Last month, I bought a Kindle.

Obviously, I did this only because somebody told me to. Specifically, my 
granddad asked me to buy one for him so he could give it to his wife for 
Christmas. They both seemed fascinated with the little gizmo, with her 
decreeing "John, don't you touch it. I don't want you to bugger it up!" 
(Yeah, she's like that...)

I've got to admit, the screen is pretty trippy. It's not like any kind 
of computer screen (mainly because it's reflective rather than 
emissive). To say that it "looks like paper" is a bit of a stretch. It 
also updates fairly slowly. The genius, though, is that it requires no 
power to hold an image (hence the long battery life).

In fact, the first time we turned it off, the screen turned into a 
beautiful illustration of some birds. If you really stare closely, you 
can vaguely make out the pixels. Or rather, I with my sharp binocular 
vision can just about resolve them. My grandparents with their barely 
functional eyes must surely be unable to see such things. (Let's face 
it, they can't see the on/off button.)

Unfortunately, now when we turn it off it just displays a boring picture 
of a famous author, selected at random. No amount of power cycles will 
make it display the beautiful bird image again, to my grandparents' 
utter despair.

It's also not especially easy to determine whether the device is 
actually switched on or off; the power light goes off a few seconds 
after you turn the device on. (I must say, it powers on /very/ fast 
indeed.) It seems that the only way to tell is that when turned off, the 
screen says "slide the power button to wake", which it never says while 
turned on.

As you'd expect, purchasing books for it from Amazon is... actually a 
total PITA! Which surprised me. For reasons beyond my comprehension, you 
*cannot* add Kindle books to your shopping basket. You can *only* 
purchase them immediately, right then and there. And for every single 
individual purchase, you have to go through a dozen order processing 
screens. You literally cannot browse the store, stick anything 
interesting into your basket, and when you're done, go through the 
basket, decide which ones you actually want to purchase, remove the 
rest, and then purchase the whole lot in one go. You can *only* purchase 
the books one at a time. And *only* way to hang on to several books is 
judicious use of tabbed browsing (a feature that nobody in my entire 
family except me has managed to figure out).

Presumably the purpose of this deliberate lack of functionality is to 
force you to buy more books than you would otherwise have bought. And 
sure, most of them are only a few quid. But it seems to be possible to 
spend money frighteningly quickly. Think about it: buy a small handful 


On the other hand, it's surprising (indeed, perplexing) how almost 
anything you do on the Amazon website somehow affects the Kindle 
/instantly/. I don't know how that's possible, but still. I registered 
the Kindle to the correct Amazon account, and within about 0.8 seconds 
the screen on the Kindle changed. That's almost faster than the page 
loading speed over my piffling 2 mbit Internet connection. (!)

Apparently it's supposed to be possible to make purchases from the 
Kindle itself. I haven't tried this. (God only knows how you repeatedly 
type in your credit card number on a device with keys significantly 
smaller than a human finger...)

It's certainly a nifty little toy. And it's /almost/ trivial enough to 
operate that my grandparents might actually figure it out eventually. 
Unfortunately, like all electronic devices, it has to scream "I can also 
do X! And Y! And Z! And J, L, R, F, Q and I!" just to confuse people. 
Actually reading a book with it is fairly self-explanatory.

(I love the way that to read the user manual you have to already know 
how to work the device. That's a wonderful bootstrapping problem.)

Now, if they made a device like this with Mathematica installed on it, 
I'd probably buy it. (It would be like the ultimate graphing 
calculator.) But as a device for reading books? Nah, I won't bother.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And for every single 
> individual purchase, you have to go through a dozen order processing 
> screens.

  That's not very smart. If you want to sell something, you should make it
*as easy as possible* to buy it. If you make it hard, it will discourage
potential buyers and you will lose money.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 13/01/2011 12:13 PM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> And for every single
>> individual purchase, you have to go through a dozen order processing
>> screens.
>
>    That's not very smart.

No, no it isn't.

(I especially like the way they label it as "1-click buying".)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Now, if they made a device like this with Mathematica installed on it,
> I'd probably buy it. (It would be like the ultimate graphing
> calculator.) But as a device for reading books? Nah, I won't bother.

Reading is not your thing and your usual abysmal ignorance shows that.  Point
taken. ;)

That said, it's the only portable device I'd ever buy, aside from the cheapest
possible cell*phones* and Nintendo's upcoming 3DS.  I don't get it people who
buy an iPhone to answer calls in the middle of some tense gaming moment or to
read ebooks in tiny letters... :)

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On 13/01/2011 3:50 PM, nemesis wrote:
> or to
> read ebooks in tiny letters...:)

With E Books, you can change the font size.
I would not go anywhere without my Sony Reader.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 13/01/2011 03:50 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Now, if they made a device like this with Mathematica installed on it,
>> I'd probably buy it. (It would be like the ultimate graphing
>> calculator.) But as a device for reading books? Nah, I won't bother.
>
> Reading is not your thing and your usual abysmal ignorance shows that.  Point
> taken. ;)

Reading *is* my thing, I'd just prefer to do it using a real, physical 
book, that's all. (Plus, while I /like/ reading, I don't get to /do/ it 
very often.)

Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for at 
any time, for no defined reason?

Still, it's not without advantages. (Size and weight being the obvious 
ones, but also the ability to enlarge the text to the point that even my 
grandparents can read it.) They're just not advances that are especially 
important to me.

