitable business and they'd be stupid to continue ignoring potential sales in other countries... And that's when the rest of us will get it (wirelessly or otherwise).

It will play music, but it's not worth the battery life. I prefer my 3 weeks of "pick up and read without having to charge". :)

It doesn't support wifi?(!)

Are all the books tied to Amazon DRM? That makes me wary of getting a Kindle as what happens if Amazon goes under (unlikely as that may be)...

Does Amazon provide any guarantee books for Kindle1 and Kindle2 will continue to work on all future versions of Kindle? I don't want to get stranded having to upgrade book media in 10 or 15 years.

It doesn't seem there's a way to "borrow" books from friends (or a local library) on the Kindle... is that right?

I guess I'm trying to answer "What problem does the Kindle solve that merit using it over books?"

To be perfectly honest, after using my sister's, I almost considered buying one solely based on the fact that I wouldn't have to fight with the binding of a book.

Aside from that, being able to browse and purchase books from anywhere is definitely convenient, as well as having any book you want at your disposable without having to plan/store/carry copies of said books ahead of time.

Mm, I've never had issues with book bindings for general reading; only with programming book bindings.

I tend to read just one book at time.

Does the Kindle allow full-text search across all books that you own?

What if you go on vacation? I brought my Kindle on a week's vacation and read five books. It saved me a lot of weight when I was traveling.

I don't know why you'd want full-text search. Any particular reason you mention it? In any event, the Kindle doesn't offer it.

From the product page:

"Kindle makes it easy to search within a book, across your library, in the Kindle Store, or even the Web. To use the Search feature, simply type in a word or phrase you're looking for, and Kindle finds every instance in your book or across your Kindle library. Looking for the first reference of a character in your book? Simply type in the name and search. You can extend your search to the Kindle Store to find related titles you may be interested in. Explore even further by searching Wikipedia and the Web."

FWIW, the Kindle's drm has been cracked for months by now.

I don't think their drm has been hacked in the sense that it can be removed. Basically, people discovered how they could load mobipocket protected books onto the kindle. People still haven't figured out, however, to copy drm'd books from one Kindle to another.

http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/mobipocket-books-on-kindl...

To your last question, convenience. Being able to carry around in a single 10 oz device an entire library is quite handy for those of us who don't know what we want to read. Or anticipate wanting to read several books on a trip. I don't have one, and looking at the selection on the Kindle Store, I'm not sure I'm going to get one yet, but I expect I will get one eventually.

I gotta agree. This is going to be convenient right now. The alternative to losing a book is rebuying it anyway, so if anything, it seems to carry things on just as they were.

Of course, if you are losing a book, then with a Kindle you'd be losing your device, which is considerably more expensive.

higher risk, but also higher reward

I picked up a Kindle, and have pre-ordered the K2. I've read about 30 books, most of them $25+ versions for $10, so I consider my initial investment almost recouped.

Amazon does DRM the right way - instead of taking away value with their DRM, they _add_ value. Unlike Apple, which lets me download my content _once_, (and if my hard drive on one of the half dozen devices that I've downloaded content and have still to sync back up to my NAS crashed, results in me losing it forever), Amazon has this concept of content that I _own_ - and may or may not be on the device in my hand. A situation which can be rectified in a few minutes with whispernet (their EVDO solution) by copying (as many times as I want) from Amazon onto my current device (presumably now my K2 as well as my K1).

You cannot borrow books from a friend - the content is tied to you, which is why can save close to $15/book.

I love the fact that I walk around with my entire library. I like to travel light, both when moving at home and when on vacation, and not having to deal with a bookshelf of light fiction, and taking books to the library when done, (or going through hassle of selling them on Amazon for 1/3 price) has been a HUGE win for me. (That's one problem that kindle solves). Not having to worry about losing my content, and having Amazon track it for me is another problem. And the book is amazingly easy on the eyes, _particularly_ in very bright light, I find it much easier than paper. (Third problem solved - no glare from paper).

I find it funny when people suggest that the iPhone might be used for reading books - it's as unlikely an idea as people buying a Kindle to listen to music. Wrong Form Factor. Battery life alone would kill you. Not to mention screen size.

With all that said - The kindle sucks as a replacement for technical books. I purchased a couple and was frustrated to no end. Page turning is too slow. The Kindle doesn't have a good metaphor for flipping between random pages. Resolution was poor for technical diagrams. Screen was too small. Rumor has it that Amazon is going to come out with a larger version for textbooks - we'll see. Until then, I continue to buy my technical books on paper. But for fiction which basically is linear page flipping of text - it's great.

Darn. I was hoping that the Kindle would be good for technical books. It'd be awful nice to carry around a bunch of references on one of those.

You can load Mobipocket formatted books onto your Kindle very easily -- just drag & drop. Kindle mounts on your desktop as a USB mass storage device.

There's a huge selection of pre-formatted books available out there too. I'm partial to Feedbooks http://www.feedbooks.com/ as they have a very cool catalog you can load on your Kindle. The catalog contains hyperlinks that let use download books directly to your Kindle via its EVDO connection (for free!).

