Less suckage. Plus, as I constantly point out, it’s called the Reader, not the Scholar. (There’s Sony’s opening to do a keyboarded up-version… but they have been too slow with developing the Reader. Ah, for some of that churn-em-out CLIE spirit!)

Right, but you’d have to be a real ebook nerd to have ever heard of the Librie. I mean everyone reading this blog is probably aware of it, but beyond that… (though technically all sorts of PDA-centric ebook solutions have QWERTY keyboards too). And, of course, the Rocket eBook had a software keyboard.

Anyway, it is really perplexing why Sony eliminated the keyboard. The Kindle keyboard kind of sucks, but at least its there.

>>>What Kindle has that no other device I have seen has – and to me, these are the two biggest breakthroughs - a qwerty keyboard and EVDO cellular wireless connectivity.

I guess he never saw the original version of the Sony Reader, the Japan-only Librie. It had a Kindle-like keyboard and was DRM-heavy too. The DRM (self-erasing “rental” books and magazines) helped to doom it (the buttonage probably helped too).

http://www.makezine.com/extras/50.html

Oh, no question that the instant gratification and PC-bypass the Kindle offers is great. But that’s a small enticement up against far too many negatives.

Yet, who knows? Let’s say a ton of everyday people buy the Kindle and it does indeed become the “iPod of ebooks.” When the DRM Gotcha bites them, maybe the scream will be so loud that things will *have* to change for the better. Several million angry customers can make a lot of DMCA change!

Granted, most people don’t have the same quantity of ebooks to ‘grandfather in’ for a new device, but it’s certainly the case that what matters most is ease of use, and DRM is not necessary to that, as DRM-free retailers in both music and books have comprehensively shown.

Anything that gets ebooks out there on eink is good. It won’t take all that long for people to realise that DRM is essentially no good. If the kindle creates a big market for itself it also creates a bigger market for other approaches, given time that is.

Most of these companies would like nothing better than to “rent” you content, instead of you buying it. It’s a constant revenue stream for them. Software is going the same way. Every heard the term “software as a service”?

And as for Amazon, remember when they stopped selling PDF ebooks? They used DRM to lock them to a particular computer. When Amazon decided to stop selling these type of ebooks, they basically told everyone to f-off when they wanted to access the ebooks that they had paid for and couldn’t. Amazon had their money, so tough luck. Read the Kindle license agreement. You’ll see that the same type of language is in there.

With DRM, you are at the mercy of someone else as to whether you can legitimately use the content that you have paid for. That is why DRM is evil and the average person should care about it.

Aye, there’s the rub. Yes, Laurie doesn’t care about DRM *today*. But say 3 years from now when it turns out the Kindle never quite took off and Amazon phases it out. Then Laurie looks around and notices that, hey, XYZ Corp has a new improved color eInk reader that’s even better than that Kindle was. Great. Except since all of those books she bought from Amazon are DRMed for the Kindle, they won’t work at all on the latest and greatest new gizmo.

This isn’t some geek hypothetical scenario, either. This is exactly what happened to normal consumers who drank the DRM Kool Aid with the Rocket Book, and found their investment in ebooks worthless after that product was discontinued and abandoned.