— unpredictable thoughts

Kindle: Reading Device doomed to fail.

Amazon.com: Kin­dle: Amazon’s New Wire­less Read­ing Device: Kin­dle Store

Rea­son one. Excuse me but why would I want some­thing that looks like a cal­cu­la­tor to read a book instead of a book? Can’t think of a rea­son why. I also think that the folks Ama­zon seeded these devices to won­dered why too. (Although it appears they put all the pos­i­tive reviews up first) If you look at their web­site there are 505 cus­tomer reviews and the device has barely crept above 2 and, is that a half, stars. Only 97 peo­ple give it 5 stars. That’s the peo­ple that were inter­ested enough to beta test.

Rea­son two. Just because you sell books doesn’t mean you under­stand books. Ama­zon isn’t a book­store they are a dis­tri­b­u­tion center.

Rea­son three. Phys­i­cal­ity mat­ters. You can’t pass a book you read on to some­one else. You can’t take it to a book trader or used book­store. You can’t use it to hold your ticket on the train while you wait for the conductor.

Rea­son four. Peo­ple that pro­vide read­ing mate­r­ial call them­selves con­tent part­ners.

Rea­son five. Dumb name. Ever heard of kin­dling? Do you want to start a fire with an e-book? Wrong metaphor.

Rea­son six. Why pay for access to things you already get for free or through your cur­rent isp?

Rea­son seven. A book is about its cover, paper, type­face, and illus­tra­tions — they are part of the expe­ri­ence. If not all books could have a black cover and be the same text face using the same illustrator.

Rea­son eight. How many books could you buy for 400 dollars?

Rea­son nine. I own my books and I have access to them indefinitely.

Rea­son ten. The elec­tronic prod­uct isn’t cheaper than the phys­i­cal product.

Rea­son eleven. The old­style books were wire­less from the begininng and still are.

Rea­son twelve. UGLY.

I love good tech­nol­ogy. I love good design. I think that the need for devices that allow the reader to change the con­trast of the page and the size of the type are needed. I’m wait­ing for some­one smarter to make a smarter device. This isn’t the device to make me an early adopter and I love the bleed­ing edge.

I’m going to head over to Joseph Fox Book­sellers and buy a real book.

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Tags: kin­dle, books, read­ing, tech­nol­ogy, ama­zon, e-books,