

Amazon drops price on their Kindle 2 to $299 - kirse
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI?ie=UTF8&tag=f033-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00154JDAI

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leviathant
Yarr, smooth use of an affiliate tag there, kirse.

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jraines
I guess you're not being critical, but I'm going to defend kirse anyway.

I think it's disingenuous to use affiliate links if someone said, "Hey, where
can I buy a Kindle?" or "what's the best ebook reader I can buy online?". But
in this case, if you saw this link and said "Oh crap! This is news to me and
I've been waiting for a price drop" . . . then by all means kirse deserves an
affiliate payout.

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leviathant
Hmm. Getting sidetracked, but how is it disingenuous to use your affiliate
link when someone asks you where to buy a Kindle? They're only available on
Amazon, and it doesn't raise the price at all if they buy through an affiliate
link.

In my opinion, lines are crossed when you suggest a less than optimal
solution/link because it'll earn you more money. For example - on my NIN site,
when an album becomes available for pre-sale, I list each vendor that we find
along with their price, even if they're selling it cheaper than Amazon. If I
were to ONLY suggest Amazon for pre-orders when I knew better deals were to be
had, that's where I feel one starts losing ethics points.

I think the bottom line, for a site like HN, or a message board, or anything
like that -- it's up to the owner/administrator of the site. I don't know how
much work goes into the administration of HN, but the content is almost
entirely crowdsourced. Were it my site, I'd probably strip (but not replace)
all affiliate code from links, but I don't really think it's unethical to have
posted that to HN with a link. Were it me, I'd have commented in the interest
of full disclosure.

And that's pretty much all I was doing with my first post - disclosing
something that may be of interest to readers here :)

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jraines
yeah, Kindle's not a good example -- I was lazy to use that.

I just wanted to comment mainly because I always see people going way out of
their way to disclose affiliate links (and conversely -- people pouncing on
undisclosed ones like they've found a witch) and I always think "do people
really get so offended by them?". But yeah, I totally agree that it's wrong to
recommend a sub-optimal product b/c you're an affiliate.

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yan
I so hope they lower the DX next.

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jli
i would buy it immediately if is supported chinese

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rbanffy
I would buy immediately if it supported GSM networks (or, at least, wi-fi)

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potatolicious
Why? The EV-DO modem is plenty fast and requires no user intervention
whatsoever. WiFi in this case would simply add more user configuration with
negligible benefits (you're downloading BOOKS, not YouTube videos).

And why would GSM/CDMA matter at all? It's not as if you're paying for the
service...

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rdl
GSM would allow it to be used in markets without EVDO, although Amazon would
need to figure out some kind of roaming agreement, flatrate data pricing, etc.

I use my Kindles (K1 and DX, I've seen other people with K2...I'll probably
buy one myself for completeness) here in Afghanistan, and am probably going to
set up a semi-pirate 1xRTT network, as USB gets old fast. The K1 only does
EVDO (for which BTS gear is expensive), but the K2/DX do 1xRTT, so you can
hack firmware on some of the consumer femtocells to remove GPS checks or spoof
GPS.

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rbanffy
Amazon doesn't need to figure out any roaming deals. i have my own country-
wide (and Brazil is pretty wide) data plan and adding one more device would be
trivial.

As for the wi-fi, I have a big library sitting on my network and it would not
fit in a Kindle.

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pclark
just launch in UK

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ntoshev
In the rest of the world too. Just allow me to put my own data SIM in it.

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rbanffy
And, while we are at it, please include some wi-fi in the bundle. It's a shame
to market it to students and not letting them use on-campus wi-fi data links.
3G when there is a wifi link available seems such a waste of spectrum...

