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Gadgets Amazon Ships New Kindles Two Days Early
Tiffany Kaiser - August 25, 2010 5:48 PM

9 comment(s) - last by azcoyote.. on Sep 1 at 1:56 PM

(Source: Wired)

New-generation Kindles have become the fastest and best-selling devices on Amazon

Amazon.com announced that the new-generation Kindles are both the fastest-selling and best-selling devices on the website, selling more in the first four weeks of availability than any other previous Kindle launch.

The new-generation Kindles shipped today, which is two days earlier than expected. Customers ordered more new-generation Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other device during the first four weeks of its availability. In fact, customers from 125 countries on six continents have placed orders for the new Kindle.

"Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon.com for two years running and our new generation Kindles are continuing that momentum," said Steven Kessel, senior vice president of Amazon Kindle. "Readers are excited about all that the new Kindle has to offer - 50 percent better contrast, 20 percent faster page turns, 15 percent lighter, up to one month of battery life - and a new price of only $139."

The new Kindles certainly do have a lot of updated features. The body is 21 percent smaller, giving it a sleek, clean look. It also weighs 15 percent less than older models at 8.5 ounces, has built-in Wi-Fi and double the storage at 3,500 books. Some features have stayed the same though, such as the 6-inch screen for reading.

The Kindle Store has more than 670,000 books now, with 235,000 of those being added just in the last seven months. Over 550,000 of these are under $9.99, and over 1.8 million out-of-copyright, pre-1923, free books can be read on Kindle devices as well.

The new Wi-Fi Kindle is $139 and the Kindle 3G is available for $189.

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New Kindle is still the same old song

By Netscorer on 8/26/2010 12:59:36 PM , Rating: 2

If I understand correct, new Kindle still does not support non-latin fonts properly and it still does not support widely-used ePub and FB2 formats, using their own proprietary format instead.
I wanted to get Kindle but went with Nook instead, which is based on open source Android OS and does support (after easy firmware upgrade) all these and much more.
Amazon acts like it owns eReading market but they are not in fact and their unwillingness to open their customer base to those who like to read in languages other then English is very disappointing.

RE: New Kindle is still the same old song

By iceonfire1 on 8/27/2010 4:13:21 PM , Rating: 3

And yet, many of the same old songs are still popular, right?

As far as stats go, the Kindle beats the Nook, and at a lower price. If there is a sizable market for non-latin fonts (I'm afraid I'm ignorant in this matter), I have confidence Amazon will want to get a piece of it. I have confidence that, instead of doing your firmware mod, you could have converted your ebook to a txt/html/pdf/etc file (which the Kindle supports & the Nook does not, natively).

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Kindle is missing a market segment

By reggieg on 8/28/2010 1:15:23 PM , Rating: 2

A big limitation of the Kindle is that it is not compatible with ebooks from libraries. This is a big turnoff to a large segment of avid book readers. No doubt Amazon would like everyone to only buy books but that isn't likely.

The Problem With All eReaders

By azcoyote on 9/1/2010 1:56:52 PM , Rating: 2

First off i can say I Jones for a Kindle 3 in graphite...

However, there is one common problem to all eReaders....
They are locked to one book provider...

I can price the same book on iBooks, B&N Reader, and Kindle Reader all on my iPhone and get prices that vary by as much as 6-7 bucks. Because of this, I have to use ALL 3 readers to get the best prices... Its annoying but worth the effort. Give me a universal reader for Pete's sake!!!

Thus... I will either be using my iPhone indefinitely or some slate variant in the future so I can use all readers...

But like I said.... Kindle 3.... Mmmmmmmmm.....

nice!

By Gul Westfale on 8/25/10, Rating: -1

RE: nice!

By rs1 on 8/25/2010 7:44:42 PM , Rating: 5

I don't know why the iPad is always mentioned as a Kindle competitor. The iPad is a general purpose device that can pretend to be an e-reader if you really want it to, but it's still going to suck at it. It just doesn't have the right kind of screen or the necessary battery life to be considered a serious e-reader. The Kindle, on the other hand, is a purpose-built e-reader. It is outstanding for reading on, but sucks at doing pretty much anything else (web browsing is clunky at best, media playback tends to skip when turning pages, etc.).

They're really not the same class of device, any more than a swiss army knife is in the same class of device as a powered screwdriver just because one of its tools happens to be a screwdriver. Some people want a multi-purpose device like the iPad that can do some light reading every now and then, while others want a quality, dedicated e-reader and don't care about the multi-purpose functionality so much. I fall into the later group, and would never even dream about trading my Kindle DX for an iPad. I spend enough time staring at LCD screens at work.

And as long as we're all plugging our digital books on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003URRNCS/

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RE: nice!

By Smartless on 8/25/2010 8:11:26 PM , Rating: 1

Ah yes but its an Apple product. Like how earlier they were comparing an iTouch to a Nintendo DS as a gaming platform. Sorry I'm stirring the flaming pot.

In other news, Kindle's really are great especially when falling asleep while reading. It doesn't hurt nearly as much when it hits your face. Though it really sucks at crushing cockroaches. Oh well apples to apples. *smirk*

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RE: nice!

By DixyCrat on 8/26/2010 3:45:28 AM , Rating: 2

It depends on what you’re used to and what you read often.

I for one have been looking at a computer display for 8ish hours a day, 7 days a week, for the past 15 years. This constitutes over half of my life. I have 20/20 vision, but I can feel the eye strain and get blurry vision when I try to read a paperback book for too long. For me a LCD display is vastly superior to ‘e-ink’.

I for one also spend my time either looking at web pages or reading PDFs. The Kindle does a poor job of zooming into PDFs while the I-Pad feels like it was built for the task. The Kindel does a better job connecting to the internet, finding the PDFs I'm looking for and the battery can keep it going for longer than I need it to: 9+ hours.

Overall, for me, the I-Pad is the better device. The I-Pad seems like a Dremel, with the ability to do many light applications acceptably; whilst the Kindel is a power sander: good at what little it does, no doubt, but not applicable to my daily usage.

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RE: nice!

By Netscorer on 8/26/2010 12:43:16 PM , Rating: 2

iPad is comparable to Kindle because it is light, you can hold it like you hold a kindle, the battery lasts for days and it does not get hot with Kindle App. The screen has very good resolution and I personally was reading from it for hours without getting tired. It has adjustable backlighting too, so you can read it comfortably while in bed late at night. The only problem I had was reading in strong day light. But there is always a solution for that - find a shadow!

I'm not an Apple fan-boy, mind you. I don't own any of their products, even the iPad - just borrowed it from my friend for couple of days. But I can clearly see that tablet like iPad or soon coming Android-based tablets would provide big competition to Kindle as they are multitasking devices and even at eReading they beat Kindle (or Nook which I own) in many ways.

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