
The 10 Biggest Surprises about Amazon’s New Kindles - ditados
http://www.beyond-black-friday.com/2011/10/02/the-10-biggest-surprises-about-amazons-new-kindles/
======
nodata
This article seems unnecessarily negative. The kindle is a book reader and a
book reader only, and at that it works very very well.

Point by point:

> 1\. There’s No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)+

It's a book reader.

> 2\. Power Adapters Not Included

It comes with a usb cable. I think everyone can charge a usb device nowadays.
If you can't, then the official power adaptor is ten bucks.

> 3\. One Miserable Keyboard

It's a book reader.

Still, if you really want a keyboard, they sell that too.

> 4\. Your Personal Documents are now Stored at Amazon.com

They always went through Amazon's servers anyway. You can delete them.

> 5\. Amazon Prime not Included

Why _would_ this be included?

~~~
bryanlarsen
I disagree. His 5 positive points sounded pretty gushing and made it obvious
to me that he's definitely a fan.

The negative points may seem surprising at first glance, but I think all 5
points are informative.

> > 1\. There’s No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)+

> It's a book reader.

Previous kindles included it, so even I expected it.

> > 2\. Power Adapters Not Included

> It comes with a usb cable. I think everyone can charge a usb device
> nowadays. If you can't, then the official power adaptor is ten bucks.

Virtually every other piece of consumer electronics comes with a power
adapter. This is surprising.

> > 3\. One Miserable Keyboard

> It's a book reader. Still, if you really want a keyboard, they sell that
> too.

The point isn't that the keyboard is bad, the point is that the keyboard is
excruciatingly bad.

> > 4\. Your Personal Documents are now Stored at Amazon.com

> They always went through Amazon's servers anyway. You can delete them.

Still a good point to mention to NEW kindle buyers, though.

> > 5\. Amazon Prime not Included

> Why would this be included?

Because most of the rumours before the announcement said that it would be.

~~~
innes
> The point isn't that the keyboard is bad, the point is that the keyboard is
> excruciatingly bad.

You're talking about a device with a D-pad, and no touch screen. That's how
keyboards work on such devices. It being bad isn't unexpected or noteworthy.

~~~
fr0sty
EDIT: got confused between "Kindle" and "Kindle Touch". To me it is obvious
that "Kindle" has no touch screen and that keyboard input must be via the
D-pad. Consequently I assumed the complaint re:keyboard not being touch would
apply to a product that actually had a touchscreen.

In short: I agree with my parent comment. neither unexpected or noteworthy.

------
lambada
"Apple’s iPad only recently got its own version of Flash," This is news to me,
did I miss an announcement somewhere? I thought the iPad was still as Flash-
less as ever.

~~~
josephb
Yes the iPad is still without a flash viewer.

The recently released Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 will stream to iOS devices
by delivering an HTML5 rendering from my understanding of their press release.

------
fr0sty
EDIT: Mea Culpa. The article was complaining that the "Kindle" (non-touch)
didn't have a touchscreen and had the tedious d-pad interface instead. That
revelation doesn't bother me at all (and hardly is a revelation.

Original post follows:

It is called the "Kindle _Touch_ ".

It is advertised thus: "now with _multi-touch_ ".

Their longer blurb says this: "Simple To Use _Touchscreen_ Kindle Touch
features an easy-to-use touch interface. Turn pages, search, shop books and
take notes quickly and easily."

To learn now that the "touch" screen borders on being useless and that amazon
has a very poor concept of "quick and easy" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

~~~
mds
The article was talking about the $79 Kindle not the Kindle Touch for the
keyboard point. Not sure why they'd expect the non-touch kindle to have a
touch keyboard..

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piinbinary
The article says, "There’s No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)" - I was
under the impression that the Kindle Fire didn't have 3G connectivity. Am I
missing something?

~~~
rpledge
Yeah, this article is pretty poorly researched. Considering how much press the
Kindles got it's kind of inexcusable.

------
saturdaysaint
I bought the $79 model hoping that the %30 weight decrease (compared to 3rd
gen Kindle) would make it easier to handle with one hand. This seems like an
obvious use case to me that would make it more comfortable to say, read in bed
or read with a cup of coffee. So I'm disappointed that the button placement
still makes page turning a two-handed affair. The page turn buttons are so
tiny that one handed reading requires an awkward position.

