fuddam
someone just gave me 50 quid for my birthday specifically towards a kindle. I kinda want to wait, either for price drop (call me cheap) or an improved version. Won't wait forever, of course, but there might be something just around the corner - ?
Ditto here - the thought of being able to move my Dale Brown library into the loft and have them on something I can just pick up and use is very appealing. I've not heard of any Kindle++ rumours, every one seems to be focussed on the Android-based tablet from Amazon, but this is a horse of a different colour - it'll be a LOT more expensive than the Kindle and the battery life won't be a patch on it. Both of these being - imho - good arguments against it being a “disposable” like the Kindle is.
The problem I have with the Kindle is longevity - with a normal book, once you've got it then it's yours for ever and ever and ever … ;)
On the other hand if Amazon decided to drop the Kindle then all the content you bought is gone - "
ha, ha, suckers!! in effect. I used to make very extensive use of eReader.com (later Fictionwise) as they had a great selection of sci-fi (Star Trek Corps of Engineers), and I could get my thrillers 6 months to a year before they arrived in this country. Many happy lunchtimes spent reading a STCE or Ted Bell on my Palm PDA! :)
Unfortunately when Barnes & Noble took over (
a thousand curses on their house) Fictionwise then first most of the thrillers became “US/CA only” then the range started to drop, basically unless you wanted the latest Dan Brown or some vampire novel then you were out of luck. Finally I discovered that there were “problems” with a lot of the titles I'd already got - the eReader software was unable to unlock them or download new copies.
Yep, the bad experience with B&N has soured me on the whole eBook idea. Plus it'd be real nice if I could - for example - buy eBooks from Waterstones to use on a Kindle, but apparently the Adobe format used by Waterstones et al doesn't work on Kindle. Although I guess you could get around that by using a (cheap?) Android tablet because that'll run that Adobe software and Kindle reader. :) Unfortunately the battery life won't approach that of an e-reader (and I'm not convinced that it'll be that easy to read in bright sunlight either).