Amazon's Kindle Sells Out In 5.5 Hours 417
necro81 writes "As reported on Engadget, Amazon's Kindle e-book reader has sold out. Charlie Rose's interview with Jeff Bezos reveals that the Kindle sold out within just 5-1/2 hours of going on sale. Amazon hasn't revealed how many it had in stock at launch, so it may just be that they didn't anticipate early demand. A check of the Kindle's product page shows that more will be rolling out starting December 3rd." Wired also has a brief head-to-head of the more prominent ebook readers and PCWorld has a review of the new gadget from Amazon.
Low production run? (Score:5, Insightful)
I somehow doubt it is a case of 'we made lots, but demand outstripped supply'. More likely this was a limited production run to test the waters.
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM Suckage (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Crack it.
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If I could afford 2, I would crack it.
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It is a joke. The BOM on the thing would run you less than $200 quantity one and I seriously doubt Amazon paid $100. Most of the sticker price is an all up front subscription to their cellular based wireless network that probably isn't even available out here in flyover country where I live. So if yuu don't value the handcuffs to the Amazon Store that why would you bother buying one just to hack it?
No, we need to design our own. There ain't squat in one hardware wise. No wireless (eats battery like crazy) and two SD slots (for easy copy action!) along with the ability to read PDF files. But first e-paper tech needs to finish developing. Current incarnations lack the resolution of a cheap laser printer, to say nothing of commercial printing and the screen refresh speeds blow goats. And color would really be helpful along with a touchscreen UI.
But like all things tech these issues will be solved after enough early adopters with big wallets and small brains spend insane amounts of cash on not ready for prime time hardware that won't even be compatible with whatever ends up becoming the standard. Then I'll buy one.
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I wasn't serious enough to look at it twice, but it says you can just email it your documents, it did just say word, and various music, picture formats. Also unlimited free lifetime access to wikipedia.
So I am not sure what needs hacked either, just waiting to hear what formats work, and how usable the email capability's/formats are. If it can be turned into a $400 for a lifetime subscription to na
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leaves you to wonder if that's wikipedia's lifetime or mine but that is not really relevant here
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, keep in mind that when they say "lifetime free access to Wikipedia," they don't really mean your lifetime, or even their lifetime, but merely the lifetime of their business model. If at some point down the road these things stop making money for them, that cell connection is going to stop working, too. (And given the short lifespans of cell technologies, I wouldn't expect this thing to work with the cell network for more than a few years, a decade at most, before Sprint forces an upgrade to some new system. I have piles of old handsets sitting around my house as a testament to these forced upgrades that they push through every so often.)
I think this thing is interesting, and it's the best effort at e-books so far, but it's still really, really bleeding edge. Personally I just can't justify shelling out four bills to be what seems suspiciously like a public beta.
why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Better performance, and no vendor lockin.
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The suspense is killing me!!
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I actually think its a solid product idea. Basically you pay for content and wireless access at the same time. E-paper sounds legitimately like a great technology. It would be pretty tempting offer if not for having basically no money at the moment and the Asus Eee PC being
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Heh so's your monitor. But that's despite the point: It's 150 DPI, that's definitely more than adequate for reading.
I agree with your other points (although I find the wireless bit debatable... wireless access to Wikipedia? w00t!) but the DPI one? Sorry.
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"Current incarnations lack the resolution of a cheap laser printer..."
Heh so's your monitor. But that's despite the point: It's 150 DPI, that's definitely more than adequate for reading.
Maybe you think so, but I don't find it particularly pleasant. I think this is fairly common, too; I know quite a few people who print off anything longer than a few pages because they detest reading on-screen so much.
An e-book can probably get away with a lower resolution than commercial or laser printing achieves through the use of anti-aliasing, but I think you're mistaken if you think most people can't tell the difference between 150 dpi and 1500 dpi offset, and won't immediately pick the high-dpi one
I've been buying e-books for years (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work at SGI (late 90's) and one of their ad slogans was ignite your mind and I think it had a picture of an octane (model name) sgi box there.
the thing is - we sold a lot of SGI boxes to gas and oil companies. 'igniting' from a computer is the last thing they'd want!
for a while, some SGI boxes (their power supplies) had a nasty habit of, well, blowing up or catching fire. the move team (who moved employees when we had our frequent re-orgs) would often have blown power supplies after we powered down systems and moved them, had them sit unused for a weekend and then powered up monday. I guess an always-on system being turned off, let sit and then powered on can cause strain.
PPFFFTT! "stand back, I'm about to power on an SGI box!"
ignite your mind. yeah - and your tie, if you are standing too close by to some of them.
