Amazon Kindle - Hands-on Transcript
The UK Kindle is here. Our first hands-on look at the Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader and how it could be a game changer for the printed word.
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Listen to FrequencyCast Show 55 - Kindle Hands-on
Also, try our 25 minute UK Kindle Review!
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Our first hands-on review of Amazon's new UK Kindle:
For Show 55, we looked at the new Amazon Kindle. Here's our transcript:
Carl:
What are we going to focus in on today?
Pete:
Today we're talking about this lovely, sexy, slimline black device that I've just handed to you.
Carl:
Oh, thank you very much. Ooh, it is sleek. That's thin, isn't it? It looks a bit like a solar panel with a qwerty keyboard on the bottom of it. Are you going to power it up?
The Amazon Kindle, released in the UK in August 2010
Pete:
OK, let me just do that - there you go. This is an Amazon Kindle, the third generation of their electronic book reader. This is a little bit of a game-changer, they've really thought this device through.
Carl:
So this is like the Sony eBook Reader, is it - but better?
Pete:
Pretty much. When the Sony eBook Reader came out, it offered the same kind of idea. You can download books, take them away on holiday, and read using this E Ink stuff, so it's a white background, black ink, and it's quite a handy, clever way of reading books.
Carl:
Right, yeah, I remember those - that was very clever, it looked like an Etch-a-Sketch, didn't it, behind the screen? I like that, but why do I want a Kindle over the eBook Reader? - because I thought the eBook Reader was quite slick.
Pete:
The Sony Reader was actually pretty impressive, to give it its credit. There was one big problem though, which was actually getting the books onto it. So what you'd have to do is go onto the Sony store, find a book you were after, download it as an electronic file, import it into your Sony application on your PC, and then plug in the USB, copy the book across, which is all a bit of a faff. It wasn't overly smooth and slick. What the Kindle does, obviously it's an Amazon product, so it's linked to the Amazon bookstore, nearly half a million books available instantly, and it uses a Wi-Fi connection, or even a mobile phone 3G connection, to automatically connect to Amazon's bookstore. You type in the author or the title of the book, and it will just download it over the air straight onto your machine - no faffing, no connecting to a PC, no importing.
Carl:
How long does that take?
Pete:
They actually say it will do it within 60 seconds, that you can literally find a book and be reading it within 60 seconds.
Carl:
Wow, well I'm impressed with that bit, but what I'm not impressed with - you said it has Wi-Fi or a mobile phone connection, or something? Does that mean I'm paying monthly subscriptions here?
Pete:
Yeah, you'd think - that's what I first thought, when I saw eBook Reader with a mobile phone in it, I thought - OK, so you're going to have to presumably take out a contract to use this thing, but you don't. What they've done is, they've done a deal with Vodafone in the UK. So it has a SIM card built in, and effectively it talks to the mobile phone network, it makes a data connection to Amazon, and you can browse and download onto this device, but there's no contract, so you pay no extra. You buy the device as a one-off fee, no extra contracts or subscriptions.
Carl:
All right, so I'm happy about that. But that means my eBook can double up as a mobile phone then, yes?
Pete:
Mmm, yeah - I can see where you're going with that. Sadly no - the mobile phone part of it is purely for the data to connect to Amazon for books and newspaper downloads. It does though have an experimental web browser though - Have a look at this, hang on a sec...
Carl:
Wow. That's clever. That's our site. Cool. That's nice on the eye. Better than a VDU
Pete:
But of course it's greyscale
Carl:
Well, yeah. Nice! I do have a question, I'll forget otherwise - the Sony eBook Reader had an mp3 player, does this?
Pete:
Yes it does actually - you can play back music, audio books and even podcasts, including ours, although you can't actually download podcasts over the air. If you look at the back there's a nice set of stereo speakers there, and at the bottom there's a headphone headphone jack and a volume control
Carl:
OK, so you can play it over headphones. But what does it sound like?