How jarring is having the entire screen briefly turn black on each page turn?

E.g. See this video: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/09/video-kindle-2-as-slow-...

It's not very noticeable while reading. I'd say it's not any more jarring than flipping a physical page.

Much like a real book, Kindle really does seem to disappear while you're reading from it.

Seconding this. The first few times it stands out, then it becomes unconscious.

I've heard a number of complaints that the kindle 1's conversion service fails on PDF's with tables and graphs. Anyone know if this is still an issue?

My main purchase point would be for reading PDF papers/textbooks, so it's a bit of a deal breaker.

The PDF conversion is pretty mediocre for some things. It's not really a problem with the conversion service but rather with the PDF format itself.

I converted my PDF copy of Programming Clojure. It's mostly readable, but the code examples are not indented properly. Things like that are pretty much a show stopper for a programming book, but other books may work well enough. A fairly plain text document without many images or diagrams should work fine.

Not all PDF documents can be converted, though. If the document is a scan then you're out of luck. Text in images won't work either.

The bottom line is PDF is excellent for when you want a digital copy that will look the same as a print copy, but it is an absolutely terrible format for ebooks. The problem is the format and not the Kindle or the conversion service. Trying to use PDF on an ebook reader instead of one of the ebook formats is akin to littering the web with Word docs.

Thanks for the explanation.

It's a shame though.

As MP3's were to the iPod, free ebooks in PDF could be to the Kindle.

For example, Google Books has plenty of full content PDFs for out-of-copyright works.

Heh... Still waiting for REAL PDF support... Even DRM king Apple allows for arbitrary MP3s to be played on the iPod/iPhone. Until then the kindle is relatively useless (to me).

PDF really isn't that "compatible" with eBooks. Text needs to be able to reflow, arbitrarily break for pages, and not rely much on specific presentation. PDF is designed to look the same on screen as it will when you print out it, so it's at odds with the desirable eBook features.

The kindle is roughly the size of a paperback... I can't imagine there would be much difficulty in making a pdf display in that size (and I routinely print pdfs at 2 pages per page side).

Many PDFs are made in letter size, so they would get scaled down to the point of unreadability on the Kindle screen. I don't think it's fair to compare the Kindle screen to 2-up paper, since printers have much higher resolution.

Actually, PDF can include structure tags that allow it to re-flow the text when the display size changes. The problem is that this tagging feature is a somewhat new addition to the PDF standard and is not supported by most document creation utilities.

Ah, it's awesome that they've put some of that stuff in. I hope that stuff picks up faster than many previous cool PDF features have. :)

PDF conversion is pretty easy to achieve if you have Windows. If you have a Mac, it's a bit more painful, but it's still absolutely achievable.

I know. The point is just that I shouldn't have to convert it, it should "just work" (tm).

you can also just email them to the email address associated with your kindle and it will wirelessly deliver your converted document to your kindle. even though it's an extra step, I find this version of "just works" is often superior, as I don't have to pull out any cables or memory card readers, and can be done asynchronously (I don't need my kindle with me to send it a document).

The Kindle video on Amazon's site claims "View Word and PDF documents" ... is that somehow not true?

It may be subject to change in Kindle 2's software. But in Kindle 1, it has to be converted.

Take a PDF that is formatted for a 8.5 x 11, then try to read it on a 4 x 5 screen. It just doesn't work. Word docs, RTF files, and other structured doc formats (e.g. HTML) can be re-flowed to fit the screen correctly, but a PDF file needs to use the "tagged" PDF format and have the structure tags included in the doc or else it will not be able to adjust to the different display size.

You can directly put non-DRM'd files on the kindle. It's just that it only natively supports basic text and it's own semi-proprietary format. The effective difference is very small, but it's there.

You can also convert (via windows app or an amazon service) your own files into kindle's format.

As a Kindle 1 owner, the only major improvement I see in Kindle 2 is TTS. I am assuming they have new dedicated hardware support for this, otherwise it would just be a software update. No SD card slot though, just increased memory. No folder support, no native PDF viewing, no third party apps. Case not included in the base package anymore. I don't think I'm going to upgrade.

In one of the promo videos they demonstrated the TTS. The quality of the audio was robotic, so this feature does not really appeal to me.

I find it interesting that there's no clamour for any sort of back or frontlighting on eReaders. I know paper doesn't have it, but even back in the Newton days I knew that was a killer feature.

(Even though the Newton's backlight buzz made it just as irritating to a snoozing bed-partner as having the light on would be)

I really want to get one, but it doesn't meet my basic needs. I need to be able to properly display technical books and the other problem is it doesn't support Chinese fonts, so I can't read chinese on it. What I like is that I don't need to carry tons of books with me. When I moved to China last year, I brought a whole suitcase of technical books, a pain to carry around.

Anyone have any experience trying to view the books through the O'Reilly Safari site on the Kindle browser? Any better or worse than on the screen?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com