How I learned to stop worrying and love the eBook
It was a chilly November morning. I picked up the Wall Street Journal from my driveway. I opened it while sipping my morning coffee to find an article on Kindle, Amazon’s wireless ebook reader. Amazon, my former employer of 7 years, had recently launched the much touted Kindle in a widely publicized event on Nov 19th. Since then Kindle generated an enormous amount of buzz, the kind that the ebook world never saw before, the kind it badly needed.
I put the newspaper aside, fired up Firefox on my always-on laptop, and started reading reviews for Kindle. I read this bland, but comprehensive, review on CNet and this really great, mostly negative, video review from Robert Scoble, and this one from Joe Wikert, who launched Kindleville, an entire blog dedicated to Kindle, a couple of weeks later.
Most of the reviews praised Kindle for its wireless freedom, but blasted it for poor design, restrictive DRM, and an outrageous price tag. All those negative reviews did little to suppress my old loyalties to Amazon. I decided to pay up $399 + tax and get myself a Kindle, even though many of the articles I read suggested alternatives. I hop over to Amazon.com and find that they are temporarily out of stock. Bummer! I was all ready to get one and now I have to wait. Amazon doesn’t even say how long I’d have to wait.
I wasn’t going to wait. I drove down to the nearest Borders store and bought a Sony Reader for $299 + tax. The shopping experience itself was quite funny and merits a mention. None of the store reps at Borders seemed to know they stocked Sony Readers. They had to ask around and finally some store manager type knew where they were on “display”. Unfortunately, the only reader they had in stock was locked inside that display case and they couldn’t find the key. They clearly hadn’t opened it in weeks, may be even months. Anyway, they finally found the key and I got my hands on the Sony Reader. Let me point out that I was not one bit annoyed by all this. The staff was very friendly and I thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious. It just gave me a perspective on where we currently are in the evolution of ebooks into mainstream media.
As I was leaving the store, I was worried that I might have jumped the gun. I tried reading books electronically before (on my laptop and my mobile phone) and that wasn’t great. The Reader might end up in the long list of gizmos that I bought but rarely used – digital voice recorder, GPS (handheld, not the car one), digital photo frame, cordless electronic can opener, etc etc.
Getting the ebook reader turned out to be the best purchase decision I made in a long time. Ever since I bought it, my Sony Reader and I have been inseparable. It goes wherever I go - trains, planes, the DMV. I have to say it’s quite a head-turner. Of course, I have been reading a lot of books since November – the free classics promotion from Sony certainly helped. And I’m loving it. If I have to put my finger on one thing that explains why I’m loving it so much, it would be the e-Ink display. What they say is true - it really is like reading on paper. I can read for hours without any eye strain. I can definitely see myself reading news papers, blogs, just about anything I spend hours reading on my laptop today, reading on an eInk device in the future.
With the new display technologies and the enthusiasm around Kindle (will Sony be far behind on its own wireless ebook reader?), we can finally say that the eBook has arrived. It’s still very early but we are past the point where the average joe walking down the street will agree that most books in the future will be read this way.
Tags: amazon, Books, ebooks, eink, gizmo, kindle, reader, sony
March 30th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
i saw the kindle at my friends place. i agree with you the display is the highlight. it’s very easy to read (are they a public company? can i buy their stock? :). i haven’t held the sony reader (may be next time we meet) but i think amazon needs to improve their design in their next version.
what book are you reading these days?
April 6th, 2008 at 6:18 am
My husband has been asking what I want for my birthday and I think I have narrowed it down. I really really want an e book. Now the big question…which one? I’ve looked at Kindle…but I don’t want to wait for production. I also want versitility… Sony or Kindle…which one allows me more freedom to go to different web sites and buy books. I hate being locked in…If I’m paying $300 + I should be able to buy in multiple formats. Any ideas, feedbacks on getting the most out of a new digital reader?
April 6th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Renee, if you care more about being able to download books and other documents from any source, than about being able to download content whenever you like (say when you are on the bus), you should get the Sony Reader. You can transfer your own PDFs to the reader from your computer through a USB cable.
But know that you are signing up to be an early adopter. It is still quite early in the life cycle of e-book readers. So no matter which one you buy, it’ll likely be outdated very soon. While one can argue that this statement holds for almost any electronic product, I’m simply saying that the rate of innovation is usually much higher in the early stages of a product line’s life cycle. But if your husband is an avid reader, he’ll be happy to be an early adopter of the reader.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I’m happy to see that Amazon took charge of this with the release of Kindle. I’m sure the future will bring even more cool advances with other e-readers as well as with future versions of Amazon’s Kindle.
Joseph
May 26th, 2008 at 8:01 am
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