Does Amazon offer any sort of "buy the book get the ebook for less" type deals? As someone who likes the convenience of downloadable goods but also likes both the aesthetics and security of a physical hardcopy, that sort of deal often strongly appeals to me (and is decently common in music and video games, especially with indie and sold-direct-from-artist situations).<p>I don't know how much it would appeal to most people, or how much of a weirdo it makes me, but I would love to be able to purchase a book and have it shipped to me, and also simultaneously get the instant-read "disposable" Kindle copy downloaded immediately while I wait for the shipment to make its way to my home.
Sadly, not available outside the USA. What an utter miserable oversight.<p>And, I wonder what would happen if the Kindle supports music. Might be a very worthy competitor to Apple.
Are all the books tied to Amazon DRM? That makes me wary of getting a Kindle as what happens if Amazon goes under (unlikely as that may be)...<p>Does Amazon provide any guarantee books for Kindle1 and Kindle2 will continue to work on all future versions of Kindle? I don't want to get stranded having to upgrade book media in 10 or 15 years.<p>It doesn't seem there's a way to "borrow" books from friends (or a local library) on the Kindle... is that right?<p>I guess I'm trying to answer "What problem does the Kindle solve that merit using it over books?"
How jarring is having the entire screen briefly turn black on each page turn?<p>E.g. See this video: <a href="http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/09/video-kindle-2-as-slow-as-the-original/" rel="nofollow">http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/09/video-kindle-2-as-slow-...</a>
I've heard a number of complaints that the kindle 1's conversion service fails on PDF's with tables and graphs. Anyone know if this is still an issue?<p>My main purchase point would be for reading PDF papers/textbooks, so it's a bit of a deal breaker.
Heh... Still waiting for <i>REAL</i> PDF support... Even DRM king Apple allows for arbitrary MP3s to be played on the iPod/iPhone. Until then the kindle is relatively useless (to me).
As a Kindle 1 owner, the only major improvement I see in Kindle 2 is TTS. I am assuming they have new dedicated hardware support for this, otherwise it would just be a software update. No SD card slot though, just increased memory. No folder support, no native PDF viewing, no third party apps. Case not included in the base package anymore. I don't think I'm going to upgrade.
I find it interesting that there's no clamour for any sort of back or frontlighting on eReaders. I know paper doesn't have it, but even back in the Newton days I knew that was a killer feature.<p>(Even though the Newton's backlight buzz made it just as irritating to a snoozing bed-partner as having the light on would be)
I really want to get one, but it doesn't meet my basic needs. I need to be able to properly display technical books and the other problem is it doesn't support Chinese fonts, so I can't read chinese on it. What I like is that I don't need to carry tons of books with me. When I moved to China last year, I brought a whole suitcase of technical books, a pain to carry around.