Re: Review for Kindle from the Washington Post

--- In [email protected], "John Landahl" <jlandahl@...> wrote:
> At this point you'll have trouble finding any review that will make you want to rush out 
and 
> buy a Kindle, Tony.  In fact, dozens of people have posted negative comments raising 
the 
> exact points you do on the Amazon website with titles like "Laughable".  So why do 
people 
> keep buying them despite the issues you raise?  Apparently a lot of people either don't 
> care much about the PDF format (that would include many members of this group, 
based 
> on comments they've posted here over the years) or they take the time to read the 
> information on the Amazon website.
> 
> For example, there's a discussion about PDF on the Kindle in which people say that with 
a 
> free copy of Mobipocket Publisher, you can convert PDFs to documents the Kindle can 
> read.  And the $0.10 charge is for the convenience of not plugging in the USB cable and 
> hooking the Kindle up to your computer in order to transfer files.
> 
> One interesting discussion on the Amazon website right now reports that while the 
overall 
> product rating of the Kindle is 2.2 stars due to the hundreds of negative reviews to the 
> effect of "I will never buy a Kindle!", the small number posted by actual Kindle owners 
give 
> the product a 4.74 star rating.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/74-STARS-TRUE-CUST-
> RATING/forum/FxBVKST06PWP9B/Tx5UBM7X6JT52J/1/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?
> %5Fencoding=UTF8&cdAnchor=B000FI73MA&asin=B000FI73MA
> 
> With regard to the power issues, although one of the few relatively favorable reviews has 
> faulted the Kindle for short battery life, searching the Amazon customer reviews for 
> "battery life" doesn't turn up any complaints from actual owners about it--mainly the 
> comments are that battery life is good.  Apparently that reviewer got a device with a 
> defective battery, but if that were common I'm sure we'd be hearing plenty about it in 
the 
> actual customer reviews!
> 
> John Landahl
> InfoStrategist.com
> Seattle, WA
>

John,

I've been using MobiPocket Creator for a while now, and it doesn't do well with PDF files, 
in my experience.  Random spacing issues crop up, with spaces thrown in where they 
shouldn't be, and words crammed together where they ought not to be.  Sure, I can go 
through the HTML file that MP Creator makes as an interim step and correct all those 
places... IF I have the time and inclination.  Not everyone who wants to use an ebook 
reader, wants to be the "techie" sort to go through a conversion process for books they 
want to read, if they already have them in a PDF format.

Granted, it's only a 10-cent process, but I wonder if garbling of the text (as the reviewer 
reported) is a common issue.

I haven't used a Kindle, but going by what the reviewer said, only plain text files could be 
directly imported by the user via the included cable.  From what I've heard, that's what the 
documentation says, too, although documentation is often wrong with a new device of any 
kind.  It's possible that the included cable allows you to import anything in ANY format, 
but I have no idea without trying it.  As I'm not a paid reviewer, that's an expensive 
experiment.

I am curious, too, why there is so much excitement about the Kindle vice the Sony Reader? 
Is it the keyboard?  Seems more of an annoyance to me.  Immediate gratification via the 
wireless connection? For a $100 difference in price, I can happily load up my books on the 
device while at home or at the office.  And there is the fact that, as a competitive effort, 
Sony is giving away 100 titles with the purchase of a Sony Reader right now.

Almost every reviewer I've read who commented on the ergonomics of the things rated the 
Sony Reader higher because of weight, overall "feel" and the control placement.  It must be 
the weight of Amazon's advertising and marketing power that is making the Kindle so 
much more popular right now.
 

Tony






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