Big Price Too...
So Amazon is releasing a very expensive and somewhat larger version of their Kindle tricked out to read magazines and newspapers as well as eBooks. Okay. It looks beautiful. Nice piece of technology. Read the story about the announcement at CNNMoney here.
The Kindle DX features: 9″ screen, a built-in PDF reader, enhanced Internet navigation, storage for up to 3,500 books. It’s priced at $489. Lots of other features too.
I thought I’d point out that they’re repeating the mistake they made with the smaller Kindles. They came out too expensive and too restrictive and opened the door to cheaper and more flexible competitors. They believe that with the name Amazon attached, people will pay anything, blah, blah, blah… it’s not true. The Internet is not a local hardware store (Remember those…) where people have to buy what’s on the shelf. People can shop all over the globe now–a dangerous behavior to encourage for a company like Amazon that only sells Kindle online, and usually requires ordering and shipping delays.
And remember, before we get too excited about Amazon’s business acumen, onboard PDF capacity was absent in its first Kindle versions. (An attempt to control content by pushing their own format, and boosting profits by charging to convert PDF to that format.) It took them two versions of Kindle to realize that PDF is the most pervasive, (if unloved) form of document formatting on the planet used by government, business, the legal profession, universities, etc. It was obvious then, that they were trying to control how buyers use the Kindle. No developer born after 1955 could have accidentally overlooked adding PDF reading capability to the earlier Kindles.
Please don’t mistake my discontent with Amazon as a dig at their machine. I just hate to see such a beautiful piece of technology in the hands of monopoly minded profiteers.
Inexpensive, adaptable eReaders and low priced content means better profits for creators and greater selection for consumers, yah?