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Amazon's market: Segway-riding idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to say that its not nice being rich, but you're also an idiot since this overpriced, semi-useful device is full of DRM and all your books will likely be gone as soon as amazon decides to discontinue it or not to suppor
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Bogus Cynic (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a cynic. No, wait, you're not. You're just stuck in the usual conspiracy mindset, combined with the also-usual ignorance of economics.
When you manufacture a mass market item, you're not in a position to say, "Let's just make 100 of them for our first manufacturing run, so we can boast that it sold out in a few hours." There's a fixed cost to starting up and shutting down a manufacturing line, and that means there's a minimum number of items you have to make if you want to make them
Gullible much? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is however perfectly easy for a company to launch with a limited number of items received from the factory. This is a basic sales trick. Amazon ordered the production of the kindle, but that doesn't mean all the units arrive in one go, that itself would be extremely foolish, it would delay the launch and cost a lot of money to stock everything.
Say that a factory can produce 100 devices per day just as an example. You want to launch as soon as possible so you tell them, when you got 500 send them over, so I can launch. Then at launch those 500 are "sold out". Sure they are, but the factory has been busily producing so they in fact now got 700 more, but because sending small orders is uneconomical you told them to NOT send the daily production over, you told them to wait till they got a 1000.
Bam, you get a head line of being sold out while the factory has plenty.
The kindle ain't sold out because it is still in production. It is trivial to set this scenario up and Amazon should fire its marketting department if they hadn't set this up. It is a basic move. Make the item seem hot, so that people get the idea that they MUST buy it now or they may not have another chance.
Have you EVER sold anything? It doesn't matter what house you are looking at buying, they ALWAYS got an intrested party about to make a good offer, so if you are quick you might just beat them. Decide NOW!
Re:Low production run? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also while there are many people who don't read books regularly, the people that do usually appreciate owning a bookshelf of their favourite novels. I feel it'll make a great reference device for things like dictionaries, encyclopedias and newspapers.
My last point is that when reading a novel, the reader is usually put into a deeper level of thinking which is annoying to be pulled out from. I'm curious if the device has a trivial way to flip pages that doesn't require the user to mentally escape the novel everytime they want to turn the page. (Or other annoyances like being told they have new email mid-reading.)
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
The display is very crisp and clear and easy to read. It has a clear surface over the e-ink display... the effect is like reading a really, really flat piece of glossy paper. Yes, if you have very good vision you can see the pixels, but it's so very very high contrast that that's not a problem.
The unit is much more attractive in person than its photos make it look on the web. It's not beige, it's very white. It's slim, and the angularness of it is less obvious in person than on the web, unless you look at it from the end. It has a nice leather case that it goes in which makes it rather book-like in many respects. When you turn it off, it puts something interesting on the screen (remember, e-ink takes no power to display, only to change, so you can leave something on an "off" e-ink screen) and my friends quite like that. The UI is easy enough to use - a minute or two of poking at it and I'd figured it out more or less. The wireless connection works very well. He downloaded a sample chapter (yes, you can get free sample chapters) in mere seconds after he'd typed in the title.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with it, and immediately recommended it to my aunt, who has been searching for a good e-book reader for a few years.
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Huh? The text higher up in this window (your message) is in Helvetica sans, which I use because it's the font I found on this Mac that gives me the most readable text. This text I'm typing has serifs, but only because I haven't figured out how to change the font for a <textarea> HTML widget; it's noticably less readable (at a larger font size,
Re:Low production run? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, the point the parent was making is that many people (including nearly all American book publishers) think that serif fonts are easier to read, especially for very long blocks of text. The problem is, computer screens still have comparatively low DPI, and aren't very good at rendering serifs, certainly not as good as they are with sans-serif fonts. This goes even moreso for a device made solely for reading text, even though it does indeed have a higher DPI than computer screens.
Of course, you're right that font preference varies from person to person. Myself, I almost exclusively use sans-serif fonts for screen reading, and prefer serif fonts for print. For example, those annoying "advertising" sections in magazines and newspapers often use a sans-serif font, and I find them much more difficult to read (fortunately they're also always devoid of content).
Anyway, given the specs for the Kindle (167 dpi), it should be able to do a pretty good Helvetica, assuming Amazon felt like getting a license from Linotype (the default serif font they use is also from Linotype, so it's possible).
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't used the Kindle, but I have used the Sony eReader, which has a similar resolution, and it is *much* easier on the eyes than an LCD.
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Funny)
Only 1. It was bought 5.5 hours after launch by Jeff to ensure amazon.com was still up.
Amazon rating (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Amazon rating (Score:4, Informative)
In all fairness though, just about all of the 1-star ratings seem to be from people who haven't even used the product yet.
