

Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Locked Up: Why Your Books Are No Longer Yours - wave
http://gizmodo.com/369235/amazon-kindle-and-sony-reader-locked-up-why-your-books-are-no-longer-yours

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procrastitron
I think the problems with both readers is a symptom of the respective
companies loosing focus on their target markets. These specific products are
trying to satisfy too many industries at once. Instead of trying to address
publishers, distribution, and customers all at once; these companies should
have focused on doing one thing and doing it well.

A simple book reader that just handled pdf files and was priced competitively
to books (less than $100), would stand on it's own. However, being priced at
>$400 means that these products have to solve many problems at once
(availability, distribution, and hardware), and if they don't do all three
well, then they will fail.

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iamdave
I'm still looking for the point in these ebook readers. Isn't that why I have
my laptop? Or if I'm on a short bus ride and I don't want to wait for it to
boot up, press the little power button on my PDA, and navigate to the file
that way?

What am I missing here? It really looks like a piece of technology that (like
I've said before) was produced simply because someone wanted to make the next
step before it was practical to do so.

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jyu
Have you actually tried using one? I don't know about the Kindle, but Sony
Reader is pretty useful. It lasts weeks due to e-ink unlike PDA or notebook.
Reading books from a smart phone or PDA is difficult because of screen size /
font limitations. This is great for readers that commute via MTA, or people
that fly a lot.

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iamdave
I honestly haven't, but I haven't had problems reading on my PDA before, but
at the same time I don't need another accessory that can do the same thing as
any other of my utilities.

To each his own

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omarseyal
for anyone who cares here's the tumblr for one of the authors of the article -
<http://caffeinated.tumblr.com/>

