Kindle 3 flies

Sold out.

Comments

[Alan Birnbaum]

See separate threads in the Reader Forum. Bottom lines for this barely 8 oz "eReader," i.e., no more than a lighter, smaller paperback:

Probably GREAT FOR PURELY NARRATIVE MATERIAL such as novels, cost per copy/file typically no more or less than the paperback. Novel file sizes vary from about 500 Kb to 4 Mb, i.e., 750 to as many as 6000 volumes, great for that around the world cruise you're planning.

VARIABLE VALUE FOR GUIDEBOOKS, depending on how you use them, i.e., for preparation only, either at home or in your hotel room, and the extent to which graphics such as maps or illustrations are important to you, cost almost always less than a paper cop, and weight of course much less than the 16 to 24 oz. of a Frommer or Michelin Green Guide. The file sizes will be larger than a novel, figure 3 to 11 MB, so figure as few as 270 to as many as 1000 volumes, so even split with a library full of novels, the 3 GB capacity should be plenty.

Monochrome display with a 600 x 800 pixel screen means that this is not the device for books full of artwork or photography, then when it comes to periodicals, likely better for newspapers than for magazines, but, with the Internet being your "paperboy," the New York Times or Washington Post or International Herald Tribune comes to your doorstep every morning that you have Wi-Fi or perhaps 3G access, whether you're in Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Timbuktu....OK, maybe NOT in the middle of the Mali desert!

[Alan Birnbaum]

As to the Kindle being only monochrome, while having the advantage of being much smaller than, say, an iPad, which can run that software as an "app," a report just noted mentions:

<<Besides updates to the iPod Touch, rumors posted on site iLounge earlier this week>> suggest << that a 7-inch display version of the iPad is in development but that its release is likely to be "later this year.">>

Such a smaller iPad might still, using the iPhone 4 screen technology, still have a pixel matrix of as much as 1280 x 1920, allowing personal playback at BluRay standards, while being a better platform for guidebooks, perhaps, save for the superior daylight readablity of "digital ink." But, with sharing allowed by the Kindle system, some people...who have nothing better to do....like, say, work, might own both.

[Alan Birnbaum]

The New York Times today has a good analysis of what eBooks mean to the overall market:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/media/12bookstore.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Basically, staying in business as a small bookstore will get even harder, and it won't be so easy even for the Barnes and Noble outlet, which most likely will feature FEWER books. This is probably also not good news for companies whose major product is bookshelving, despite my house being in the market for another pair of them. On the other hand, "books" with expected small distribution likely will become more accessible, and the concept of a book being "out of print" will become largely a theoretical concept.

Hmmm, I wonder what the eBook potential might be for "OBOW: Traveling Light with the Wit and Wisdom of Buzz and Buddies."

Likely not much...the title is too long!