So, what do you think about Kindle?

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Great review, Leo.

I've had a Sony e-Book reader for several months and I find myself using it a lot more than I thought I would.

The Sony Reader's SD memory slot is easily accessible, so I typically leave a card in my computer and transfer files to the SD card that I can use in my Sony Reader "to go."

It would be great to have the Kindle's always-on web browser, but for now the Sony Reader is adequate for what I use it for.

And who can forget the first portable book reader, the Sony Data Discman. It was a tiny little player with a tiny little screen. The content was distributed on tiny little CDs. Early versions were criticized for their poor search and annotation capabilities. These were addressed with a redressing of the reader engine; a little piece of software that Leo and I were part of. Leo's no stranger to digital books - in fact, you might consider him to be a real pioneer, having worked on them nearly 20 years ago.

What did it look like?
http://www.gracevideo.com/index.php?q=node/590

About the player:
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0014.html

About the authoring systems:
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0125.html

Odd that Amazon names their replacement for paper books with a word that has to do with burning things.

I don't care what features it has. It makes me think of people burning books and I'm not buying it.

I've seen the Sony Reader, and it looks impressive. I'm curious if there are any side-by-side comparisons between the Reader and Kindle available?

While the wireless internet access could be quite useful, I wonder if there are any other features that justify the higher price?

The first question that I had was does it have a "bookmark" feature? Like putting a piece of paper in a real book to mark your location, and/or a sticky note to mark the location on the page.

I read about this; however, I just got a Palm Treo 680 smartphone a couple of months ago. I have to have a backlight, as before in the old Palm III, it was too much eye strain to read. The last Palm m515 was good to read with a backlight, too.
Here the Palm Treo 680 is multiple use item so a better investment for me. I can go to many places and get e-books; I go to the Palm store, to the Adobe Digital Reader, to The W. Project for old books, and more, then play a crossword puzzle, and check email,etc all on the same machine. Well, Maybe in the future, with more improvements, I might look into it..... The backlight is very important to me so that is why it's mainly a "no" for me at this time.

re kindle. It all seems a tad expensive to me .
this is what i do when i go on holiday.
i bought a 4gb mp3 player for thirty pounds .
i go to the public libary take out the talking books i want. They rent at 75 pence a week i have just done eight books £6.00 i rip them to my computer total 74gb which is compressed to 1.4gb i am not stealing anything i have paid to rent them. bought a small set of fold up speakers for £10.00 for indoors. And i use the earplug speakers when i am in public places so as not to annoy any body .works fine for me and is cheap cheers and a merry christmas fatman

The Kindle is interesting.

To increase the usage time, why not add a strip of solar cells somewhere on the front to charge the battery? This might give it enough power to have backlighting?

Also, what are the possibilities of using the Kindle for school books? The Kindle could hold several books plus reference material such as a dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas, etc. With one of these children would not need backpacks bigger than they are.

I have a Kindle and a Sony e-book reader (1st gen). The Kindle is so much easier to use. I especially like the ability to email documents to account_name@kindle.com and have them converted and automatically loaded to the device. Also, my previously purchased ebooks in mobi format are trivial to load.

I agree with the comment about the Next-Page button on the right side being too big and too easy to press by accident. Also, the book doesn't stay in the cover very well unless you use the elastic strap over the lower right corner. This can also accidently hit a button and there should be a beveled area in the corner for this imo.

For the previous poster who asked about a bookmark feature, it does support bookmarks although it will also remember your place automatically so you only really need them if you are skipping ahead or moving around inside the document.

wondering if i can purchase and download kindle audiobooks and then listen to them on my PC with iTunes or different player?

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