Review: Amazon Reader Needs More Juice

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer, Electronic Devices / Consumer & Gadgets

The Kindle device is shown in this photograph released by Amazon.com on Monday, Nov. 19, 2007. The $399 electronic book device will allow downloads of more than 90,000 book titles, blogs, magazines and newspapers. (AP Photo/Amazon.com)

(AP) -- Making a successful reader for electronic books is one of the toughest tasks in consumer electronics. Many have tried and all have failed, defeated by something that's thousands of years old - the book.

Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .

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Posted by gopher65 11/21/07 16:52

Rank: 5/5 after 1 vote

It is disingenuous to say that "books" are thousands of years old. Writing is thousands of years old. Papyrus is Thousands of years old. Books are fairly recent. And if you want REAL books, as in, mass-manufactured books made on a printing press, then you are looking at no more than 600 years. That's hardly "thousands of years old".

Other than that though, I agree that battery life is a (strange) issue with the Kindle. The two day battery life is stunningly low for something that doesn't have an active display. Where is all that power going?

But I'm sure that will be resolved. Maybe with a software patch to this device allowing it to automatically turn off its modem when not in use, or maybe with a new reader in 6 months or a year.

My big problems are 2:

1) You should be able to hook the darned thing up to a computer via a USB port and transfer text files FOR FREE. You aren't even allowed to transfer your own text files? WTF is with that?

2)And of course, the 10 bucks for an ebook. That is crazy expensive. The primary reason why paperbacks are 10 bucks (or 7 bucks for some) is because they cost a wackload of money to manufacture. Almost the entire price of a paperback goes into paying for its creation, shipping, marketing, etc. They don't make much money on those things. Yet we are suppose to believe that they can sell a paperback for 7 dollars, make almost no money on that book, and survive, but they need to charge 10 dollars for an ebook? That's ridiculous. Someone needs to slap these people upside the head. Hard.

Ebooks should be 2 to 3 dollars. 3 bucks for new releases, 2 bucks for older books, and 50 cents for the convince of downloading a nicely formated non-copyrighted book (no royalties to pay out there, so that's 50c - CCfee - bandwidth fee = profit).

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Posted by out7x 11/22/07 01:10

Rank: 3/5 after 2 votes

I agree. Ebooks are too expensive. 10% cost of paperbook seems reasonable.
Kindle battery issue is stupid.

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Posted by enantiomer2000 11/22/07 14:18

Rank: 5/5 after 1 vote

"And of course, the 10 bucks for an ebook"

Welcome to the wonderful world of electronic copyright, where the only value is the information. People just don't get it where just because something cost X for a physical copy, that doesn't mean you should charge X for a virtual copy. That goes for books, music, and videos.

EBooks should be 1/8th of the cost of the original. Music should similarly be priced at something like 10cents per song. Each movie should be something like 2-3 bucks while each tv episode should be no more than 50cents to a dollar.

That is the only way that the market will be considered affordable enough for the average user to actually pay for the material, when it is so easy for them to just download it for free.