Kindle Review

In a scathing (yet hilarious) review of the Kindle, Robert Scoble - a former technical evangelist at Microsoft - states the following:

1. I want to meet the guy who designed the thing, and I want to beat the crap out of him.
2. It’s obvious they did not think about how the device was going to be used.
3. Amazon is a “cheap-ass company”.
4. In conclusion, “It really sucks.”

I take it he doesn’t like the Kindle device, fundamentally I think he is wrong, Kindle can be a success and whilst the Kindle does have its flaws, it certainly is not going to be a failure. Here are the 6 major criticisms of the Kindle Scoble cites;

1. No ability to buy paper goods from Amazon through Kindle.
2. Usability sucks. They didn’t think about how people would hold this device.
3. UI sucks. Menus? Did they hire some out-of-work Microsoft employees?
4. No ability to send electronic goods to anyone else. I know Mike Arrington has one. I wanted to send him a gift through this of Alan Greenspan’s new book. I couldn’t. That’s lame.
5. No social network. Why don’t I have a list of all my friends who also have Kindles and let them see what I’m reading?
6. No touch screen. The iPhone has taught everyone that I’ve shown this to that screens are meant to be touched. Yet we’re stuck with a silly navigation system because the screen isn’t touchable.

Now as far as I can tell, Scoble has 3 problems with the Kindle - Social Networking, eCommerce, and Usability. The usability seems fine to me on the Kindle, it takes about 30 seconds to figure out how to use the device and then it becomes second nature and most reviews have had a similar experience. In my opinion social networking has no place in a eBook device so that’s a moot point, however the ability to share your profile for thing like a book club might be something worth looking into. And finally eCommerce, the Kindle is a eBooks reader, not a supermarket! who wants to buy a toaster or mountain bike through a Kindle? I certainly don’t want to, I want to buy books and read on my Kindle. If I want to buy anything else, I will log into Amazon.com and purchase my goods that way. However, Scoble does have some valid points so the review is watching even if it it just to watch Scoble lose it.

You can check out the Videos here:

Amazon Kindle video #1. Unboxing.
Amazon Kindle video #2. Kindle first use.
Amazon Kindle video #3. Walking around with Kindle.
Amazon Kindle video #4. Mike Arrington on Kindle.
Amazon Kindle video #5. Books vs. Kindle
Amazon Kindle video #6. Me being a total jerk to Amazon.
Amazon Kindle video #7 (Interview at SF State University).

Source: Scobleizer

AppleInsider have just received their Amazon Kindle device and have uploaded an in-depth review of the Kindle along with some very high quality images of the unboxing process.

AppleInsider have done a good job with the unboxing process, unlike most unboxing pictures out there, AppleInsider have taken very high quality images, which are well lit. Good job from the guys at AppleInsider!

When I said earlier that the review was in-depth, I wasn’t kidding, the review is spread out over 5 pages and covers just about everything you can think of! here is an expert of the review where they are talking about the interface and navigation:

The biggest problem for E Ink is that it can’t redraw rapidly enough to support animation such as a mouse cursor or smooth page scrolling. Kindle attempts to work around this limitation using a scroll wheel to navigate between options on the page

Dialing a small roller up and down animates a silvery block cursor in an independent track that uses its own display that can update rapidly (above). This navigation track allows the user to select between options presented on a page, or to select a line of text which might include multiple hyperlinks within it. Once selected, a push down on the roller brings up a menu, typically including options to:

• select from one of the hyperlinks in the selected line.
• lookup a word in the selected line.
• jump to the Home page.
• visit the Kindle Store shopping page.
• navigate within the existing document to its front page, table of contents, a specific location, a sections listing, or user specified bookmarks.
• add notes to a document, highlight a selection, and access earlier notes.
• create bookmarks.
• save a selected page as a digital text clipping that can be output to a computer.

The right and left edges of the unit each have two large buttons: next and previous page buttons on the left, and next page and “back” buttons on the right. It seems logical that “back” and “previous page” would do the same thing, but that is not always the case. Sometimes back returns to a previous section, for example. It isn’t consistent enough to really be intuitive or predictable, however.

