| Amazon's Kindle comes to Australia |
| By philby | |||||||||
| Monday, 12 October 2009 19:18 | |||||||||
Page 1 of 2  So you may have heard by now of something called the 'Kindle' making it's way to Australian (and other international) shores. Put out by a small start-up called Amazon, the Kindle could be here to change the way you read books. For USD$279 you can get this (not so) new piece of tech into your backpack or handbag. The Kindle an eBook reader that's thin, light and can hold up to 1,500 books, newspapers and magazines (from a selection of over 280,000 titles). It would certainly be one way to get some inconsiderate people to stop reading the Sydney Morning Herald within the tight confines of a train, tram or bus! It allows users to wirelessly download books via 3G or GPRS (depending on where you are in Oz) networks without using a computer. It does this without any mobile subscription fees, only charging USD$1.99 (on top of the title price) to wirelessly do so outside of the U.S. You can even save that USD$1.99 if you choose to download the book to your PC and then transfer it to your Kindle. For all its innovation and convenience, the Kindle is only a half-hearted effort for those in Australia who want to get their hands on it. Just flicking through the specs, as well as other reviews from our friends in the U.S., doesn't make for great reading (ironically) if you were looking to get a Kindle. Form Factor - You can see why they've gone smaller with the Kindle, but it's a lose-lose situation. Make it too small and people will say that the screen is smaller than a small paperback. Make it too big and it immediately takes away one of the Kindle's killer features, it's portability. With the Kindle, they've headed in the 'smaller' direction, to the chorus of "the screen is smaller than a paperback" from a swathe of reviewers. Added to the fact that the white colour of the Kindle doesn't bode well for one of the Kindle's key target user, the frequent commuter (as the frequent cleaning and scratches of my Cityrail-travelled white MacBook can attest). Amazon look to have missed the mark with this version of the Kindle. Content - "280,000 titles"? Only? Now I'm not a big reader, but I'm pretty sure there are more books than that in a decent-sized bookstore. Not only that, but downloading straight to the Kindle without browsing around in a real store takes away the opportunity to drink Gloria Jeans coffee, leave the empties somewhere in the kids section, and rifle through some random books and magazines that you wouldn't have originally considered, Borders-style.
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