Walt Mossberg reviews the Kindle in the WSJ

[Bob Russell]

If you have been waiting for Walt Mossberg's take on the Kindle, your wait is over.

About the Sony Reader (the obvious comparison point), he says that "Like the iPod, it was linked to an online store where you could buy thousands of titles that could be downloaded to the Reader. Unlike the iPod, it hasn't been a hit with consumers, partly because the store was hard to use and had a very limited selection."

And about the Kindle, "...I love the shopping and downloading experience. But the Kindle device itself is just mediocre. While it has good readability, battery life and storage capacity, both its hardware design and its software user interface are marred by annoying flaws. It is bigger and clunkier to use than the Sony Reader, whose second version has just come out at $300."

He sums it up with the following: "Amazon has nailed the electronic-book shopping experience. But it has a lot to learn about designing electronic devices."

The whole article is available here for a few days without an online WSJ subscription.

Thanks to radleyp and Jane from DearAuthor for the tip.

[Alexander Turcic]

He also says this:

New releases and bestsellers cost $9.99 each, compared with a typical Amazon price of $15 to $20 for the paper volumes. Prices for other books vary widely, but are generally cheaper than the paper versions.

I think this is the most dramatic development in e-books since the release of the Kindle. In the past we often heard the argument that e-books were unattractive due to the price being similar to that of p-books. It seems Amazon has finally managed to break away from this tradidion.

[CCDMan]

In the past we often heard the argument that e-books were unattractive due to the price being similar to that of p-books.

Indeed, that has been a common complaint and this is great progress in that direction. Of course, there are a lot of whining folks that still think bestsellers should be a dollar or something just because they are not paper. They don't seem to realize that market, not cost, drives this process. I am sure they will come down a bit more, but not much. Personally, I am happy as long as ebooks are just a bit cheaper than the alternative and we seem to have arrived at that point.