iPad vs Kindle vs Rock

[PaulG.]

Watch out for Mr. Bookman

I was never much a Seinfeld fan, but that was hilarious.

But if I may offer my $0.02... I have had a one hour commute to and from work for years. I got into Podcasts and audio books when my daughter got me an iPod Shuffle a couple of Christmas's ago. I recently upgraded to a Nano. I love my commutes (except when the roads are bad). However, I still love my books and have been thinking about getting a reader of some sort. The bulk of a book is what I don't like the most. (Anyone lug around Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged?) I also like the idea of having more than one thing to read on such a small platform.

Edited January 30, 2010 by PaulG.

[Gary Rubin]

I am a big library fan. Free books!

Somebody was telling you you can get books from the library on your e-reader. Is that true?

Instead of plugging into the books available from Amazon could you plug into the Library of Congress for example, and check out books instead of buying them?

Probably depends on your local library. Ours does have ebooks, but it's also a very big library system in a pretty wealthy and tech-savvy county. They also have e-audio books available for download.

Not having a reader, I don't know the logistics of checkout, etc.

[hooovahh]

Sorry I came in late.

I love the idea of buying a $250 device which will always be connected to the internet and never have a monthly fee...well not for the near future. That alone makes me want to buy a Kindle. Amazon also has a try before you buy, allowing you to download the first chapter of any book in their database for free. I've also heard you can get newspapers delivered automatically to the device. So you wake up in the morning and have you're newspaper. Again I don't read newspapers but if you did it would be nice.

They did try a few ideas to put it in consumers hands to try first too. If you owned a Kindle you could opt to allow to meet strangers (in a public place anonymously) to let them try the Kindle for a few minutes to see if they liked it. I don't remember what the perk was but I thought about signing up to play with one.

I saw a eReader (I think the Sony one) in a store and I was walking with my wife. Most electronics in the store have a plastic cover over screens, to appear that they are on but it is just a sticker to show a fake interface. I went over to the reader and it looked like it had one of those plastic covers on it, I pushed a button not expecting anything to happen but the page changed. It looked real...I mean it is real but I really liked like nothing I had ever seen before. That being said I'm not much of a reader (wish I was) but imagine if all textbooks were available. When in college I had to carry around a ton of big books all day, (didn't live on campus) Having one of these would have been awesome. Then imagine if it was touch screen, then I could do my home work on the device as well as read the questions.

I agree about the DRM crap. Essentially renting a books until the server goes down sucks, but I don't think it would be a big deal for me, I use the books I own now, reading through once would probably be enough for me. I know not all versions support this, but if you have eBooks downloaded, or PDFs then you can put them on the device DRM free.

Not sure if anyone has seen this but it looks like soon some books will be available cheaper on Amazon than any other medium. Basically the publishers get a larger cut of the profit from a eBook sale, but they have to allow Amazon to be the cheapest place to get the book. If this happens it will be another big reason to go for the Kindle.

Book replacement?...probably not but I love new technology, and like having the option.

[Cat]

Not sure if anyone has seen this but it looks like soon some books will be available cheaper on Amazon than any other medium.

Thanks for the link! My step-dad has written a book that Amazon sells for the Kindle. He'll be glad to know his royalties will be going up (from about $20/year to $60/year ).

[crelf]

Thanks for the link! My step-dad has written a book that Amazon sells for the Kindle. He'll be glad to know his royalties will be going up (from about $20/year to $60/year ).

Actually, the 70% is interesting - I don't know how much my publisher gets right now, but I get 10% of the sale price if it's bought in the US directly form the publisher (ie: through their website) and 5% for all other sales (eg: through Amazon, all international sales, etc). I doubt that much of the 70% will filter back down to the authors.

[hooovahh]

Actually, the 70% is interesting - I don't know how much my publisher gets right now, but I get 10% of the sale price if it's bought in the US directly form the publisher (ie: through their website) and 5% for all other sales (eg: through Amazon, all international sales, etc). I doubt that much of the 70% will filter back down to the authors.

Exactly, if the publisher decides to sell their book cheaper on Amazon and get 70% of the sale, you may not get any more than you are getting already, but the publisher will get more money, and Amazon will lose more money, but they are banking on the fact that it will bring them more revenue in Kindle sales in the long run. Which I'm guessing it will.

[Cat]

Exactly, if the publisher decides to sell their book cheaper on Amazon and get 70% of the sale, you may not get any more than you are getting already,

I'll let you know if the 70% really happens. FWIW, my step-dad is now getting a comparable percentage to the $3.15/$8.99 mentioned in the article.

