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Not just the iPhone: Eee PC owner on why he didn’t buy a Kindle
September 1, 2008 | 10:00 am
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By David Rothman
I see roles for all kinds of e-book-capable devices. In the middle of the Kindle-Sony/iPhone debates, let’s not forget the promise of the Eee-style machines for e-reading. In Who needs a Kindle, when you’ve got an Eee PC, Rowan Hanna tells why he’ll use his mini-laptop rather than buy a K machine. His words:
- It’s small in size — easy to hold and carry
- It doesn’t heat up like a regular laptop – so you can actually rest it on your lap
- It’s quiet — a winning point in my opinion, there’s nothing less tranquil than your laptops fan going at full-speed
- No restriction on file formats — I can read e-books in any file format I choose (the Kindle makes you convert them to its proprietary format)
Notice the last item? Hint, hint, Jeff. And remember, Rowan Hanna isn’t even bringing up the DRM issue, which, of course, is related to the eBabel one. At least with multiuse machines, you can run a bunch of DRM-infested programs.
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Comments:
I agree – there are so many great ways to read e-books!
But the world’s full of tradeoffs… in this case, weight, size, form factor, battery life, ease of use and eye strain.
What’s best for each person will vary widely. I predict we’ll see more overlap in capabilities and less need for multiple devices, though, as each category gets better.
The future is bright if we can just lick this DRM lockdown problem with a solution that is both “reasonably” fair to both content owners and consumers.
The library selection of books available from Amazon for the Kindle is bad enough; of the last 30 or so books I read, NONE of them are available in an e-book format that I could read on an Eee PC. At least some of them are for the Kindle..
Seriously – what books are you reading that you can get inn a format that is readable on an Eee PC? It’s a good idea in theory, but not in practice.
The Kindle is NOT restricted to the AZW format. Most of the books I have on my Kindle are in PRC format, some are in MOBI format and some are in TXT format. PDF, DOC and HTML must be converted, but not necessarily to the AZW format. I have read over 150 books on my Kindle and most of them are not in AZW. Not all documents have to be books and obviously not all books have to have come through Amazon. There are thousands of books out there that are readable on the Kindle without any help from Amazon. It would be nice if Jeff Bezos made more formats native to the Kindle but not necessary.
Thanks for the mention David.
@Daniel Segel, I’ve found plenty of business/marketing and development ebooks in PDF format. SitePoint is one example of a site that offers their books as paper books or PDFs. There’s also places like Planet eBook if you’re looking for classic fiction books (…that are out of copyright).
Admittedly, it might be easier to find the ebook you’re looking for on Amazon, but so far I haven’t run into any problems finding books for sale in PDF format.
Battery life? How little is too little for an ebook device? There was quite a stir when the Iliad came out initially with barely 5 hours of life. I didn’t think the Eee did much better than that.
>>> No restriction on file formats — I can read e-books in any file format I choose
No. This person has no restrictions on file formats only AFTER choosing to eliminate all Amazon Kindle ebooks. And he appears not to know that non-DRM mobi ebooks (such as all from Baen) and txt files work just fine on the Kindle.
I’m not thrilled with a proprietary file format but I can live with it for now. Having said that, I would only have bought a DRM-infested ebook reader from Amazon. Amazon owns the DRM file format they’re using, and they own a huge distribution channel which is not dependant on ebooks for profits while the ebook market builds.
My Kindle has about 1/2 books that I haven’t read yet, and 1/2 books that are old favorites I already own. When I considered buying the Kindle, I decided I’m willing to risk that my Amazon ebooks will still be readable 20 years from now. If I’m wrong about that, it’s still worth it to be able to carry now (goes and looks) 352 books in one hand.