New Kindle 2 Features Fail Us

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The New Kindle 2 has been highly anticipated. It's now available for pre-order and will be shipping within a couple of weeks. Back in November, Amazon sent out Kindles to some people for a free 30 day trial (e.g. no upfront costs like when you order and return). We tried it out.

We had a few problems with it. First, the battery life was terrible, especially considering we had wireless off (more on that later) and that it doesn't use any power to display a page (I tested this by pulling the battery with a page showing -- pretty fun!). It would last maybe a day or two before needing to be plugged in, so we had to keep it plugged in all the time.

Second, the buttons were all in the wrong places. The page turn buttons ran along the sides and would be clicked by just picking it up. Considering page turning was very slow (distractingly slow), this didn't work so well.

Third, the wireless didn't work. There is no Sprint 3G coverage where we are, apparently, so we couldn't use any of the store features, regularly updated content, the browser, etc. None of that could work.

Finally, it was way too expensive for what it was. The books cost almost nothing to be reproduced in digital form, yet Amazon is charging more than a paperback book ($10) for them. This doesn't work and since they can't be sold, it's money completely gone. Considering renting a book from a library is free, and buying a book for $8 that can be resold for $4 is easily 60% cheaper, this just doesn't work. Then, add on to that $400 and you've got a perfect storm of exorbitant expenses that really don't make any sense at all.

So, when I started hearing about the new Kindle and how it was going to improve upon the last, I was hopeful. Well, all of the details are out today. Sadly, it looks like they've failed to solve any of the problems we had with it.

First, with a 25% better battery life, we'd now get a standby of maybe 3 days (could be better, obviously we haven't used it). This means going on a week vacation would necessitate bringing the charger still.

Second, the buttons appear to be smaller, but in exactly the same places. Grab it wrong and you lose your page. It still looks hard to hold -- and thinner doesn't help that any. I'd be curious in feeling how this has really changed, though, but I swear the hands in all of the pictures are pushing buttons.

Third, they are proud of the fact you don't have to hunt down WiFi. Sorry, but in a place where there is no Spring 3G, WiFi is infinitely easier to find -- such as, in all the local coffee shops, in our own home, and even from our phones (N95 as a router comes to mind, here). WiFi would even allow it to work in other areas. Sadly, this is a deal breaker.

Finally, the price hasn't changed at all. The books are still way too expensive. The cost of a paperback or hardback book is supposed to be where it is because the publisher has to store tons (literally) of books, ship tons of books, and physically distribute them to bookstores at a risk they won't all sell. None of that exists with digital delivery. They should be able to be sold for a song. No, I mean literally -- 99 cents or even two bucks. The royalty structure would have to change so authors got the same amount from them, but even with that I'm guessing the publisher would profit even more than from physical book delivery and with absolutely none of the risk or up front costs of printing a run of books. This is also a deal breaker.

Sorry, but no thanks. We'll continue to use the library for free books, and physical media so we can resell and recoup most of our initial expenses.

That being said, I'm glad the readers are as popular as they are for a variety of reasons. But, I've been continually surprised by how they are popular amongst the non-geek crowd more so than in the geek crowd. Fascinating.

Posted by Shane on February 9, 2009 1:42 PM | Permalink