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November 19, 2007

FINALLY ()

by fluffy at 8:49 AM
The thing I was working on at Amazon is finally available. Go buy one. Or don't.

(Oh wow, it looks like they've cleaned up the on-screen UI a lot since I left.)

(Though I really need to ignore the customer forums. Ugh.)

Comments

#10113 11/19/2007 09:31 am
I'm surprised at the pricing.

I really wish someone would come out with a reader that has large screen and displays PDFs reasonably.
#10114 11/19/2007 09:35 am
The price will come down as the display gets less expensive. The screen is to Kindle as the Blu-Ray laser is to the PS3, and Kindle has a lot more hardware in it than the Sony reader. Also, Jeff was adamant about not selling the device at a loss.

One thing people don't really consider is that Amazon doesn't get a lot of money on the books themselves. Most goes to the publishers, and most of what's left goes to Sprint for the bandwidth (and then the free mobile Wikipedia and blog access really eats into what's left). Amazon actually loses money on a lot of the books.
#10115 11/19/2007 09:48 am
Yeah, I didn't notice the wireless coms. I'm pretty sure Sony doesn't lose money on the eReader though. (But the communications hardware likely makes the difference.)
#10116 11/19/2007 10:14 am
What part did you have in this product? It looks interesting but definitely like old technology (90s? or 80s?). Interesting concept nonetheless. And free EVDO for life? Really?
#10117 11/19/2007 10:28 am
I don't think I would use it enough to justify that price tag. I'm annoyed that the new releases cost $9.99, but I saw that a lot of the Project Gutenberg stuff is on there for ultra-cheap (presumably to cover the EV-DO bandwidth and maybe pocket a few cents in the process?) and the access to Wikipedia is tempting.

I didn't purchase an iPod until that price had come down a decent amount, and music is probably more important to me than the written word. I would love to have one, but it will have to wait until they are half what they cost now (and per-book costs being lower would be nice, although I don't see that happening if it's the publishers that are setting that price)
#10118 11/19/2007 10:40 am
I worked on a new file format which makes conversion of back-catalog books a lot easier/cheaper while maintaining fidelity.

The EV-DO isn't free per se, it's just bundled into the cost of the content. I think one of the long-term plans is to allow people to subscribe to more general-purpose data services for web browsing or whatever but I can't speak to that (it was in flux while I was still there and of course things can change a lot in a few months).

(And I wasn't saying Sony was selling it at a loss, I was saying that Amazon doesn't sell it at a loss EITHER but Amazon's product costs more to make.)
#10125 11/19/2007 06:12 pm
Hmm, so it's EVDO and it sounds like Amazon is MVNOing with Sprint to make it work.

That could be neat.

(But I'm totally buying an Eee anyway.)
#10126 11/19/2007 07:07 pm
I don't think it's even an MVNO. It's just a straight up "hey Sprint, give us data" relationship. Okay, there's the Amazon WhisperNet marketing term (jeeze, where have I heard that name before) but it's not like it's actually being sold as a thing people can subscribe to (at least not yet). If they do open up the data as a more general-purpose thing, it'll likely just be something billed to your Amazon account.

I think it's funny how a lot of people on the forums are like "Wait, it's EVDO? I'll have to change my mobile provider?" No, not unless you want to use your book to make phone calls...

(Hm, I wonder how long before someone hacks the system and installs a VoIP client on it.)
#10130 11/19/2007 09:16 pm
(Hm, I wonder how long before someone hacks the system and installs a VoIP client on it.)


That's kinda what I was thinking: hack the system and turn your reader into a modem for your wifi mobile device (pda, laptop, itouch, etc)! Although, I wouldn't expect it'd be easy or even probable but maybe it's possible...