Weird behavior between pages (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'd like colour but for reading a book it does seem a bit redundant, but the Kindle can browse the internet as well. So really I expect to see colour in a future revision.
For now, the iPod Touch is the best reader/browser combination.
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the irex illiad can be modifiied(it runs linux) using it's own built in wifi and a web browser you can surf the web on it.
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Perhaps this might explain that:
http://www.e-ink.com/products/customers_type.html [e-ink.com]
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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That's OK (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an old rule in the computer biz: Don't ever buy anything whose version number ends with an even digit.
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As with anything in life, if you need something thats new, get it immediately but expect problems.
If you want something, wait until it becomes a need and then get it.
You will have less problems and will have had time to assess the market (also you will save money)
Re:That's OK (Score:4, Funny)
Manufactured scarcity (Score:2)
Nothing sells product like an air of exclusiveness.
And before people think I'm trolling Amazon, I think this practice is good for both customers and the company -- the customers get something "hot" and the company sells in volume.
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Amazon is not (yet) like Apple, Sony, etc where they can just push a button and have 100,000 devices made and shipped.
I
Two Things (Score:5, Insightful)
2. There are always people looking to profit from the above people, who jump on these product launches to then turn around and sell the product on Ebay.
Beyond that I wouldn't read too much into this just yet. The Kindle may be a success, or a flop. All we know is that it a newly hyped gadget that sold out at launch, like most new hot gadgets.
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That would be "stereotypes FTW" Bob!. Or, in other words, _not_. (Zero Kindles for auction ATM.)
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Front Page of Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically the best advertising that any device could have.
OMG all 3 units sold out in 5.5 hours!!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
2. Do not reveal how many (hand fulls) of product units are available
3. On day of initial sale, reveal that product was sold out in 4 hours!!!!
4. Let lame media pick up stories
5. Enjoy free advertizement & viral marketing
6. Pick another date to release a few more units
7. PROFIT!!!!
Fixed the Flash and Speed? (Score:2)
What I'd like to know is how this e-ink compares to what Sony is using in their latest generation reader. Is it faster at changing the display? Do they still have to flash the whole display to update one little part?
And why have they ever needed to flash the whole display anyway? Is there some reason they can't erase just one area, working with a dirty rectangle algorithm so things are faster? Surely they can put enough memory in to keep two copies of the display (old and new) then use XOR to figure out wh
My Concern is transfering files... (Score:2)
And e-ink currently requires full screen rewites due to the screen being a singular entity, in the current incarnation the screen is a page in that it can only be drawn on once, then it has to be wiped (new page) before the next drawing.
My concerns with this unit
Looks good, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Either have cheap books or a cheap gadget, not both.
But then again... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm surprised it doesn't include "amazon email".
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Re:But then again... (Score:5, Informative)
It does. Every Kindle has a unique email address.
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the iPhone effect? (Score:2)
The number of people who buy a product on day #1 is largely irrelevant, that's just the fans - you can also charge them more (sorry, just had to get that in). The numbers that really count are a few months in, when the problems become known, the promised content does or does not become available and the initial euphoria wears off. I wonder how many units will still be
As a Sony ebook user (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the things that really showed promise was having comic books delivered to the device. However, it never really panned out for Sony, one year on and there are only 14 items in the manga section, and Kindle isn't looking much better. The sample they gave with the Sony eReader actually looked pretty good in terms of readability, shame there isn't much content that I want on it though(I suppose I could go track down pdfs, but too much of a pain)
Re:As a Sony ebook user (Score:5, Funny)
I'm I wrong or the only one to notice the EvDO (Score:4, Interesting)
So, either I need to cut back on the beers and pay attention to which letters mean what, or this thing is actually kinda cool, not that I'm buying one this year. If I'm way wrong, mod me to nothing, but otherwise, man do people complain about anything here!
Re:I'm I wrong or the only one to notice the EvDO (Score:5, Informative)
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But it's still EVD
$9.99??? Surely you are joking! (Score:2, Troll)
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nifty e-book reader comparison matrix (Score:5, Informative)
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix [mobileread.com]
At first I was ready to buy... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I would have paid up to $125, as I still need to actually buy books to read on it. But $400? Either the device is expensive to make or the market researchers grossly over estimated the publics need for such a device. $400 buys some really nice toys, much nicer than a e-book reader. I think I'm going to spend my money elsewhere this holiday season.
What a shame, too. I would really like to own one when they become reasonably priced.
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Three hundred for a cheap one with no memory... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who buys one of these things now deservers to have "sucker" tattooed on their forehead -- these things look like they're made to rip people off with continual "upgrades" as they gradually turn into something useable.
