In the past two decades, our lives have become increasingly digital and portable with office work, kids’ homework, entertainment and shopping coming into the household in bits and bytes. We’re faced with more information than ever before, and more ways than ever to access it.

In most aspects, we’re happy with the digitisation of our lives, but have kept a few bastions of the analog world unmodified for centuries, one of which is the book. Unquestionably, the production process is easier than it was in Gutenberg’s days, but we still print with ink onto paper and bind it together with a thick cover.

In the past twenty years, a lot of written word’s moved to the computer screen, but leisure reading is one of those things that’s remained firmly printed on paper. There have been many attempts to create electronic readers that “feel like reading print”, but they’ve all fallen by the wayside without ever getting to critical mass.

Yet, on Monday, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced the launch of the Kindle Reader, a new twist on the ebook reader that failed time and time again. Brave move or naive pipedream?

I won’t go into the detailed technical specs since the Machinist does it so well but want to understand how and where this could be useful in today’s world.

Pros:

• Lightweight way to carry a lot of information, this could be a lifesaver on the train, tube, in crowded spaces and on long journeys.
• Easy way - in theory - to acquire new books without having to physically visit a bookshop or wait for an order to arrive. Less sure of it in practice if you’re outside of urban America, since wireless is provided by Sprint’s EVDO network.
• As a fellow blogger says, “I have on my bookshelf The Great war For Civilization: the Conquest of the Middle East […] written pre-Gulf War 2. Wouldn’t it be absolutely marvelous if the book updated itself for a modest fee on publication of a second edition? Or if my Wrox ASP.Net 2.0 magically jumped versions to 3.0 0r 3.5? that would be great.”
• A mother and non-geek says “Finally, a tech toy that isn’t meant for techies!!! I couldn’t be happier to read about the Kindle. I was wondering what to get my daughter for Christmas and now I know. She’s a third year law student and lugs A MOUNTAIN of heavy books to school, which is a 90 minute commute. With all those textbooks, it’s really hard for her to take casual reading material with her, too. This will be perfect! I think all you geeks are wrong on this one.”

Cons:

• DRM around all Kindle books: Forget lending a book to a friend, moving it to another device, buying it as a present for someone else
• Device not particularly open to other formats: The lack of PDF support kills it for me, since I’d expect to, at the very least, be able to read whitepapers and reports on it without having to bend over backwards.
• Reading on screen still not the same as on paper, the feel, the smell and the ability to scribble or annotate.
• The web browser and RSS reader seem unnecessary: The browser is limited at best, as Russell reports, and RSS feeds are paid for. Paid for?! Seriously, what were they smoking when they decided that people would be willing to pay a monthly fee to read RSS feeds which one can read for free on a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, iPod touch. I doubt a Kindle buyer wouldn’t already have one of these devices already…

I’m a total bookworm, especially on holiday yet, somehow, I can’t picture myself laying on a deck chair on my next holiday and pulling out my Kindle to read a few lines of The Devil Wears Prada, really.

Now, a device open to other formats, with no wireless, on which content can purely be transferred via USB, without audio or web browser, sold for far less, I would probably consider. It would save me printing so many work documents, and I’d definitely be up for technical books where an update is available when technologies evolve. Imagine how many trees we could save!

I’ll reserve final judgement for the day I get my hands on one of them - If a kind soul wants to lend me one, I’m willing! - but until then, I think it’s an interesting addition to the world of handhelds but not one I’d currently be likely to buy, even as a hopeless gadget addict.

For more reading on the Kindle:

• Dive Into Mark’s “The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)” draws some interesting parallels between Amazon’s own words from the past, some classic 1984 quotes and the current Kindle announcement.
• Mike’s review shows he’s not totally sold on the idea either…
• Diego’s second review
• Of course, Scoble’s also got an opinion on this…

[tags]Amazon, Kindle, eBooks, wireless, Taptu, mobile, technology[/tags]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Mobile devices, On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.