| bentl1 |
04-22-2008 09:27 AM |
Waste of cash
This "thing" is a tremendous waste of your cash. The problem comes from several different areas. 1) Poor ergonomic design, you hit buttons when you don't want too. This happens even while you're just holding it. 2) Battery powered .... Despite the power saving they claim, it still uses batteries and under heavy use (such a fast reader) the batteries discharge faster than you might imagine. 3) Expensive books!! Why, when this is the worlds cheapest way to disseminate books, are they so expensive? They should no more than a buck or two for ANY book ... any more than that and you should just buy the "paper" book. In fact many of the books they have can be purchased cheaper form a local store. 4) Lack of titles ... There just aren't many books .... period. 5) Waaay too expensive!! If you add up the cost of what this thing costs to build it should be well under a hundred bucks. Mass produced, probably under fifty dollars. At $400 it's just a ridiculous curiosity. 6) Proprietary format ... you paid for the ebook, why can't you read it on your computer or what ever you want? You're locked in to a format that is very probably going to be a dead item shortly and the only way to access it is on a unit with absolutely no universal support. This Amazon approach comes at a time when DRM is dying a quick death, so why own a perishable item (ebook) that can't be viewed on alternate sources? It's astoundingly short sighted that the Kindle has so many flaws, despite knowing what has caused other readers to fail. This is probably the worst new product of 2008.
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