Gizmodo
We got a unit, played with it, and shot it from all angles including the hidden SD card slot and the surprise "pleather" protective case. In this post, NYC reporter Jen Hooker and I answer many of your most pressing questions—hell, maybe all of them—including browsing the web, playing music and transferring books and more:
Take a look at the screen shots:• How long was initial powerup? 4 seconds (but our demo unit may have been booted up before).
• How long does it take to turn pages? One second or less.
• How comfortable is it to hold? Very comfortable. It's nice and light. It feels right in the crease of your hand, between the thumb and forefinger. The downside is that it's very easy to hit the Next Page key accidentally.
• How easy is it to use the scroll wheel? Easy and intuitive.
• Can you change the font size everywhere? No. You can change the fonts of books, but when attempting to alter the size of text on the home screen, we got a message that said "Sorry, you can only change the size of text while reading content." It doesn't say you can change the font setting globally, either.
• How responsive is the keyboard? Turns out, not very responsive. It sometimes takes a second after you type the key for the letter to appear. (Good thing there's no text-messaging app?) Placement of the Delete key is awkward because it's directly above the Enter key, and it's easy to confuse the two.
• What does the connection cost monthly? Nothing. And in case you are curious, the EV-DO service is from Sprint, not Verizon Wireless.
• What happens when you connect your Kindle to a PC or Mac? It goes into USB Drive Mode and shows the contents of the Kindle. Here's what we saw when we plugged in:
Can you transfer documents straight to the device? In our testing, we only got MP3s to show up when we transferred them via USB. PDFs, RTFs, and JPEGs did not appear when we copied them to the Documents folder on the Kindle. But according to the online manual, you should be able to transfer any Kindle-compatiable file via USB.
• How do you convert files? Once you have set up your approved e-mail addresses at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle, you need to send JPEGs, Word docs and other files (but NOT PDFs!) to your Kindle e-mail address from your standard address. But guess what: a SMALL FEE of 10 cents will be applied per e-mail attachment, so careful with that. When we tested, our conversion of one JPEG and one Word doc took about 20 minutes all said and done.
• Can I backup and store the books on my PC? Yes. We downloaded a book, and then copied it to the Mac and deleted it from the Kindle. We checked and it was definitely gone from the Kindle. And when we copied it back over from the Mac, it appeared again. Of course, Amazon recommends deleting books to save room, but downloading them from the cloud when you need them, rather than storing them on your PC. But at an average of 300-400KB, you shouldn't really have a problem storing tons in your personal virtual warehouse.
• Can I read the books stored on my PC? So far, "no," but that could change. The files are in a .azw format and we don't have a .azw reader. Do you? Either way, it's probably an easy thing to cook up for Windows and Macs, so maybe it'll happen. But why would Bezos want you reading his $9.99 downloads on your shiny laptop? There are economic reasons why this might not happen.
• What is the SD card slot for? As far as we can tell, the SD is mainly for extended storage. It is easy to send stuff from the Kindle to SD, but it's not evident how you can move documents off of SD and onto the Kindle.
• What's the deal with the dictionary? Inside the Kindle is the Oxford American Dictionary, but you can only look up words that you run across while reading—you can't just type them in. Also, you can eventually download preferred dictionaries, and select which one you want to be primary.
• Can I browse the web on this thing? Since the EV-DO service is free, we suspected that the answer is "no." But it turns out, you CAN browse the web! Something called "Basic Web" browsing available in the "Experimental" section of the menu, along with "Play Music" and "Ask Kindle NowNow."
• How do graphics look on the web? There are two web modes. Default mode lets you see text but pictures come in tiny and hard to see. Advanced mode displays the web page the way you'd expect on a normal browser, but it cuts off text and is harder to manage.
Default browser mode:
Advanced browser mode:
•How do you play music? The "Play Music" feature is in the Experimental page (Menu>Experimental). So far we can only play MP3s on it, and with no metadata on the screen. The songs just play. AAC was attempted and apparently doesn't work. (You can also click Alt-P to play music when you are in another part of the reader.)
• What file formats are supported? Kindle (.azw), text (.txt), unprotected Mobipocket (.mobi, .prc), Audible (.aa) and MP3 (.mp3).
• How long did it take to search for a particular book? In our test, it took 12 seconds.
• How long was the actual download? The download was nearly instantaneous—there's a bit of sleight-of-hand because when you click "buy," it takes you to the "OK" screen and then after that you go to the home screen to see the list of titles you own (in your Amazon.com Kindle account). By the time we checked the home screen, the book was downloaded. We believe the 60-second statement, but we'll see if we can clock this stuff on average (without going broke!!!).
