A Few Thoughts On Amazon's Kindle.

When I headed over to Amazon.com on my rounds of the web, I was surprised to see a note talking about how successful the Kindle has been, I paused. For those of you who don't know, Kindle is Amazon's reading device that allows people to publish to their device, and more.

It uses DRM, which I'm not really a big fan of. If you and I both had Kindles, I couldn't lend you my books or vice versa - we'd practically have to swap Kindles. I suppose in a culture that doesn't share books with each other, that is OK. I don't think I'm a participant in that culture; I regularly read books that belong to others - and other people always seem to borrow my books. It might be convenient for me to say, "Sorry, I have a Kindle - you can't steal borrow my books anymore", but - to what end. Sometimes an old book to me is a new book to someone else, and I gladly give some books away. I can't do that with a Kindle. You can parade as many Pulitzer Prize winners, as many Nobel Laureates (including my pumpkin-vine Uncle, V.S. Naipaul), and as many smiling 'wowzers' sort of people. That is my criticism of the DRM, and so be it.

But I seem to be one of a few who don't like that about the Kindle. Maybe people will figure it out as they go along - likely they will accept it. Used book stores will fall into decay, those wonderful places where you could trade old books for new ones as well as meet people of similar interests. You know. Sort of like social networking that requires some physical activity on your part so that you don't need an Atkins diet and $3,000 worth of exercise equipment.

Or maybe I'm just getting outdated. Maybe the culture of sharing books is gone already. Maybe I am a dinosaur complaining about the tar pits while some enterprising folks with 10 gallon hats have some pumps snaking into it to churn out the material from my dead brothers and sisters.

But that is just the DRM. Looking over the Kindle's features - man, some of them are very cool. The screen looks great. They did have me at the screen.

It uses Whispernet, which is... only available in the United States. I'm not presently in the United States. Whispernet is useless to me. I have better luck getting a Apple-colored OLPC than a Kindle, though a Kindle seems more useful and has the cultural side 'benefit' of teaching children it is not right to share... Are you understanding why I don't like the DRM yet? OK.

At 10.3 ounces and being flat, that would be a lot easier than lugging around my library of books. But guess what? If I buy the Kindle... I still have my books. No one will say, "OK, you own that book so we'll give it to you on Kindle". Nope. Still have the 400 lbs of books, and I can't refer to them on the Kindle without paying $399 plus additional costs per title. So the Kindle ways 10.3 ounces, but the reality is that my library will gain 10.3 ounces for about $400. That doesn't seem like a bargain for me.

It says I can show the Kindle Store right from the Kindle. But if I can't use Whispernet - how do I connect the thing to the Internet? Maybe that is what the USB cable is for - but I don't see that as a feature unless I have direct internet access on the Kindle itself.

The Kindle seems designed for people in the United States with $399 to burn. And that really is sad to me, because it does seem like a nice device which unfortunately suffers vendor lock in. There are hacks around the Kindle's DRM - basically by converting files yourself - but still... is the United States the only market for Kindle? I could see the hardware itself being a major asset to the rest of the world if Amazon would allow it to happen. Heck, I might even get one (though people would have to buy $6,650 worth of stuff on Amazon through me for me to be able to afford one).

I don't know. Its really hard to impress me with a Kindle - even the publishing aspects seem somewhat limited. I honestly wonder if Amazon seriously thought this through - because if they did, they certainly marginalized a very large market. Outside of the United States, they call it 'the rest of the planet'. What I see is content that may not be available in any other medium trapped in the United States alone. The rest of the world won't get it.

And that is very, very sad.