Although I find the Amazon Kindle
However, I think its a brilliant concept, and I knew it would be successful and spawn much better models down the line - and that is exactly what is happening this fall.
According to analysts, the new Kindle 2.0 is thinner, lighter, has a better screen, a better interface, better controls - but most importantly, its more *sexy*, like an iPhone - sex appeal was the #1 missing factor in Kindle 1.0. As a bonus, the price is coming down to under $300.
Although Amazon is not releasing exact figures, most analysts have predicted they have sold about 300,000 Kindles, and are looking at revenues of $100M+/yr based on unit, media, and vertical sales (you can download and buy ebooks wirelessly in about 2 min, plus you can buy anything on Amazon from the device).
In addition, a second Kindle is being launched in an 8.5×11″ form factor, designed more for textbooks, which are more likely to include advanced illustrations, tables, graphs, and figures which presumably need the bigger screen.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to go to college with a Kindle instead of textbooks. I probably had 30 or so books to buy a semester, weighing a total of 20 lbs. Half I would need to buy at one campus bookstore, the others were only available at the other bookstore on the other side of campus. Of course in the beginning of the semester at least 10% of your books would not be in stock, so you would have to revisit the stores to get them. Also inevitable was the 10% of books on the course’s list that the professor ‘never got around to’. Then you would have drag them back to the bookstore at the end of the year to get some really disappointing news on their resale value.
How about clicking your professor’s Amazon reading list link from his Facebook page - while in class - and having all of the books downloaded onto your Kindle instantly? In your knapsack, just a notebook computer, a Kindle, and your iPhone. Bliss.
5 responses so far ↓
1 patty // Aug 28, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Congratulations on your Stamford Times appearance!
2 manager mom // Aug 30, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Ditto patty. And, I am not down with the Kindle yet… I still need to thumb pages… but I keep hearing great things.
3 Chris (Admin) // Sep 1, 2008 at 2:53 pm
thanks guys - btw, i hear now that this Kindle isnt coming out this year after all
4 Lynne // Nov 29, 2008 at 7:50 pm
When my mother was in the Med. Center for over a week, I just breezed in and used my Kindle to read children’s books, check stock prices, check MSNBC and BBC news, and read the current book. There was no need to turn on TV. It was a quiet floor, and I enjoyed the Kindle so much. You shouldn’t wait. Amazon sends out their own “news.” Blogs are available. I could read a mag or a paper, and it was a blessing. I am always trying a sample of a Kindle book, and I find something to read before the last one I was reading. It’s like an old night of radio drama when I was a kid. I can read some of one book and then the other. I have 3 versions of the Bible, and I keep finding that the Kindle may be the cheapest way to get a bestseller. On some old old books, it’s really cheap, but to buy the used book, would be expensive. Case in point is an old book about Lincoln that was $.99 for both files and about $42 dollars for each used book. Abraham Lincoln, a biography by John Morse both in a single file. It’s so nice to have a choice. You don’t really know what’s available until you let your interests lead you.
5 Happy First Birthday StationStops.com! | StationStops // Dec 5, 2008 at 1:15 am
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