Comments on: Motley Fool challenges Kindle sellout ballyhoo: Oh, and how about the Segway?

By: thedigitalist.net » A book publisher’s manifesto- Part IV

thedigitalist.net » A book publisher’s manifesto- Part IV — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:40:06 +0000

[...] Kindle and Sony eBook readers. David Rothman who blogs many of the TeleRead pieces admits to being close to being a Kindle supporter; he probably would be, if only it eschewed DRM and embraced the .epub Open eBook standard. But what [...]

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:37:26 +0000

“The howls of fury will be loud indeed when people start being told they’re running up bills and must be charged for this “free” stuff.”

Agreed. Would have been much better to go with WiFi, but then I assume you have lots of issues with configuration, etc., and then it just doesn’t work out of the box for mom.

I’d imagine they’ll announce a monthly flat rate for web browsing soon, while keeping the free access to their store. But the web browsing in monochrome isn’t likely to attract that many subscribers, especially because users are likely to trend toward folks who already have better substitutes. I much prefer browsing on my Blackberry than the Kindle.

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:32:42 +0000

The battery life reported there is entirely due to the EVDO. Turn on wireless, don’t touch the device at all, and the batteries drain literally in less than 24 hours. I was extremely annoyed to travel to the inlaws for Thanksgiving, pull out the new device to show off, and find the battery completely dead even though I had charged it fully the night before and hadn’t touched it at all.

Its just crazy there isn’t some sort of automatic “turn the wireless off after X minutes of inactivity” setting.

There is an “Update Kindle” menu option, so hopefully at some point they’ll push out an update that implements something like that.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:15:45 +0000

I agree, Mike! Detail: The Washington Post was picking up an AP review. Thanks. David

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:10:23 +0000

I like everyone who writes sentences such as these from that Post article:

>>>You can wirelessly send questions to a team of editors, who will grab answers for you from the Web and send them back to you for free. There’s even a rudimentary Web browser that allows you to surf for free.

The implication is “free — forever.” As if they can’t even think of it ever ending. But I guess in this post-9/11 time, journalists have really suspended their powers of discernment!

The howls of fury will be loud indeed when people start being told they’re running up bills and must be charged for this “free” stuff.