The Kindle: Good Before, Better Now. A woman was using a Kindle at Starbucks the other day. She really didn't get much reading done, people kept wanting to talk to her about her Kindle, and look at it themselves. The Kindle will have made it when people can actually use it in a public place without being harassed.
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Yeah, from what I see it's better than before but still a good way off anything I'd part with money for. The main thing for me is the compatibility issue - was it really too much to ask them to have it read multiple formats without requiring conversion first? Apart from that they're getting there, will be interested to see what the next couple of iterations shape up like.
I'll buy one when it reads to me in Naomi Campbell's voice and calls me "Big Boy".
Seems the Kindle make piracy pretty easy -- or can they block it somehow? When an eink-style ebook costs $100 and can display any old pdf then the publishing industry will be in serious trouble.
A $350 price tag keeps it niche (a nice upper-middle class niche, but still) and perhaps they have enough piracy controls to hold back the tide for now.
That said, perhaps book reading itself has become such a niche activity that only well-off people bother anymore - so pirating a $10-$20 book isn't worth the effort. Clearly the average American (below a certain age) is comfortable pirating music though, so I assume those same people will have no problem pirating books when it becomes cheap and convenient.
I'll get one when it can adjust the settings on my warp drive.