Amazon launch Kindle reading device

[TiG]

I don't know how anyone can possible deal with reading a book on something like this?. I can't proof read on the screen, I have to print and read on paper. As for reading the whole ability to just pick up and read, turn the corner of the page you are on.

Its much more of a tangable thing to be doing, I just don't like this whole e-book idea full stop.

TiG

[Funkstar]

Its much more of a tangable thing to be doing, I just don't like this whole e-book idea full stop.

Well said.

These things aren't Intrinsicaly Safe or EX rated (explosion proof), so I can't read them while in the middle of the process module on an oil platform. I can read some paper though

[charleski]

My thoughts on the Kindle:
1) WOW it's ugly
2) Anyone who trusts Amazon to store their e-book purchases on their servers is just stupid. Amazon deleted the e-bookshelves of all their customers before, and they can do it again. Earlier this year Google deleted the viewing rights of everyone who'd bought video material through them. I love buying books, I don't love waking up one day and finding that my library has vanished. If Amazon makes the $9.99 price stick (and if that translates into £5 over here) for new first-run hardbacks, then I'd accept that for a DRM'd book that I can't transfer, lend or give away, but I won't if it just turns out to be a rental that only lasts however long Bezos decides to keep the servers running.
3) Thumb pad?? Maybe it's just because I grew up on library books and was imbued with the idea that writing in a book was a deadly sin, and kept all my own childhood books pristine so that my Dad could chuck them all out without warning when I went off to university. A thumb pad is a great idea for technical docs that you need to comment on or annotate for your own purposes. Oh, but wait, those are all in PDF. Can I sync up a PDF to it from my own computer? No. Can I download PDFs of the latest issue of the Lancet into it? Not that I can see. So, WTF am I going to use the thumb pad for, annotating the latest Harry Potter?
4) Did I say it's ugly? Look at the Sony Reader.

I love the idea of eBooks, I've been reading them on my Palm T3 for years now. And I'm glad that Amazon seems to be getting into them in a big way. It's sad that eBooks always seem to be almost, but not really, ready for prime-time, and Kindle is no exception. For me, the big killer is the lack of guaranteed persistence. Even with the need for DRM (because book publishers are even more head-in-the-ass about this than music and video) it's not hard to produce a guarantee that your purchases will have longevity. And frankly, I'd be far more upset if my book collection vanished through a technical misadventure than my music or video.