• What's in the library, aka Kindle Book Store? There are already plenty of books, 90,000 in all, including 101 of the current NYT bestsellers. Don't believe us? See for yourself at the Amazon Kindle Store.
• Will it be available at brick and mortar? Probably not, at least not yet. Bezos only said available at Amazon, and we doubt Barnes & Noble is begging to sell.
• Is the screen really "easy on the eyes"? We say yes. It's definitely mellower than a laptop, though the screen's sharpness isn't as great, so that might bother some people.
• Can you underline text? Not exactly, but you can "highlight" which places a thin box around the text you want to call out, so in a sense, you are doing the same thing. You can also add margin notes to specific passages.
• How does it compare to the Sony Reader? We haven't done a comparison of our own yet, but Gadget Lab did one that you can read here.
Comments
Where can WE see it in person? Are there no plans for it to be carried in brick-and-mortor stores?
Is the screen ready "easy on the eyes?" Can you notice a difference between this and say, a laptop screen? Thanks.
Can you underline text on the Kindle?
Does it have PDF support, can I transfer my own pdf documents to the device? Txt, doc, rtf?
Along the lines of the previous question, how does file conversion work?
If there is pdf support will I be able to transfer it via usb from my computer or will I have to pay amazon to do it for me?
Can the plether cover fold 360' around the back of the unit, or do you need to remove Kindle from the cover in order to hold it with a single hand?
Will EVDO enabled book will also work when traveling internationally? (I live in Canada and I think this product is worth some money if it works here in toronto). Or would I have to drive to border/buffalo to receive daily e-copy of newspaper on it?
Can it display PDFs?
If so, How does it deal with oversized PDFs?
Can it make a raw text file (aka project gutenberg) look acceptable?
Being able to display a PDF and scroll/zoom around a large one... and I'm almost sold. I don't see it happening, though.
There's a volume control in the pics, does it read to you? Audio/video compatible?
does it support color images? (or any images in general?)
How do 2page Pdfs work on the Kindle? Can you zoom in on a pdf?
I love the packaging and the back of it.
At $399.00 it is an expensive tie-in to Amazon.
I would have liked it to work with WiFi too and be able to link up with documents on my home or work wireless network.
That "Heat" book is 336 paperback pages on paper, and the file on the Kindle seems to be 336k, so that's 1k per page for the proprietary format. Interesting.
So how long before people start hacking other EVDO devices to use the Kindle's free internet access?
What's this "experimental" stuff?
Is it not 100% ready to be released? Are retail versions going to have this menu?
Are these firmware updates foreshadowed?
Are any books included on the unit? I believe most e-readers give you "100 free classics" or something to that effect.
Love the idea but how practical is this really?:
- can you sell your downloads? I can sell my books.
- $400 is lot, imagine how many used books I can get for that, not even counting the price of the actual downloads
- Unless you're researching something how many books are you really reading at once, and do you care if you can carry them all?
- 90,000 titles is not a lot. I already struck out on several titles, some of them not so obscure like an Umberto Eco book.
@Abouna: This sounds exactly like the things people were saying with the launch of the iPod and the iTunes store. It's going to take some time (just like the iPod), but I think this is going to take off in a big way.
Imagine you're back in college - easier for some of you younger ones I guess - and you have four classes and a lab today. That's about 50lbs. of text books around $100 each. Is there a plan to tie this into university book stores? How about the refence books frequently refered to by many professions? This has potential beyone recreational reading if the material is made available.
@balloondoggle: The review said it plays mp3's. Read.
How does it compare to the Sony ebook reader?
So I ordered one. I logged in and signed up for Time Magazine trial, it said, your trial period is over, we are charging you NOW,,,
how is that possible, I dont even have the Kindle yet..
So far I have seen no information about this thing's DRM scheme.
-What limitations are imposed on the user? Number of reads and/or length of time?
-Must all your purchases be stored on the unit, or can they be archived on a PC?
-What is the likelihood of losing everything if, say, Amazon decides to pull the plug on the current authentication server? "So sorry, your books are no longer viewable and will be deleted. And no refunds!"
Until the DRM on this thing is exposed and clarified, I will remain very wary.
@astrocramp: i agree how about product comparison and a sizemodo!!
well, at least this thing is aptly named.
Any one know if you can underline/highlight or write in the margins? I'm in law school and I lug around about 25lb of casebooks everyday, so this would be a godsend.
Wait, you can browse the web with no EVDO fees?
That doesn't seem right.
If it is... umm major selling point.
