More on Kindle Reviews.

What better way to start the week off than with a Kindle post! My latest obsession since the iPhone and you are loving it. Admit it. First things first, a lot of people have been suspect about the number of Kindles sold given the speed of their selling out and Amazon’s not saying how many they sold. I have no idea but a few thoughts - first, remember when Apple didn’t mention how many iPhones got sold? I think a lot of companies hold off on these numbers. Second, the Kindle has been sitting at the #1 bestsellers list for electronics sold out or not since it was launched - other devices have trundled up and down that list in other spots during that time but the Kindle has sat pegged to the top. There’s some sort of demand for this device for sure. Sure, not iPhone demand, but demand nevertheless. Now that it says that Kindles will not arrive by Dec 25th I wonder if it will slip.

I saw Scoble’s video review of the Kindle and have a few things to say. It follows glove in hand with the pattern of “And Amazon doesn’t send unicorn’s with the Kindle!! I want a Unicorn!!” that the A-List bloggers have been complaining about.

He opens it up with what he calls a “major problem”. He can’t buy books on the Kindle, like paper books that he can send to his friend. This is obviously a major problem because of the way it prevents you from reading e-books. Oh, huh? It has nothing to do with reading E-books? Oh yeah. It has nothing to do with reading E-books and why would a requirement of your e-book reader be a general interface to Amazon? Sure it’d be nice to have, but a major problem?

Then he gets to some design issues. He talks about how easy the buttons are to press accidentally - a problem that many have talked about, definitely an issue with the device. He harps a ton about the rubberized back - he really hates it but he doesn’t really say why… somehow despite it being a flat rubber piece for traction it doesn’t work. I don’t know, I haven’t held one, but it seems like an odd problem.

The best part comes next - he talks about the 5 places people hold it - all the corners and the bottom - but holding it at the top corners presses the buttons, yes that’s a problem. Holding it in the left hand where you always see everyone holding it and you can imagine holding it and Amazon imagined you holding it (because they put the next button right there) he says they need to put the next and previous buttons right there. Doing as he suggests would limit even further where you could hold it since it would assume a very specific spot for your thumb. And, oh, Amazon did put a next button exactly where he wants one and a second before saying where he wanted his buttons he was saying how difficult it was to press (despite it also being too easy to press). So to sum up - Amazon makes it too easy and too hard to press the buttons and Amazon doesn’t let you hold it anywhere you want even though his own button scheme would limit you even further.

He complains a little bit about the menu system - I haven’t seen this but it sounds like a reasonable complaint. Deeply nested menus are clunky and annoying, although light and appropriate menu usage can be fine. He also complains about the screen flash - but that’s a limitation of the technology, not Amazon’s fault as far as I know. You trade screen refresh rates and some flashing for high resolution and long battery life. That’s life. He also cops to his knowledge of the refresh limitations but then in the next breath suggests it needs a touch screen. I don’t know - it would seem like a touch screen would even more mandate immediate response from the screen than working with a keyboard.

Then in a fit of craziness he decides he’s got the marketing know how to really fix all the kindle’s problems. Yup, free books. He thinks the the key to all Kindle’s ailments are pre-loading it with free travel books or maybe just 5 or 6 books. What? That would make it way less appealing to me there’s very little chance that they’d put on books that I’d actually want and then at $400, I’d feel like some reasonable portion of that price was going to paying for those books that I don’t want. Ridiculous, a slightly less ridiculous thing to say would be that it came with a $50 credit towards buying your first Kindle e-books.

At some point in his diatribe he complains about the Kindle’s lack of social network? What? What the hell does that have to do with an e-book reader? Again here’s something that maybe would be interesting to see (maybe not), but as a requirement? What has he been smoking? Where’s his rant against the iPhone about not knowing where all my other iPhone having friends are?

Scoble’s review mostly was a review of random stuff that he thought the Kindle needed to have in his imaginary world. In the portion of his review where he actually reviews the device he seems to contradict himself in several areas. Most of his complaints where he doesn’t contradict himself are otherwise well known - blogs suck, drm sucks, etc.. He does raise the interesting point that there aren’t real page numbers, which is pretty tired. He almost gets through saying that they should get rid of the experimental web browser but half way through that thought he changes his mind. The funny thing is that he obviously actually likes the device, he’s going to continue using it because despite 15 minutes of ranting he doesn’t really have that many complaints about, y’know, reading a book on it. It’s just that for reasons of Amazon’s poor marketing he won’t recommend it to his friends and family.

Sigh. Take a look at the Kindle reviews on amazon - make sure to sort them by recency. Almost exclusively the bad reviews are from people who are ranting about the problems of the Kindle without actually owning one. Those who have bought one almost uniformly love it.

Dec 3rd, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: amazon · kindle