hmmz i thought it was a erotic toy....

I would much rather have an actual book. I can see the advantage for students wanting easy and potential cheaper access to text books but thats about it.

can read other text files... can't read eBooks sold in other formats... all digital content ....must be ... through the store.

Amazon in "crippled unless you pirate" foot-shootathon.

The infrastructure for kindle and coverage of ebooks just isn't good enough to make me switch from old fashioned paper yet.

So, the Kindle costs $250 (plus shipping from the US and most likely import duty too) and each e-book costs around $10-15, which is about the same as a print book.

Call me a Luddite, but I'd rather have a real book. I'll guarantee that five years down the line, I'll still be able to read that book - the format won't have become obsolete, I won't need to hunt down software patches and they never need recharging.

Thanks all the same, but I'll be sticking with real books for the foreseeable future.

+1 with above comment (but then I also thought that of my sony discman and look at us now?)

Thanks, but no thanks! I'll stick with my Portege m200 tablet. £175 off eBay - pure tablet goodness. It even runs 7! And games! My purchase of the year :)

Does this work in Europe?

Yes, but you'll need to order from the US, plus not all books are available outside of the US :(

This will go the way of foot spas and bread makers. In the cupboard never to be used.

I'll stick to paper books, thanks. Can't beat curling up on the sofa on a rainy evening with a good book.

Paper books will be gone in 15 years max.

I think sony version is going to do better as its not limited to only one format so it will have more usefulness to students and the general public

Originally Posted by Star*Dagger
Paper books will be gone in 15 years max.

Bollocks. 150 years maybe. I don't see anyone of this generation or the next replacing books with an electronic device.

There's just no need: unlike music, who needs to carry around 150 digital books with them? People read one book at a time mainly. All you need is the one book. There's just no real benefit to carrying around a $250 computer to read them.

Totally agree with the above comment. I don't read more than one book at once and I've found that most people are the same way (I only say MOST people because I haven't asked every single person in the world but I'm yet to find anybody that's not like this). I believe the Kindle has a feature for you to look up words you don't know which is mildly useful but if you you're reading something and the context of the sentence is not enough to make you understand what the word means you probably should be reading something else.

Why the **** is this stuff popular? It's full of DRM AIDS. "Oh, yeah, that book you were reading? Turns out it only had a two-year license, so you'd better pay up again. The other one you want to go back to but deleted to save space, eh, sorry, you can only copy it five times." This is not a future of media I wish to be a part of.

WTF IS A BOOK?

Originally Posted by 1ad7
WTF IS A BOOK?

It's like the internet printed out.

I do buy a lot of books but I also like my Sony Reader for it's convenience for things like holidays and travelling long distances.

I bought one for my girlfriend the other week.
Considering that she will happily demolish a novel in one day and the fact she's now registered with 4 libraries just to ensure availability of her next read, I figured it was somewhat justifiable.

Nevermind the fact that she used her phone to read eBooks in the past and I was concerned as to what that was doing to her eyesight.

Originally Posted by sear
Why the **** is this stuff popular? It's full of DRM AIDS. "Oh, yeah, that book you were reading? Turns out it only had a two-year license, so you'd better pay up again. The other one you want to go back to but deleted to save space, eh, sorry, you can only copy it five times." This is not a future of media I wish to be a part of.

Amen to this. DRM is the mark of the Beast (something the Jehovah's Witnesses still need to catch on to... they can have it for free if they want... and read Bit-Tech). It's like DVDs having anti-"piracy" warnings. Seriously, I just bought the goddamn DVD. The last thing I'm going to do is download it. (And our lovely pirates just cut off all the anti-piracy crap/advertisements for other releeases anyway!). Their DRM crap is the only reason I have stopped buying DVDs, and only buy non-"copyprotected" CDs from small labels/bands themselves (luckily, I don't have a very popular taste in music). Aargh and bah to the vomit the industry produces, which I can definitely do without (which they themselves have taught me by being dicks).


To the person who said he only reads one book at a time: you pussy, I read two at a time! Oh, yeah - you little girl, you!

I do completely agree, though. Paper books > screen. Not to mention that a real book never runs out of battery power. ****, even if you don't pay your electricity bill you can read real books (provided you shelled out for candles and a lighter/matches prior to not paying your bills ;)).

On a serious note, though: when you buy a book, you own the physical item, which is what buying stuff is all about! You wouldn't buy a car if it meant you couldn't re-paint it, change the lining of the seats or open its hood yourself!
When I buy a book, I know I'm not allowed to make 100,000 copies and sell them myself, but at least I can make a copy for myself (because, apparently, when it comes to books, no one cares if I copy it page per page for personal use), share it with other people (i.e. loan it to them, not give them one of my 100,000 potential copies) and all that. It's mine. As it should be.

If you treat people reasonably, they will treat your "intellectual property" (the worst term ever) with respect. If you treat them like potential criminals from the second they spend their hard-earned money on your product, you won't get any respect. ****ing douchebags.

Apologies for the rant. I just really hate DRM :(

Some of you may remember the XKCD comic dealing with the kindle, it stated that the main benefit was free Wikipedia access through the 3G network for life and that this seemed to be suspiciously like the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in practice.

The only reason I ever wanted a Kindle was for the Wikipedia access and if somehow Amazon do manage to strike a deal with some phone networks then it's going to be practically the best thing to own from a long term point of view. Unfortunately it's not available here in the UK for the reason that some phone companies think it will be expensive (AT&T didn't think so so stop whining) to provide all this text to people.

To summarise - the kindle beats all other ebook readers due to wiki access

I'm waiting for Plastic Logic's Que. Jan 7th here i come.

Originally Posted by SiG
I bought one for my girlfriend the other week.
Considering that she will happily demolish a novel in one day and the fact she's now registered with 4 libraries just to ensure availability of her next read, I figured it was somewhat justifiable.

And these four libraries now loan her books in kindle format?, or is she just going to buy a book a day?:D

For those into SciFi, Alternate Reality and so on : http://www.baen.com/library/
Free books here, provided you can read RTF (like.txt files) :D and a few ebookformats:

Ebookwise/Rocket Format
Mobi/Palm/Kindle Format
EPUB/Stanza Format
Microsoft Reader Format
Sony Digital Reader Format
RTF Format

The ONLY reason why I really want a Kindle is free access to wikipedia wherever the f*** I am! That is a revolution!

Related link: http://xkcd.com/548/