

Amazon: New Kindles Selling at Record Rates - charlief
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/amazon-new-kindles-selling-at-record-rates/

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rbranson
Ah, the psychology of price points. Let us all take note of this when we
decide how to price our products and/or services. People are now perceiving
that the value that this device delivers is significantly higher than it's
price.

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petercooper
Amongst my group, I'm known for my near hatred of Amazon's Kindle (not the
ecosystem or apps, just the devices) due to their shoddy typography, but even
I've caved and ordered one of the new ones. They're cheap enough now that, I
think, anyone involved in writing/publishing needs to keep a good eye on what
Amazon's up to. For writers, the Kindle (ecosystem) is rapidly looking like it
could become their equivalent of the App Store.

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brk
I love my Kindle.

Not because it's the best, prettist, most elegant way to consume books, but
because it's the best, prettiest, most elegant way for ME to consume books,
based on the currently available options.

I find myself reading more since I've gotten my Kindle, and for the price
point, if I decide in a year that I DON'T like it, it's not a major loss (plus
has some decent residual value).

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tghw
I completely agree with this. I'm also reading more, which in and of itself
makes it worth having. I recently went on a trip to Europe, and the free 3G
was invaluable, since we didn't always have a good source of internet.

It's getting to the point that, were I to have to choose between losing my
iPhone and losing the Kindle, I'd rather lose the iPhone, even though it costs
3 times as much to replace. It makes me that irrationally happy.

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jemfinch
I just wish flight attendants would stop making me turn it off for takeoff and
landing.

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MichaelSalib
Yeah, but remember, your Kindle is a much bigger threat to the navigation
system than the 30 or 40 cell phones in people's pockets that they forgot to
turn off. Plus, reading a Kindle might distract you in an emergency, which is
why they don't let anyone read books or magazines during takeoff and landing
either.

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lallysingh
I was under the impression that the cell phone shutoff was to prevent the
towers from freaking out about dozens of phones coming in & out of range at
650mph+.

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PidGin128
I was under the impression that towers had some type of signal baffle to
prevent reception from devices a certain number of degrees from the horizon.

I have no merit or citation to exert with this claim.

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pmjordan
I'm curious how well the Kindle renders tech/scientific books, with graphs,
diagrams and formulae. I'd imagine the larger form factor of most printed
technical books compared to fiction paperbacks to be an issue. I'd assume the
10" version does better than the smaller one.

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MichaelSalib
I was just speaking to a friend of mine who is a EE/physicist who had just
returned a Kindle DX two days ago. He got it specifically to read IEEE journal
papers and found that it was unacceptable. His specific beef wasn't with the
e-ink or the e-ink page turn speed but rather with the huge delay spent
processing PDFs when you turned pages. In other words, page turn delays were
no problem when reading a text only document, but when reading a PDF, they
were really long, presumably because of the slow processor and an
unwillingness to pre-rasterize pages.

I love my kindle, but for technical documents, I just print them out.

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pmjordan
Interesting, thanks. As far as I can tell, it's possible to convert PDFs to
the Kindle's native format, any idea if this improves the situation?

I've noticed the PDF delay on the iPad as well, although it's not sufficient
to bother me. I'm reluctant to use the illuminated screen for extended periods
of reading though, especially in the evening.

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kroger
"Interesting, thanks. As far as I can tell, it's possible to convert PDFs to
the Kindle's native format, any idea if this improves the situation?"

Yes. I use mobipocket creator [1] to convert pdf files to the mobi format.
It's free and works pretty well for documents with one column. For papers with
multiple columns (like those from journals) I use papercrop [2] to slice the
pdf in smaller parts so I can read in my (non-dx) kindle 2.

[1]
[http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscrea...](http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscreator.asp)

[2] <http://code.google.com/p/papercrop/>

edit: small fixes

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MichaelSalib
Papercrop looks really intersting...does it store text as text within the
output PDF or does it just convert chunks of the page to an image?

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kroger
It just convert the chunks to an image (the final format is a PDF as well).
The result is a little bit hacky, but it works. If your goal is to catch up
with your reading pile, so it may work for you. On the other hand, if you
need/want to go over every single detail (tables, formulas, etc), it may not
work so well. As usual, YMMV.

[Actually, mobipocket creator seems to be not too bad at converting multi-
column documents. The problems I had converting academic papers were tables
and math, and not the fact they had more than one column]

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zsouthboy
Will someone please release an API so I can write a printer driver and we can
print directly to our ebook readers already?

The APIs that have been available so far (AFAIK - someone please correct me)
for any of the readers have been lackluster.

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tvon
Some records are easier to break than others.

Of course, if I read more I'd probably have one by now, at $190 for the free
3G model it's very tempting.

Relatedly, has anything come of the SDK?

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brk
_Relatedly, has anything come of the SDK?_

Two apps that I'm aware of, a hangman app and a "find the words you can make
out of this random block of characters". Nothing too ground breaking, but it's
gotten me thinking about some reader-centric style apps, including things that
pull references or quotes from a users' Kindle library.

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ableal
Not available worldwide, by the way. URLs:

<http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93450>

<http://www.kindlepost.com/2010/08/free-games-on-kindle.html>

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P37FW0>

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P38AAG>

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johndoe77
Having ordered several weeks ago, I am anxiously awaiting it's arrival. The
wifi only version was a nice move and the price point is really attractive.

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listic
I wonder why they still don't sell to Russia and over 100 other countries.
Copyright issues?

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MarkSweep
Setting up Whispernet with local cell providers would also probably be a
bottleneck.

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robryan
Would be interesting to know whether Amazon is outselling Apple for eBooks on
the iPad.

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jgerman
I'd probably bet that they are. I use the iPad exclusively for my eBooks and
80-90% of my non-free books are on through the Kindle app.

Exact same situation with my wife as well as a few others we know.

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ataggart
Primary reason I haven't purchased a kindle: no way to lock the page
orientation. I borrowed one from a friend and tried reading on the beach; the
damn thing kept flipping around so I couldn't read it. Such a trivial thing to
add, but lacking in the iphone as well.

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blehn
I'm assuming you were using a Kindle DX (the others don't auto-rotate). But
anyway, you can lock the orientation:

[http://thekindle.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/screenrotationd...](http://thekindle.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/screenrotationdx.jpg?w=299&h=210)

