A Kindle for kids?
By Paul Biba
Kindle Nation Daily is predicting a Kindle for kids, but not a Kindle 3. According the the Nation, the predicted price is in the $149 – $199 range. It seems to me that an e-ink screen is too fragile, in its current implementation, to be kid-proof, but the Plastic Logic implementation might just work.
Go over to the nation and take a look at the full article.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am
For older kids, a B&W mostly text reader might work, but younger ones aren’t going to be happy if it isn’t color with lots of graphics like the books they read.
Readers for young kids may have to wait until OLED prices come down quite a bit.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
The other issue with younger readers is touchscreen difficulties. I wrote an article for this blog about it. Basically, I was quite surprised to run into this problem when I experimented with my Sony Reader on some five year olds. I had not anticipated the issue of how small children tend to read with their fingers and point at every word. So either you are going to have a very dirty non-touchscreen very soon, or you are going to have a touchscreen-based reader that is totally un-useable because they’ll keep turning pages by accident when they try and point at the worlds. I would never consider an ebook reader for a child who is younger than chapter book age. I just don’t see a way to get around the finger issue since that’s how they read at that stage.