There's a *lot* of information at the Amazon site.
The devide appears to run Linux as there's a .tar download of modified GPL code included.
In fact from the surface this looks suspiciously like the Sony Reader in may respects, so I have to wonder if at least the software has a common source. It at least operates in a very similar manner.
It does *not* appear that you get to use the device for email. Yes, the device has an email address and you can send things like .txt documents to the device via that email, but only from email addresses (or address patterns) that you've authorized (so no $0.10 per spam with attachment, and no spam at all actually).
The license agreement says that the free wireless covers only the store etc. All other uses of the service may be charged, including web browsing. It sounds like at the moment web browsing is free, but if Amazon starts to lose their shirts on data transfer costs with Sprint, they are free to charge anything they like, discontinue the service, etc.
Anyhow, I ordered one to play with and we'll see tomorrow :)
Z.
This will SO be the Commodore 64 in a few years... save your $400 and wait for the cheaper, thinner, larger, brighter, color OLED touch-screen paper...
Once this thing hits a price point of about $100, then it will hit the mainstream. Until then, it's a completely unnecessary luxury. And this is coming from a total gadget lover.
But I am impressed with the quantity of books available on launch.
How's it do in low light condtions, aka a room with a desk or table lamp?
How long does the battery last (real world conditions, not as stated on the site)?
And seconding the University book thing (though I'm almost out ;) )
Too bad it's Sprint EV-DO only, and no wi-fi. Our community of 150,000 for some reason has NO Sprint EV-DO at all, but VZW's already upgraded theirs all to the new higher speed. So basically it's totally useless without Sprint coverage, since there's no way to download it to your PC and transfer; the books on the site are all listed as 'with free wireless delivery to your Kindle'.
LAME.
Cant transfer books from PC to Kindle, no Wi-Fi, no color, its ugly, and no PDF viewing? I agree that if they threw in a couple of those things and cut the price in half this could be a hot product, but I just don't see what is so great about it right now.
What about reading at night? do you attach some kind of light to this thing ?
I do a lot of reading before bed, and currently use a booklight. So if it's not backlit, how exactly do you read in the dark?
@Nijle:
Eink follows the same rules as paper-- it is opaque and cannot be backlit. You need a light to read just like a paper book.
... no .lit support?
Eeeeeeeh.
Needs to be free or very cheap. I don't know why they don't realize this. Charge for it, and it stays a niche product. Give it away, and it becomes pervasive, and you make up the profit in content and ad sales.
I mean, you'r trying to shift a _major_ paradigm here, and you think people will pay to help you do it?
Follow-on question: how is the book pricing? Do I pay less for ebooks since there are no printing and shipping costs and etc.? Shipping you could argue converts to bandwidth costs, but it should be much cheaper to let me download a book than to ship/truck one to me.
I would actually like to see this become a reality, tied into libraries and book stores and all kinds of things, but I hate how they have to try to squeeze _every_ cent out of it, and thus doom it to failure.
Also:
"Kindle also includes free built-in access to the world's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia-Wikipedia.org."
Yay! Now you can carry amateur-authored-and-edited information which is even sometimes possibly true though it may have no citations and is likely to be riddled with unprofessional author bias anywhere you go! Be the worst kind of internet-generation blowhard with ease! Amaze your friends!
What a missed opportunity there: what the hell does Encyclopedia Britannica have on the "keeping up with the future" table today? Paid web access that few people ever use, you say? Hmm...how about we offer reduced-price subscriptions to Kindle users? We get money, and they get our respected, professional knowledge source.
But no, we get Wikipedia.
Am I the only one that's confused by the inclusion of a keyboard? It seems like a waste of space that could better be used for screen real estate or reduced size.
I know you'll need to type in the name of books to download them, but that'll be a fraction of it's usage and it would seem a virtual keyboard would suffice.
The device will fallback to Sprint's 1x wireless speed if EV-DO is not available in your area.
The e-paper displays are completely amazing. If you haven't seen one, go to a Borders or Sony store and look at the Sony reader. Most people will not believe that what they're looking at is not a printed cardboard mock-up until you demonstrate that the text changes when you push a button.
In terms of low-light, etc, it's exactly the same as the printed page in a paperback book. No light is emitted from the screen, it's all external light reflecting off of pigments on the surface of the "page" and so optically it's exactly like ink on paper.
Z.
