{"id":22854,"date":"2011-09-28T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=22854"},"modified":"2011-09-28T11:16:11","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T17:16:11","slug":"the-new-kindles-look-pretty-spiffy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/28\/the-new-kindles-look-pretty-spiffy.html","title":{"rendered":"The new Kindles look pretty spiffy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I’ve bought too many Kindles of late to justify running out and buying a new one (sigh). \u00a0But a few thoughts on the flurry of Kindles coming out.<\/p>\n

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  1. Kindle<\/strong>: The newest “traditional” Kindle is lighter, thinner, faster, and has no physical keyboard. $80<\/li>\n
  2. Kindle Touch<\/strong>: Same form factor as the current Kindle, the same sunshine-friendly e-Ink, but lets you swipe the screen to turn the page and features a virtual keyboard. \u00a0($99 WiFi, $149 3G)<\/li>\n
  3. Kindle Fire<\/strong>: An Amazon-dominated Android 7-inch tablet, which means music and movies as well as books, but with a more traditional tablet screen (color! quickness! glare!) ($199)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"<\/a>
    The Kindle Touch, the new "normal" Kindle, and the Kindle Fire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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    The Touch, and possibly the new Kindle, also now come with “X-Ray,” essentially a research file (with both Amazon and Wikipedia info) about each book you get when you download it. \u00a0It’s a nice feature, and also a clever way to distinguish Amazon’s offerings from, oh, free (or pirated) ebooks.<\/p>\n

    Okay, the low prices on these are going to be hugely attractive to a lot of people, and major competition to a lot of tablet users and other competing eReaders (esp. the Nook). \u00a0Granted, the tablet doesn’t have 3G connectivity, or GPS, or a camera — but that’s not going to be a huge turnoff for a number of consumers. (It also comes with a 3-month Amazon Prime trial; if you already have Prime, then you get free access to a number of Amazon video offerings.) And it’s got a proprietary browser that relies on Amazon’s computing ability on the Net to speed things up; it will be interesting to see how that works.<\/p>\n

    Personally, I don’t have enough need for a tablet to consider the Fire (and, if I did, I’d go for a tablet that was more purely Android, not so much the Amazon-controlled kind), but I can see where it would be attractive to a lot of people. \u00a0The Touch sounds nice, though.<\/p>\n

    Like I said, not buying anything … yet … but at these prices, a replacement Kindle looks a lot more attractive in the mid-term.<\/p>\n

    I’m sure there will be lots more commentary, but here are a couple of articles about the reveal:<\/p>\n