Who's going to rush out and buy a Kindle?

[Monteagle]

One other thought: Since Amazon is now committed to Kindle, how long will it take them to shut Mobipocket down cold? I don't think I would buy any more Mobipocket ebooks. Amazon does shut things down as they did with ALL ebooks a year ago. They only have five people working in the Mobipocket Paris office. And when their server went down, they left the poor French guys hanging and down for ten solid days.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Monteagle

One other thought: Since Amazon is now committed to Kindle, how long will it take them to shut Mobipocket down cold? I don't think I would buy any more Mobipocket ebooks. Amazon does shut things down as they did with ALL ebooks a year ago. They only have five people working in the Mobipocket Paris office. And when their server went down, they left the poor French guys hanging and down for ten solid days.

I do not expect that to happen at all. Why shut down a business that makes money and has contracts that you would have to break and sells books in parts of the world that you do not? And besides, if you shut it down the employess would likely go off and start a competitor.

Starting these kinds of rumors in what is termed FUD.

Dale

[Zoot]

I think Amazon basically has one more chance to make the whole ebook thing work with the Kindle. If it fails and they cut off their users from the content that they paid for, then nobody will ever trust them again (at least with any sort or proprietary DRM).

Z.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Monteagle

And when their server went down, they left the poor French guys hanging and down for ten solid days.

Please don't spead misinformation. Mobi shut their own server down to beef up their security following an attempted security breach. An extremely courageous and highly responsible thing to do.

[markbot]

I just bought a kindle. The only real reason you would not get an e-reader of some sort is that you want to collect books...but the benefits of electronic books are so great that this cute idea of have a physical library is actually absurd. and the Kindle is the best product on the market so far....since it is tied to amazon....as opposed to other readers that have lame stores that could be gone tomorrow.

also, the Kindle can read those other books if there are in PDF...

[Lucien21]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7107118.stm

Aparantly everyone rushed out and bought one. Unless they had a pitiful stock.

[HarryT]

<puzzled>

Where does one "rush out" to in order to buy a product that's only sold on-line?

</puzzled>

[Alisa]

I just read that article. Rather irresponsible to report: "Overall the gadget has won a rating of 2.5 stars out of five from those who have spent time with it." when the vast majority of the low ratings were from people who have never used the product and just want to complain about the price or how it's not color, etc.

[cfc]

Well... I just broke down and ordered a Kindle. Estimated delivery with the free 2-day shipping is December 10th. The remarks by people on Mobileread convinced me. It's not perfect, but the fact that they will probably sell so many of them that it would be worthwhile for them make improvements through firmware updates (which should be easier that any other reader). I've already done a bulk download of my Fictionwise Multiformat books in the PRC format, so I'll have over 100 books already for the kindle!

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by HarryT

<puzzled>

Where does one "rush out" to in order to buy a product that's only sold on-line?

</puzzled>

They rushed out of the room with their wifi laptops so that their better halves didn't see them buying yet another electronic gizmo or racking up even more frequent-buyer points on Amazon.

Cheers,
Marc

[lubberts]

My dad, my girlfriend and myself are all current sony reader users. My girlfriend is using my old prs 500 and my dad and I both got prs 505s when they were released (due to the untimely death of his, and my girlfriend's persistence that she couldn't have my "old one" unless I got a new one)
The problem is that we are all also Mac users. The headache for dedicated Mac users to switch between osx and windows through boot camp are plenty, which we have to do any time we want to buy sony reader content. When you add to that the fact that the sony reader software is so buggy and slooooow to use, the amount of stress derived from simply attempting to get books onto the readers is practically not worth it. I say practically because we all adore our readers despite the problems with the software. We are all avid readers, and any avid reader would be hard-pressed to hate an e-reader (after actually using one).
When my dad read online about the kindle reader's ability to download books from anywhere, and the fact that no computer software was necessary, he was sold. The fact that we can share the books we purchase (much more easily than with the reader), that the new releases and best sellers are cheaper than anywhere else (even than discount book stores), and that he could get newspapers and magazines automatically delivered without having to worry about waking up early enough to sync the reader before work, well that was all just icing on the cake!
This morning he whipped out his card, and we have 3 on the way for Christmas, to be delivered on or around December 10th. I couldn't be happier. The content that we have purchased for the sony reader is just water under the bridge I suppose, Most of the reading we do is from the webscriptions website anyway, and that can all come along for the ride.
So will I get one? Yes, we ordered 3!

[SanAntone]

Nice! If you are all under the same account I think it allows you to share books also!

[slayda]

I almost ordered one. But then I came to my senses! Still enjoying my PRS-500.

[lubberts]

Yup! We can share books! For instance if I am on the bus on the way to class, and I purchase a new book, at that point in time the other two kindles on my account are able to download that same book to read! I can't do that with a pbook! I'm not sure if the subscription we are planning on getting to wallstreet journal will be delivered to all three devices or if that is only for one device...That's not as important as being able to share the books though. Just curious. Anyone with more than one kindle right now know the answer to that?
This also opens up interesting possibilities to me. For instance, I meet John Smith here on the mobile read forums. If he has 10-15 books I haven't read, perhaps he could add me as an authorized kindle on his account for a period of time, till I read those, and I could return the favor! Or if I trust someone enough to change the billing info each time they want to purchase a book, just add John Smith to my account right from the beginning so that all the books we purchase we share, and don't have to purchase some books multiple times. I'm not sure about the feasability of that, or how far my trust goes, but it is an interesting possibility to be sure.
What is really awesome is that while I await my shiny Kindles I have already set up a different nick name for all three, along with setting up our kindle email addresses. The website allows me to browse the books and request that they "send a sample to my kindle". The other kindles on my account are able to request different samples as well. We wanted to make a wish list for each of us, but when that escaped my capabilities I just decided to send a sample for each book I might like to buy, so I can read the first chapter and then decide to purchase or not. Pretty cool considering I don't have the kindle yet, and it's a bit of a tide-me-over while I wait.
Also, I've played around with the conversion. I sent a .doc ebook I received from the baen free library to myname@free.kindle.com, and they sent me back the document in .azw format. Of course I cannot read it yet, and before converting all my hundreds of books only to discover that I needed to make a change to the name of the file for purposes of organization, I decided to hold off till I put that one book on the reader and see how it looks.
Does anyone who has a kindle now know what the name the document gets when you send it? Is it just the name of the document? Also, how are the books organized on the reader? Anything like Sony's collections? Or is it mainly the search feature that you use? Is there any form of organization that you determine?

[zartemis]

Originally Posted by lubberts

Yup! We can share books! For instance if I am on the bus on the way to class, and I purchase a new book, at that point in time the other two kindles on my account are able to download that same book to read! I can't do that with a pbook! I'm not sure if the subscription we are planning on getting to wallstreet journal will be delivered to all three devices or if that is only for one device

Subscriptions are for one device, according to their official post to the Kindle discussion on Amazon:

Q: How can I read books that I legally own on my different kindles? Can I? Should I be able to?
A: At this time, you cannot share or give your Kindle books to Kindles that are not associated with your Amazon.com account. If you are the owner of multiple Kindles, or have multiple Kindles registered to your account (i.e wife, husband), your books can be re-downloaded to each of these Kindles, up to a limit of 6 Kindles. Subscriptions to periodicals can only be downloaded to one registered Kindle.

It does appear that you can change what device the subscription is sent to on the fly from the online kindle manager, however, so one week it could go to one device, and then later you could change it another one.