I'm going to be honest: this is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen. The e-book reader idea as a whole is a fantastic idea. But it needs to JUST read books. It needs to be backlit. And you need to be able to just drag and drop files onto it. This device is such a joke...it's honestly not the iPod Touch off the top of my list for "worst product launch this year." Who the hell wants this thing? If you want to read all sorts of documents, and browse the internet, and read email, you get a LAPTOP. Not a $400 book. I just can't get over how fucking retarded this device is.
i have the sony one, and compared to that, this one looks cumbersome. Plus all that email jazz? I don't need a "book" that hooks me up to the internet. Plugging my reader into the computer and downloading books is much simpler, it would appear. My only problem: not mac compatible.. :(
Edit: The prices for books _do_ appear to be slightly cheaper, but they are listed deceptively: the Kindle listings show the "list" price, then the Kindlebook price, and it looks like huge savings. But who sells books at list? Of course not Amazon, so you have to go look up what Amazon would sell the print edition for, and then compare apples to apples, which reveals the savings to be there, but not huge.
This thing can make books so much easier to buy, which can drive an increase in book sales if you do it right. "Doing it right" includes recognizing the fact that the content can be cheaper since you should end up selling more of it.
I dunno, I tend to be negative, but I just want to find the people responsible, knock their heads together, and remind them that they can do better. I mean, the way we get and read books _will_ shift into an electronic format. These guys need to study the way it happened for the music industry, and learn from the mistakes there, before they just get shut out of the process entirely like we're starting to see with record companies.
WTF? This is like "all apps should be run from the server" argument we heard a few years ago. yes, whoo hoo, ebooks. I know, snazzy NEW development JUST SO they can sell an ebook reader? Um, does it do anything ELSE but let you read ebooks? Can't we all already do that?
This is the perfect example of technology being created for an artifical need.
As if we all need digital photo frames. yeah, I'm going to go out and buy one of those right after I buy of these dumb things.
the designer of this needs to be locked away immediately. we must keep him from spreading his hideous aesthetic any further!
I like the philosophy of Kindle, but not the design or execution. This will be the wave of the future in some respect, whether it will be done via laptop, tablet pc, or Apple Newton I'm not sure, but I do think the Kindle isn't the formfactor to bring it. For starters it's ugly. Apple has spoiled us on design. I understand that you don't want a touch screen for something you'll read, but I would think if only the bottom part were a touch screen, you could do away with the physical keyboard - which, since it's utilized only for searches and wikipedia seems you dont' need to devote so much space to it - and you could do away with the ridiculous button that changes pages. A swipe of the finger across the screen should change the page. I do like the included wireless - for newspaper and blogs this device would be great. But are people so quick to do away with the traditional way of reading novels? I think people enjoy the tradition of buying a book, sitting in a coffee shop, and being able to amass a collection on their bookshelves. With this price it's a moot point, even first adopters like myself won't be convinced.
I'm pretty interested in the EVDO aspect. Free wireless internet? Forever?
@Navin R Johnson:
How did you do that?
Would a OLPC XO be better then this? They sure look nice and have pretty good battery life.
Thoughts?
Amazon, Bezos, et al. Please fix:
No wifi = bad
Charging to move content I OWN OR CREATED = bad (allow conversion on PC & transfer via USB = good)
No PDFs = bad
$400 = bad ($400 with 40 free books = good)
No UI for music playback = bad
Good and intesting but a lot of "political" restrictions and its not yet done. Its needs wifi, a working dictionary, and a bunch of other stuff before i pay 400 dollars.
(Photo Courtesy of Gizmodo) Wilson o'er at the Giz got his paws all over an Amazon Kindle unit today and sets out to answer virtually every question you could possibly have about the device. (Except for maybe what it tastes like.) His take?
Tech Gadgeteers across the web are putting on their thinking caps today and discussing the features of the newest buzzed about gadget: the Amazon Kindle e-Reader.
These should cost as much as a graphing calculator and be a standard device in all schools. I'm amazed that with all the advances today we don't have a reasonably priced E-book reader. 400 Bones? C'mon.
Not that i'm hating on books, but i'm moving across the country and theres no way I can take my whole collection with me. And I shouldn't have to.
I've been wanting, playing with, ebooks for a long time. I've tried to use them on Palms and whatever small devices, but as with anyone who has even tried to knows, looking at a tiny backlit LCD screen screws up your eyes in a minute. Eink solves that problem. However flipping the screen is excruciatingly slow, and not only that, extremely annoying. Even with the latest generation. "Under 1 second" may in theory sound fast, but unless we get something like .02 seconds, its just too slow. The "its the same amount of time to physically flip a page" is asinine. You can literally flip through a book to find stuff as fast as you want. The refreshing of the screen is ridiculously annoying, the page first inverts