Article: Kindle versus iPad

[zippy]

I own a Sony PRS 505. It sucks. These are the problems I have with it:

1. Lack of colour. Grey scales is not good enough. I want colour. This is the 21st Century
2. Its slow.
3. Battery is not good enough. Its almost permantly plugged in to the power at work. I think the battery performances deteriorated signficantly in about 2 months.
4. Standard memory capacity is not good enough. Having to buy an SD card withing a week is a fail.

When the iPad is released, I will probably wait for the first upgrade model. By then it should be clear how it measures up. Especially with regard to battery life. If you are going sell mobile devices, battery life can easily become the single most annoying thing about it.

 

[Crusader]

I own a Sony PRS 505. It sucks. These are the problems I have with it:

1. Lack of colour. Grey scales is not good enough. I want colour. This is the 21st Century
2. Its slow.
3. Battery is not good enough. Its almost permantly plugged in to the power at work. I think the battery performances deteriorated signficantly in about 2 months.
4. Standard memory capacity is not good enough. Having to buy an SD card withing a week is a fail.

When the iPad is released, I will probably wait for the first upgrade model. By then it should be clear how it measures up. Especially with regard to battery life. If you are going sell mobile devices, battery life can easily become the single most annoying thing about it.

1. I mainly read fiction. For that purpose greyscales are more than good enough since 99.9% of what you are viewing is plain black and white text.
2. In which way? My Opus boots in 15 secs, and page turns takes less than a second. Speedy enough for me.
3. There must be something wrong with your battery. My reader lasts for more than two weeks on a single charge.
4. I prefer to use an SD card to store my books on, they are cheap enough. I see the 505 came with 256MB of storage (200MB accessible). The average ePub file tends to be around 500KB so that should still allow quite easily for more than 200+ books on the device.

 

[PeterCH]

Not quite how I interpret a lot of your statements, but I agree with you that not everyone wants the same thing. I think where we disagree is what "freedom" means. I personally do not feel limited by the Kindle device at all.

You don't feel limited but there are better spec'ed options (in terms of h/w) and software compatibility. Look if all you do is buy ebooks from Amazon and read them than the Kindle is good enough. Pity it doesn't have a higher res screen and card reader but that's not too bad.

There is a good reason a large proportion (I assume ... do not have stats) of Kindle users buy their ebooks from Amazon only ... that is where they bought most of their printed books in the past. They have a good relationship with a compnay that gives excellent customer service. It is easy to buy your books if you don't have a computer or don't want to use it to load up your device. And Amazon's ebook prices are some of the lowest on bestsellers.

Amazon is actually a pretty expensive store. I know you said you used to buy from them from 97 onwards, but back in those days there were lots of nice deals. Nowadays Amazon is more expensive than many other Book/DVD/BD/CD sellers and it doesn't even ship software and games outside of the US. And yes I use(d) Amazon extensively too - Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.fr.
Of course I found DVDPacific, CDUniverse, CDJapan, DaaVeeDee and many other shops to be cheaper - especially the hundreds of drop shipper stores on Ebay (like DigitalDogPound or Movie Mars) which offered $4 + $1 insurance for shipping and $16 for a DVD that Amazon would charge $22.99 for + shipping which would always attract customs and was always 2-3 times more expensive.

I am a customer of Amazon (and Barnes and Noble) since 1997. Amazon has given me sufficient reason to support them with 70% of my onliine business for books, DVD, blu-ray, etc, by providing consistently good service, good prices and the goods/content I want.

B&N was always more expensive than Amazon. Back in the 90s Amazon offered lots of coupons and deals. You could get coupons for Amazon easily and get lots of discount. B&N was never attractive. Their prices were always MSRP while Amazon gave you good off deals. Of course after the dot com bubble burst and shops like 800.com and Express.com ($14 DVDs which cost $24.99 at Amazon.com) went bust other guys stepped in and Amazon hiked their prices. They still offer great service but apart from Ken Crane's, I've had excellent service even from shippers who sold stuff for 60% of Amazon's price - for ex, they'd reship lost items.

As far as the issue of expandable memory is concerned, it might be an issue for a small percentage of people. I have around 3500 ebooks and 800 PDF books and technical documents on mine and I'm currently using less than 1G of the 3.3GB available. It is more than enough memory. On the other hand, if I get the iPad (and I just might because it looks cool), I suspect that the 64GB will not be sufficient within a very short space of time.

Carrying stuff on cards is very handy. Yes you can load up but you need either a PC to load up or network. If you don't have either - well you're stuck.

 

[BigAl-sa]

I can order other ebook readers the same way. I can't go to a store here and buy the Amazon book reader.

Ok. At which stores here can you buy these other ebook readers?

Carrying stuff on cards is very handy. Yes you can load up but you need either a PC to load up or network. If you don't have either - well you're stuck.

erm, no. The Kindle has a built-in 3g modem, so providing you have a 3g signal, you can buy new books - you're not stuck. Personally, I couldn't be bothered carrying a myriad of cards...