[Mark Yedinak]

I'll jump in late to the conversation but I like my kindle. I will be traveling more frequently now as well as a minimum of one trip a year to India. I love to read on planes and carrying around a ton of books is simply not practical. A trip to India and back is about 40 hours of flight time for me and I could read quite a few books in that time. It is a lot easier to just load the Kindle up and have tons of reading material available. I also like the extensive amount of classics that are available for free. Reading on the Kindle is very easy on the eyes too. Let's just say that I am with Cat and Chris on this, I love my Kindle.

[Daklu]

Looks like another new Apple device is in the works...

(Courtesy The Onion)

[Francois Normandin]

Looks like another new Apple device is in the works...

(Courtesy The Onion)

I want that hummingbird battery.

[hooovahh]

Related? (apple flea). Also the Apple wheel has to be better than Sony's "New Stupid Piece of *** That Doesn't ***ing Work"

By the way I censored that link myself, have we tested the profanity filter yet? And if I posted a link that has a bad word in it would the link become broken?

[crelf]

...have we tested the profanity filter yet? And if I posted a link that has a bad word in it would the link become broken?

If you really want to know, post in the appropriate forum - don't hijack this thread.

[Phillip Brooks]

Quoting myself: Is that acceptable?

Technical:

I didn't spend a lot of time with them, but I looked at the Sony and nook readers just before Christmas. The nook seemed like the nicer unit to me, but I didn't get to hold it; there was a big crowd gathered around a sales person demonstrating the features.

The sample Sony unit bolted to the kiosk was awful! The screen flickered when changing pages and the response time to menu selections was very slow.

Social:

To me, these devices are a solution looking for a problem. The only 'problem' they seem to solve is that of the distribution of wealth. According to reports, the publishers give up 30% of the price, but have no printing, inventory or distribution overhead; just marketing and editing prior to release. The publishers will make more because they certainly paid more than 30% in production costs. Lets say for the sake of argument that it is 50% (probably low).

The 50% that used to be distributed amongst loggers, paper mills, printers, trucking companies and book stores provided income that was in turn used to pay mortgages; to buy cars, groceries and books . A free economy is like a well architected LabVIEW application; it depends upon flow.

The 30% redirected to the new business model seemingly goes to support the infrastructure to distribute the books. This is false because as a user you must pay subscription fees for access (cellular, broadband, etc...).

The human part of this support is not being done by the displaced business model; it is being performed by 'the lowest bidder'. The 20% savings by the publishing house is still highly contested between the publishers and the authors and will likely be split between them in the end.

I read this article this morning and though of this post. Paper companies want us to print more!

I also recently got to experiment with my sister-in-law's iPad. It was actually quite nice. She had downloaded several of the free classic books and they were quite readable. You can view single pages or turn the unit sideways and view two pages at a time. There's a 'lock' at the top of the device to prevent it from matching the orientation of the iPad (vertical or horizontal).

My 9 year old daughter said "Dad, it's a big iPod touch! Can I get this instead of an iPod for my birthday?"

I have to give the iPad the nod over the Kindle or Nook; it's more expensive but is a true computing device. I think I would rather have one device over three or more (laptop, ebook, music/vid player and handheld game player).

Last year it was netbooks; this appears to be the year of the tablet. A dual core Pine Trail Atom tablet with an SSD and a 7" OLED screen will be very nice. You could even run LabVIEW on it!

[PaulG.]

Quoting myself: Is that acceptable?

I read this article this morning and though of this post. Paper companies want us to print more!

I also recently got to experiment with my sister-in-law's iPad. It was actually quite nice. She had downloaded several of the free classic books and they were quite readable. You can view single pages or turn the unit sideways and view two pages at a time. There's a 'lock' at the top of the device to prevent it from matching the orientation of the iPad (vertical or horizontal).

My 9 year old daughter said "Dad, it's a big iPod touch! Can I get this instead of an iPod for my birthday?"

I have to give the iPad the nod over the Kindle or Nook; it's more expensive but is a true computing device. I think I would rather have one device over three or more (laptop, ebook, music/vid player and handheld game player).

Last year it was netbooks; this appears to be the year of the tablet. A dual core Pine Trail Atom tablet with an SSD and a 7" OLED screen will be very nice. You could even run LabVIEW on it!

An interesting comparison between the iPad and Kindle.

[Gary Rubin]