The e-paper displays sound interesting, I suppose, but if I'm going to spend $800 on a linux gadget I'd want it to have the full functionality of a laptop... paying that much for a crippled laptop doesn't make a lot of sense to me...
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In theory the Sony reader is what I'd rather have (Score:4, Informative)
That said, I would need a device with larger screen than either the kindle or the Sony gadget.
Why would Anyone Bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has nobody been paying attention to the many and various articles in recent years about "some random company" who decided to revoke their DRM product (new DRM, dropped product, company died, etc) and totally screw all their customers who had paid license fees to use this DRM functionality?
VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS people.
Why, the Kindling says the writing is on the wall. (Score:2)
I still say OLPC's XO laptop is better :) (Score:5, Insightful)
A bit bigger than the Kindle, sure, but sure seems like the one I'd rather have in my backpack / fallout shelter / carry-on bag. After all, does the Kindle have a game pad?
timothy
My display died in 3 hours! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reading an LCD (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, they finally got that technology out of the lab about a couple of years ago.
Re:Reading an LCD (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then again, in the future I expect things like textbooks may be more than that. 'Course, on the other foot, one reason textbooks are supposed to be expensive are their relatively limited production runs. Not a problem with ebooks.
Re:Reading an LCD (Score:5, Insightful)
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1. Convenience. You can do full text searches on every book in an eBook reader, an incredibly useful feature for anyone doing research or just looking up a particular term.
That's something computers are for - if I'm doing research, I'm not going to be doing it on a text reader.
2. Portability. You can carry a thousand books and also grab other content (newspapers, blogs, magazines, journals) in a unit the size of a paperback, which you can throw in a backpack, briefcase, etc.
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(That's my second candle post today!)
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Here's the meat:
1. Recovering your cost, and turning profit, after 2 years.
2. Carrying all your books around with you on one device (1000s of titles with a 2GB SD card, and you can carry multiple SD cards).
3. Free, wireless wikipedia.
4. Purchasing new books without having to travel to a book store, and with a 60-second delivery time.
5. Support for audio tracks and audio books.
6. Low/no publishing cost. $0.10 cents per file you transfer to your Kindle via EVDO,
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My point is that the Kindle seems to offer very little over a regular book.
I have to disagree! The encyclopedia function alone is worth, uh, volumes! Seriously, a portable encyclopedia set?
Add to that all of the usual ebook advantages, like not having to lug around tons of books if you are taking a trip, or the ability to just download a book on a whim that suits your mood rather than haul your butt to the bookstore or library. It's rather like the difference between an iPod and a CD player.
That said, like an iPod I will not be taking an ebook to the beach anytime soon.
(is that before or after sales taxes? I never groked the U.S. habit of *not* advertising the real price).
Simple: t
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Kindle doesn't have an LCD (Score:4, Informative)
Kindle has an e-paper [wikipedia.org] display, which uses something resembling ink that can be turned black or white, or a few shades in between, and doesn't require any power to maintain that shade. It looks very similar to paper, and isn't color so the resolution is pretty good.
The Sony e-book reader also has an e-paper display, so LCDs aren't being used on new e-book readers.
Re:Kindle doesn't have an LCD (Score:5, Informative)
I've never bought a DRM afflicted text and I never will. But the hardware's a different matter; the fact that it can display DRM doesn't preclude the device as long as it can display free texts.
Sony is kind of schizophrenic; their hardware is usually excellent but sometimes crippled by the media lobe of the company. In the case of the Sony Reader the hardware was left relatively unharmed, but the marketing of the device was absolutely crippled; they were so keen to push their online book store that most people don't realise it can display unencumbered texts just fine.
The Sony Reader is pretty damn good, though not perfect. For example, it doesn't have a page turn button on the right hand side more or less forcing you to hold it in your left hand or uncomfortably in your right. The iRex Iliad looks excellent, but it's pricier and the form-factor doesn't appeal to me.
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My Bad. Although I don't think they were listed in the video presentation.
Re:I was interested until (Score:5, Informative)
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OK, now I feel stupid. I went and looked, again, and it is listed.
My Apologies.
Re:I was interested until (Score:4, Insightful)
What's with these companies and "special" lockins? Why do they crave control over items they sell so much?
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Quite honestly, I'm underwhelmed. Maybe it's going to do a lot more than I think it will, but I'd really prefer something with a sizable reading page, and the absolute minimum bezel around the screen. I don't like to admit it, but Steve "I can't stand buttons" Jobs is on to something. Textual input and interaction is such a small part of the rea