> That said, it's the only portable device I'd ever buy, aside from the cheapest
> possible cell*phones* and Nintendo's upcoming 3DS.  I don't get it people who
> buy an iPhone to answer calls in the middle of some tense gaming moment or to
> read ebooks in tiny letters... :)

My current phone has a camera in it. I have no idea why. The images it 
forms are just barely recognisable.

It also thinks its am MP3 player. I have no idea why. The sound quality 
of a 2mm speaker is, obviously, abysmal.

On the other hand, it was the only flip phone I could find in the entire 
shop that says "Nokia" on it, so...

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Stephen escreveu:
> On 13/01/2011 3:50 PM, nemesis wrote:
>> or to
>> read ebooks in tiny letters...:)
> 
> With E Books, you can change the font size.

yes, but not the screen size.  Which means you can read in big letters 
and scroll all the time to see more text... :p

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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>> With E Books, you can change the font size.
>
> yes, but not the screen size. Which means you can read in big letters
> and scroll all the time to see more text... :p

Mmm, true. Still, the Kindle has a reasonable size of screen on it. 
Probably comparable to a hand-held paperback book. Looking at some of 
the weighty tomes I have in my room, most of the actual *text* isn't 
much wider, there's just more white space on the page. And there's a 
good reason for that: the wider a line of type, the harder it is for the 
eye to scan from the end of one line to the beginning of the correct 
line below it.

All of this of course goes a bit wonky once you have resizeable text on 
a fixed-size screen...

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Invisible wrote:
> decreeing "John, don't you touch it. I don't want you to bugger it up!" 

My wife constantly finger-prints up my screen, thinking it's a touch screen. 
Kind of funny, really.

> Unfortunately, now when we turn it off it just displays a boring picture 
> of a famous author, selected at random. No amount of power cycles will 
> make it display the beautiful bird image again, to my grandparents' 
> utter despair.

It will be back after half a dozen authors, then some architecture, history, 
and mathematics. There's even something that I would guess is an Enigma 
machine in the list or something.

I find it disturbing to fall asleep reading and wake up the next morning 
with Agatha Christie staring at me from the next pillow over.

> It's also not especially easy to determine whether the device is 
> actually switched on or off; 

Not sure what you mean. If it's showing the screen saver or nothing, it's 
turned off. If it's showing a book or a menu, it's on.

Hit the switch hard once, count to five, see if you have a book showing.

> As you'd expect, purchasing books for it from Amazon is... actually a 
> total PITA! Which surprised me. For reasons beyond my comprehension, you 
> *cannot* add Kindle books to your shopping basket. You can *only* 
> purchase them immediately, right then and there. 

Add the free samples as you see them. Let them go to the Kindle. Once you 
have looked at them on the kindle and you want it, push the "buy" button on 
the kindle.

 > And for every single
> individual purchase, you have to go through a dozen order processing 
> screens. 

No you don't. You just turn on one-click for kindle books.

No, you can't put them in your cart. You can use the kindle as your cart. If 
there's something you see interesting, send the sample chapter to the 
kindle.  Then delete it or buy it at your leisure.

> On the other hand, it's surprising (indeed, perplexing) how almost 
> anything you do on the Amazon website somehow affects the Kindle 
> /instantly/. I don't know how that's possible, but still. 

It's called a "network". ;-) Seriously, it's somewhat slower in the USA I 
think. At least around my house. It takes maybe five to ten seconds between 
buying a book and the Kindle starting to download it.

> Apparently it's supposed to be possible to make purchases from the 
> Kindle itself. I haven't tried this. (God only knows how you repeatedly 
> type in your credit card number on a device with keys significantly 
> smaller than a human finger...)

Don't be silly.  You link it to your account once (which they do for you 
when you buy it) and you just buy books by asking for them.

> It's certainly a nifty little toy. And it's /almost/ trivial enough to 
> operate that my grandparents might actually figure it out eventually. 

Yeah, I like how the new electronics are getting sophisticated enough they 
can be easy.

> Unfortunately, like all electronic devices, it has to scream "I can also 
> do X! And Y! And Z! And J, L, R, F, Q and I!" just to confuse people. 

I didn't see that at all, really. It's totally out of your face.  You turn 
it on, you get a list of all your books. You cursor to a book and click, and 
you're reading the book where you last stopped.

There's a lot of functionality, but it's not on screen. Indeed, it can be 
difficult to find sometimes.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Invisible escreveu:
> Reading *is* my thing, I'd just prefer to do it using a real, physical 
> book, that's all. (Plus, while I /like/ reading, I don't get to /do/ it 
> very often.)

I've got no respect for /real books/, their large volumes messing around 
with home space, their smell and yellow pages as they get old and the 
forests killed to make them.

> Besides, who wants a system that can delete the books you've paid for at 
> any time, for no defined reason?

that's plain FUD last time I heard, both from tree killers and 
traditional book publishers.

> Still, it's not without advantages. (Size and weight being the obvious 
> ones, but also the ability to enlarge the text to the point that even my 
> grandparents can read it.) They're just not advances that are especially 
> important to me.

beside all those awesome advantages, you can also simply buy a new book 
in the middle of the night when you see fit.

>> That said, it's the only portable device I'd ever buy, aside from the 
>> cheapest
>> possible cell*phones* and Nintendo's upcoming 3DS.  I don't get it 
>> people who
>> buy an iPhone to answer calls in the middle of some tense gaming 
>> moment or to
>> read ebooks in tiny letters... :)
> 
> My current phone has a camera in it. I have no idea why. The images it 
> forms are just barely recognisable.
> 
> It also thinks its am MP3 player. I have no idea why. The sound quality 
> of a 2mm speaker is, obviously, abysmal.

indeed.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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