Anti-Kindle Rant Revisited
In November of 2007, I posted a scathing “review” of book readers in general and the Amazon Kindle in particular, over on the CustomScoop blog. My analysis was basically that you can pry my books from my cold, dead fingers. I went a little overboard, I admit…but man. I hate the Kindle. I hate everything about it, right down to its “paper like” screen and ridiculous ads with a lady reading one on the beach.
Yes, because the beach is certainly where I’d bring a $360 computerized reading tablet–what could go wrong? Let’s all bring our Macbooks down there too! Sure, sand manages to work its way into bathing suits, beach bags, hair, wallets, and orifices during the average beach visit, but I’m sure my delicate piece of technology will be just fine.
Yes. I hate the Kindle. I just can’t help it, I love books way too much. My inner book-geek is in a death-match battle with my inner gadget-geek, and the book-geek is basically pulling a ground and pound right about now.
So, I thought it best to revisit my original CustomScoop blog post from ‘07, in my futile quest to bring others over to my side of things.
Enjoy:
Amazon launched the Kindle this week, a nifty little device that is heralded as “the iPod for books,” in that you can purchase entire books from Amazon.com and download them to the Kindle for reading on the go.
My initial reaction to all devices like this (the Sony Reader being the previous incarnation) is nothing short of pure horror. I may have a zest for technology, but I’m also a bibliophile.
Nothing could ever replace the experience of books for me–the way they look, the way they smell, the soft rustle of turning pages, hushed libraries, arty bookmarks, the fluttery feeling of excitement as you wind down towards the last page, the “ah” sigh of satisfaction as you close the book upon finishing…the reading experience is so much more important to me than the relative convenience of a portable device. And I don’t think I’m alone.
That being said, I’m more than willing to give the Kindle a fair initial analysis based on the product reviews I’ve read.
I’ll start with what’s bad:
1) The price. $399? I’d rather spend it on an iPhone. Or a new Coach bag big enough to carry my books in (oops, I said I’d be fair, didn’t I…)
2) Most of us, particularly tech nerds and bloggers, already spend a great portion of our days doing immeasurable damage to our peepers squinting at a computer screen. While Jeff Bezos claims in interviews that reading on a Kindle is highly comparable to reading on paper, with little “eye strain,” I can’t help but find this claim rather dubious. It’s not paper.
3) Half the fun of books is sharing them with others–with the Kindle, unless you hand over the device itself (and your account password, and who is going to trust anyone with either?), there is no sharing of books among friends.
What’s Good Interesting (can’t bring myself to call anything good, I’m really doing a bad job with the objectivity here):
1) I get the appeal of the portability, as someone who packed four books to take on a recent cruise (I drastically overestimated the amount of time I’d spend reading, and only got through one), books are heavy and take up space.
2) At $9.99 per book, Kindle books are cheap. Even cheap paperback beach reads can run you $12.99 at times, and with first-run hardcovers clocking in at $29.99 and up, $9.99 is a bargain (unless you factor in that you’ve paid $399 for the device itself..but there I go being all negative again).
3) Now this part I really do like: You can subscribe to newspapers, magazines and blogs for a monthly fee. As someone who (on top of those four books) also frequently boards planes with several cumbersome magazines (what? I like to read!), I can see where storing all the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek on a small, portable device would come in great handy. (Although since the screen is text only, you would be hard pressed to view any of the accompanying photos…darn, there I go again!)
Final call: I’d hold off on the Kindle for now. I’m just waiting for the price to go down by a couple hundred dollars right after the holidays, causing an uproar among the forty or so people who will actually buy this thing (Ed. Note: Yeah I was obviously wrong about both the interest in the device and the price–Kindle 2 is not that much less $ than the first one was…). While the device holds some promise, and I particularly am interested in having access to blogs and newspapers on the go, right now I am unmoved.
Ok Ok… You’re killing me! I think our Kindle fanfare is directly inversely proportionate. Which is good!
To counter your assessments!
1) $359, Look I’ve saved you $40! Also, a bag?
2) It really is like reading paper, the technology is crazy. It uses no power to keep letters on the screen as well. 2 weeks of reading on a single charge?! Amazing. Because it’s not refreshing (the reason for eye strain) it actually only causes the same strain that you would experience while say, reading a book.
3) This is true, until we all get kindles and they figure out how to share books. Much like Music? Can’t share that legally. You could share a CD of course, but not if you’ve ripped it. Compact Disc:Book::iPod:Kindle (free SAT question included!)
Ok good stuff!
1) Yes, portable, hundreds of books! Thousands of books!
2) Books are definitely cheaper.
3) Very cool feature. And it does display images, check out: http://tinyurl.com/aboewp Clearly Edgar Allen Poe!
Now I’m not saying I’m going to go out and never buy a book again, but imagine going through college again, and NOT having to pay $120 a book, for something you look at for 15 weeks and sell back for $8.
Dan, I love the enthusiasm, really. And really, I LOVE gadgets. Even gadgets that I never end up using. I have TWO Flip video cameras and so far have only managed to make a music video of Bohemian Rhapsody starring some New Kids on the Block puppets (which will never see the light of day due to the embarassingly loud and screechy “singing” of me and my friends, who may or may not have been consuming adult beverages at the time).
But I just love books. They’re so pretty, they make my built-in bookshelves in my apartment look so nice.
Also, yeah, I stand by it: $359 bucks is much better spent on a beautiful Coach bag, or maybe some nice Tory Burch flats. Mmmm, shooooz.
As for your college argument–you’d be losing the #1 thing about college: buying the used books someone else has already highlighted and scrawled notes in! I made it through a Philosophy class solely due to that once.
I will not revisit all of your arguments, as you and I have had this debate before. But as to your new complaint about the beach: I regularly take my Kindle to the beach and it works out just fine for me. Do you not take your cell phone to the beach?