Why Ereader Companies Shouldn't be Worried

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

And I disagree, the vast majority of mp3 players, digital cameras and so on get connected via USB, so... it's not the most convenient way to do things, but a large percentage of the computer-owning population does it.

But aren't those all kind of no brainer connections? Where the program starts up automatically & downloads things?

You really can't beat Amazon's setup where you buy the book & it appears on your reader.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by Harmon

But aren't those all kind of no brainer connections? Where the program starts up automatically & downloads things?

Not really. iPods you can hook up and sync, but there's a lot of dragging and dropping still if you have more music than it can hold.

The Creative MP3 players I have are pure drag and drop--they just show up like flash drives (well the Vision M you have to open a program, but it's just a file explorer program that looks just like windows explorer).

The Kindle system is great, I love mine. But it's hardly rocket science to hook up via USB and drag and drop for most folks. The Kindle has an advantage for people who aren't very computer literate, aren't used to using USB devices to drag and drop files etc.

But for most under a certain age that's pretty moot as most everyone is using flash drives, external hard drives, MP3 players etc. if they're going to be buying that kind of tech gadget.

The wireless transfer is a damn nice convenience to have even for someone like me who's a bit of a tech head, but it wasn't a big selling point. The better selection and better prices on some books in the Amazon store vs. the Sony store when I was checking was the deciding factor for me.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Harmon

But aren't those all kind of no brainer connections? Where the program starts up automatically & downloads things?

You really can't beat Amazon's setup where you buy the book & it appears on your reader.

Sure you can, you can have it be a USB flash drive, so outside the limited number of countries which have it's wireless support, you CAN just drag and drop - or use a management program of your choice. (Oh, and folder support is good, too)