Amazon’s Kindle DX is sweet, but overpriced. (How many times will we have to pay for the same R&D.) Predictably, the other kids on the block step in to steal a bit of thunder.

Sony is making its eReaders available to purchase online through BestBuy.ca and Futureshop.ca. Check out the press release here. This is a great move because Sony’s Readers are not tethered to the U.S. market with Whispernet the way that Kindle is and any new technology needs to be available everywhere to be fully adopted.

These companies need to get their eBook Readers into the consumers’ hands. Traditional books go hand-in-hand with, well hands, and people need to touch an eBook Reader to get the picture. They’re just newfangled thingamabobby phones or gameboydealies, otherwise, yah?

And Rupert Murdoch confirms that he is indeed working on his Mystery Machine again. Read the story here at the Guardian UK. Flushed out of the lab by Kindle DX’s arrival, the article suggests Rupert has refined his plans for an eReader. (Though his discerning observation: “The current days of the internet will soon be over” has us concerned.) Other than past glories he’s thinking newspapers and magazines and broadsheets. Oh… he also plans to start charging for online content again…which will not work in a million years…unless he plans to subvert the free Internet as we know it. The truth is the business has changed and it needs a new business model. Profits will never be the same for poor Rupert. Sniff…

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?