Kindle is Ugly

[azog]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are you saying that the FCC photo was not of a real Kindle? It looks pretty much the same as the released device to me!

No, but there was something about that photo which made it look other than it was. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I was one of those who looked at one of the early leaked photos and said "eesh!". But when they actually showed the real device on Amazon, it was in context and better lighting that made it look better.

The original shot had no context, no real indication how big it was, and the lighting of the shot wasn't very appealing:

http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/09/amazon_kindle.jpg

When I saw that with the keyboard, I equated "keyboard" with big, which meant a big and bulky device.

But as I said, I'm sure my shots above do worse than better! I'm not a professional photographer; my "expertise" usually ends with photos for e-bay and blogging. But putting it in some sort of context helps, which is why I placed it side-by-side with the Cybook. One of the first shots I saw of the Cybook was it placed on top of looked like a book-club edition soft-cover (book-club editions are usually a little bigger than normally, but not as big as hard-cover), and that helped gain some sort of visual clues about it.

[CCDMan]

...Dvorak nowhere in sight!...

Not surprisingly, he hated the Kindle (and gave that opinion w/o having touched one), but then he hates everything!

I listen to TWIT and sometimes Cranky Geeks and John is just getting annoying at this point. He hates almost everything - maybe he thinks it helps to promote himself or maybe he is just out of touch with tech reality. He is turning into a old fart luddite to the point that I no longer pay any attention to his opinion.

[Gameboy70]

I didn't realize he did a Kindle review, though I should have expected it. I don't think anyone pays attention to Dvorak as a pundit; he's become the Don Rickles of tech journalism, and people read his invectives for their entertainment value rather than their insight.

I'll have to check out his review. It should be good for a few laughs.

[CCDMan]

Originally Posted by Gameboy70

....I'll have to check out his review. It should be good for a few laughs.

His comments were on the TWIT #123 podcast from this past Monday....