I'm pretty jealous of the new Nook, which looks easy to handle with one hand.
Amazon does a lot of things really well, but they still seem to be figuring
out hardware.

------
cleverjake
Wow, the lack of 3g support completely kills the interest in the device for
me. I always assumed that it was unsustainable, but I at least expected a
mention of the removal of the feature outside of a support forum.

~~~
mbesto
Just so you read it right they say specifically - no 3G support for the
standard Kindle _Web Browser_. I've had my kindle for a year now and have
never used the (experimental) web browser.

~~~
cleverjake
I, on the other hand, use it some what regularly, which is why I am not happy
about this change.

------
fr0sty
After thinking about this some more I think there is a massive communication
failure here. Lots of unreasonable expectations and plenty of misinformation
and not only in this article but by other poster (including myself). I'll try
to clear things up:

1\. "Kindle Touch" has a touch screen "Kindle" does not.

2\. "Kindle Fire" never had 3G.

3\. Newer Kindle 3Gs will not support free 3G web browsing (except for
Wikipedia)

------
jonnathanson
If Amazon is actually selling the Fire for a loss, how is that a "surprise"?
Amazon isn't a hardware company. Its hardware is all about building a delivery
infrastructure for its content sales: books, movies, TV, music, etc. (This is
sort of like Apple in reverse; Apple uses content to sell hardware).

Obviously Amazon expects to monetize the heck out of each Kindle customer,
over a lengthy user lifetime, on content sales _to_ the Kindle. So building a
Kindle userbase through cheap, subsidized Kindles is a no brainer.

The Fire isn't competing with the iPad; it's competing with Netflix. To that
end, I am a bit surprised to see a Netflix app on the Fire. At the same time,
Amazon probably realized that millions of Netflix customers would need the
Netflix app in order to justify using the Fire as a media tablet. Once they've
got the customers using Netflix on the Fire, they'll try to find a way to make
their media downloads more attractive and less cumbersome than the Netflix
app.

------
ctdonath
Having been long curious about the "free Kindle" prediction (we still haven't
reached November '11 yet!), I smiled at this point:

"4. One Special Offer Can Pay for the Cost of a Kindle. Amazon knows customers
don’t necessarily want ads on their Kindle but they’ve worked hard to line up
some very attractive offers. '[S]pending $114 on the Kindle saved me 20
percent on buying a new Apple MacBook Air', reported one finance columnist, 'a
savings of $200." He notes there’s been other discounts which exceed the
original price of a Kindle with Special Offers, including a 20% discount on
new LCD television screens.'"

Anyone got more info on that MBA discount? Might just have to get me a Kindle,
being in the market for an Air...

------
wazoox
I'm the happy owner of a Nook Color, and it comes with Flash in its web
browser. Guess what, I'd rather do without it: it makes the very snappy
browser crawls, and it's used almost only to display ads. OK, it can render
low-res videos but that's about it. Hardly a selling point to me -- actually
Apple was right on this, Flash is a pain for mobile browsing, the quicker it
dies the better.

------
nagrom
I'm surprised that the 'special offers' are so good. I had never considered
buying the ad-supported version, but the offers referenced seem pretty good.

As an aside, the light-grey text on white background made that article very
difficult to read.

~~~
dangrossman
I'm often envious of the Kindle Special Offers I see pop up on deal sites
every so often... things like $20 Amazon gift card for $10 that I would
definitely take advantage of.

~~~
rufo
A friend of mine has a Kindle w/Special Offers. He actually bought two, having
lost one on an airplane. Apparently the special offers were good enough that
he easily paid for both.

At this point, I'm wishing I could _opt in_ my Kindle 3.

~~~
latch
A sale doesn't save you money if you weren't planning on buying it in the
first place.

~~~
dangrossman
This is true, but since Amazon sells a larger variety of products than any
retail store in the world, you can easily buy from them things you already
would have. I have a free Amazon Prime account and regularly get Amazon gift
cards from reward programs and other things, so buy everything I can at
Amazon, from toilet paper to cereal to tools...

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revertts
I stopped reading at: There’s No 3G Web Browsing (except on Kindle Fire)

Kindle Fire doesn't even have 3G. They probably should've spent more time
researching first.

~~~
binaryorganic
Seriously! I kept reading, but when the first line gets it SO wrong (and then
doesn't even mention the Fire in the text under that heading) you can be
skeptical from then on.

