
Amazon selling remaining Kindle 2 stock for $89 on Black Friday - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/amazon-selling-remaining-kindle-2-stock-for-89-on-black-friday-20101124/
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raganwald
How long before eBook readers are entirely free, supported by subscriptions
and/or sales of media? It seems like they are headed in the direction cell
phones have already taken.

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pierrefar
The thing about mobile/cell phones is that they are subsidized only when there
is a guaranteed subscription, namely the contract. If eBook readers can figure
out a similar guarateed subscription, then yes. Otherwise, I don't see how
they can be 100% subsidized.

Amazon _may_ try to play a game of lifetime value of a Kindle owner and
subsidize based on that. I'm hesitant to think that will work because if the
price point drops to $0 to the consumer then Amazon will attract customers who
will have lower lifetime value and thus end up costing Amazon the difference
between their lifetime value and the cost of the Kindle.

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DavidSJ
Video game consoles are generally subsidized, yet their customers have no
guaranteed video game subscription.

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dfghjkhgbfd
But only a little bit - they are still sold for $200-$300 so you are selecting
users who are likely to go out and buy games. If you gave away XBox/PS3 for
free the vast majority of users would just use them fro playing dvd/blueray or
browsing - not enough people would buy ninja-killer-car-stealer-gold edition
for $60 to pay them back.

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miles
The Kindle 3 web browser (based on WebKit) is _much_ more capable than the
Kindle 2's, opening up all sorts of possibilities (like SSH access via
shellinabox:
[http://tinyapps.org/blog/eink/201009300700_kindle_text_editi...](http://tinyapps.org/blog/eink/201009300700_kindle_text_editing.html)
)

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derwiki
Now I can ssh from my Kindle. miles++

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tetsuo13
Funny that the third and forth octets of the IP address shown in the Kindle
screen shots are obstructed given that the IP begins with 192.168.

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miles
I'd rather not give away _too_ much info about my internal network (though
you're welcome to the first two octets ;-) Even non-routable IP address info
can be useful under some circumstances. Probably should've just blanked out
the whole thing.

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krschultz
Good deal, but I prefer the larger screen for textbooks/reference material
which is where you get the most use out of the Kindle. Paperbacks I generally
get at the library or used book stores for a buck, reference books I buy and
keep.

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varjag
Kindle doesn't seem to be that well suited to references to me. It's not a
kind of reader where you can quickly flip pages back and forth.

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krschultz
Interesting point, I was going on the fact that I keep a lot of mechanical
engineering books for the tables in the back of various material properties,
and having a kindle instead of a 6 testbooks would be physically so much
smaller on my bookshelf, but for actual content the kindle might not be the
best choice.

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trickjarrett
I'm still planning to get a Nook, mainly because it is more open to non-Amazon
books. The ability to put my own ebooks on there is very inviting.

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blhack
This seems like a pretty common misconception about the kindle. I've never
come across a book I couldn't read on my kindle. Just give it plain text and
it's happy.

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hugh3
Isn't there an issue with not being able to read .epub format though?

I have a nook which I use exclusively for reading out-of-copyright epubs. I
can't complain about it.

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steve19
Calibre,is an open source ebook management app that allows converting to and
from many different formats including epub and mobi (Kindle).

<http://calibre-ebook.com/>

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Tichy
I never had a kindle before, but this sounds like a rather bad deal. I mean,
for how much could they sell the Kindle 2 now on a normal day?

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jonhendry
It's not that bad, since the Kindle 2 doesn't have any compatibility
limitations compared to the Kindle 3.

It's not like Amazon has moved to a format that is Kindle 3-only. The K2 can
access all the same media, and ebooks released in 2011 won't strain the K2 CPU
any more than ebooks released in 2009. It just has a somewhat lower-contrast
screen and a little less storage (which is not a big problem given the small
size of ebooks.)

ie, it's not like buying an original XBox after the release of the 360.

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moskie
Man, I just had my Kindle 2 stolen last month. (Well, I left it on a plane,
but someone did take it and purchase stuff).

This is tempting.

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greendot
I hope the DX will drop in price too.