There is also a full keypad below the screen for entering text, along with alt, symbol, and search function keys and a button that brings up a menu to change the text display size used when reading a document. Between the E Ink display and the roller wheel cursor track, it’s quite easy and usually intuitive to figure out how to navigate around, but the slow page refresh is a significant problem that severely taxes navigation speed, as every menu presented involves a flash and a pause.

If your thinking of purchasing a Kindle, but are still unsure then you might want to check this review out, the review answers many questions about the Kindle device, Kindle accessories, the service and what Kindle is like to use every day.

Source: AppleInsider Unboxing Pictures
Source: Review: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5

The guys over at Macworld.com have reviewed the Kindle and they deliver a shocking verdict… it is revolutionary!

For those out there who are lucky enough to own a Kindle, it’s not really that surprising of a conclusion. It has literally changed the way we will consume our content in the future. All you have to do is read the many hundreds of blog posts about Kindle praising it and commenting on how it is the future, yet it has consistently been shunned by the main stream media as a gimmick or just an expensive toy. That is until someone actually goes out and review the thing and find out it is pretty darn good!

So lets just skim over some of the points made in the Macworld article on why Amazon’s Kindle will be a success.

1. Some Kindle owners will buy one to replace their paper books and magazines.
2. Fast, free broadly distributed wireless.
3. No PC required.
4. Option to sync up to a PC and manage your books from anywhere in the world.
5. $9.99 price tag for e-books which means you can buy more books.
6. Access Amazon.com and the Web to search Wikipedia via it’s free wireless connection.
7. Access to an experimental and free service called Kindle NowNow
8. Subscribe to RSS feeds.
9. Morning papers delivered before to your Kindle you wake up
10. Free PDF-to-Word converter.

If you want to read the full article then you can head over to Macworld.com and have a read.

Whilst browsing around the net looking for Kindle related news to bring to you guys I stumbled upon Pocketnow.com. The guys over there have uploaded a very good, in-depth video review of the Kindle, I thought I would share it with you guys on this blog. Now the videos are quite in-depth, and they are spread out over 4 video each one covering a different aspect of the Kindle device. The videos go into a lot of detail on how the device works and what it is like to use every day. So if you are interested in buying a Kindle in the near future I would highly recommend these videos as they will give you a flavour of what you can expect when you own a Kindle device.

Part 1

Talks about the carrying case of the Kindle, then give a tour of the hardware features of the device.

Part 2

Talks about the reading experience of the Kindle, and show off the electrophoretic display (aka E-Ink).

Part 3

Go over using the Kindle store and viewing Wikipedia.

Part 4

Covers viewing a newspaper with the Kindle, and go over a few experimental features that you can use on the device.

Source : Pocketnow.com Amazon Kindle Video Review

It appears that things are not well over at AllThingsD. Walt Mossberg, who is the principal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, reviewed Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader last month. Now this was surprising slow out of the gate for Mossberg so what happened? First lets see what Walt had to say about this Amazon Kindle first.

Mossberg in his review called the Kindle “mediocre” and “marred by annoying flaws” he even goes as far as saying “It is bigger and clunkier to use than the Sony Reader, whose second version has just come out at $300″. In his video review he also says there are too many flaws to list. You can watch the video of Walt Mossberg’s review of the Amazon Kindle at the end of this post. However he does also say in his review that Amazon hit the nail on the head with the shopping experience, which is hardly surprising seeing as Amazon.com is the largest bookstore in the world. All in all its seems that Mossberg is impressed with the idea and the online shopping expirience Amazon have created, but is not impressed by the device itself saying it is too big and clunky.

However, recently news came out from another tech columnist that Mossberg “was only interested in reviewing it if he could be first. When Steven Levy got it first Walt threw a tantrum.”. Wow, Steven Levy is a Newsweek tech reviewer who reviewed the Kindle a whole week before Walt. Steven Levy and David Pogue of the New York Times (Who was also amongst the first to review the iPhone) both got exclusive reviews, they also happened to gave the Kindle glowing reviews.

If that doesn’t make you wonder where his mind was at the time of the review, Mossberg also gives three iPod shout-outs in the first two paragraphs, too bad it wants a review for the iPod. C’mon Walt, we know you are getting old, but try to focus on the job in hand!

As promised, here is the video review;