Amazon Kindle: American (not UK) Product Launch

There are the very rare occasions when I wish I were back with the natives on the Other Side of the Pond – and this is one of them.

Amazon have launched the Kindle in the USA – it’s their electronic paper ebook reader. And I’d love to get my hands on one to try an evaluation.

It’s a wireless device that let’s you download books, magazines, blogs and documents. And no computer is ever required, no synchronising, nothing. It works all by itself. Amazon are describing it more a “service” than a product.

The reader itself is not back lit, which means there is not glare, and it has been designed to have the same readability and appearance of paper.

What’s really cool is that it uses the same high speed network as mobile phones, so no ISP or hotspot required. Amazon call it Whispernet. Where you get mobile signal, you get data. And the data network is offered for free when you buy the reader.

It’s not all roses however, there is a lot of serious criticism:

It’s not cheap: coming in at $399 means it is not for mere mortals.

You have to pay for content that you can normally get free such as subscriptions to blogs at US$2 per month, or online newspapers.

It doesn’t support PDFs which is odd, given that is a format well suited for reading big documents.

It protects the documents you buy using Digital Rights Management, limiting how you use and share the information you buy.

At this stage they are only for sale in the USA. My Mom and Dad might be confused as to why Santa is giving them a Kindle for Christmas, but I’m hoping they’ll let me play with it when I next come to visit!

Read more:

• Newsweek’s “The Future of Reading” with an overview of the Kindle
• BoingBoing “Amazon Kindle eBook Review”
• Amazon’s Kind Product Page