Pete:
Well, here's what we sound like...
Kindle plays show extract
So there you go - It can also do text-to-speech, like this:
Kindle Voice Extract
Pete:
There you go. That's pretty expressive, isn't it?
Carl:
Very impressive! So, just a brief description - it's thinner than the eBook, it's lighter than the eBook. It's about half the weight. It's a little bit longer, but not enough longer and it's just as wide, but the difference being this has a QWERTY keyboard, ready for you to write your own books, yeah?
Original Sony Reader (left) compared to the UK Kindle (right)
Pete:
No, they haven't actually added that feature quite yet.
Carl:
Oh, so why the QWERTY keyboard? Isn't that just a waste of a page? They could have added more text.
Pete:
Yeah, you'd think, wouldn't you? The Sony Reader doesn't have a QWERTY keyboard, this thing does. But if you think about it, because this has got a data connection, and you're actually getting your books on the device, you actually need to be able to type in the title or the author of the book that you're looking for. It also has a couple of other nice little features, like this has a built-in dictionary, but it's also got access to Wikipedia. So you can actually look up a reference in a book, if you're reading something, and you think, "Oh, I wonder what that's about - let me find out a bit more about it", you can access Wikipedia, and again any kind of text entry, you don't want to be doing it with a scroll wheel or any weird navigation. Sticking a qwerty keyboard on is a really sensible idea.
Carl:
So clearly, this is not touch sensitive? - and you've got full access to Wikipedia, which I was quite impressed with. So this makes it an ideal product for a student, I'm guessing. Did you say, you can do some sort of reference, so you had a paragraph, and you wanted to find out what the book was, or whatever, you can do sort of a word search in that sense, can you?
Pete:
Absolutely. So yeah, ideal for students - download all your reference books, use it as a look up, do a plain text search on it, find the page and the chapter that you're after. It's also got a handy little feature that you can share what you're reading using Facebook and Twitter. So again, they've really thought this through. The first generation of eBook readers were just, download a book and read it, but this is a lot more smart than that. It's integrating it with the social networks, giving you access to Wikipedia, instant access to books. One other really handy little feature is you can actually download a preview of a book before you buy, so they've really thought it through. To be honest, I think this is a bit of a game-changer. What we're going to see is what we had when iPods came out - it changed the way people get their music. This is actually there now, this has got everything you need on it, and I reckon we might start seeing this becoming a real mainstream device now.
Carl:
Yeah. Actually I can well believe that. This is quite slick. And I was just flicking through this, I can see that the page turn is a lot faster than the old Sony Reader, it's about half the time, isn't it? And this screen is great. I mean, it just looks like paper and it's going to be good in the bright sunshine - especially if you're a holiday maker on the beach. So the lightweight is an advantage, because of course, if that's going in your hand luggage, it's not going to weigh too much, it's not going to take up too many of your kilograms, is it? But then of course, there's the battery charger - oh no, don't have to worry about that either. One charge, one month - well, your average holiday's two weeks, so that means you don't need your charger, it cuts down on weight again. So it really is designed very cleverly for the holiday maker as well. I'm assuming that students would benefit from this in their rucksacks - saves carrying all those large books around for references, etc, and so forth, plus you can do research on it.
Pete:
This thing can store 3,500 books, and of course, wherever you are, as long as you've got a Wi-Fi connection, if you want a new book, you can just download it on the spot. And lLike you say, charge it once, it'll last you a month - perfect for holiday makers, and a really nice little tool, very well thought out.
Carl:
Excellent. How much?
Pete:
So when the Sony Reader came out, we were talking about £250 for a basic reader. This one, obviously it's got Wi-Fi built in, a mobile phone built in as well, and a QWERTY keyboard, and it's updated. So given that the reader was £250, how much do you think this Amazon product comes in at?
Carl:
£310.
Pete:
£109.
Carl:
Sorry?? - how?
Pete:
Exactly. The Wi-Fi only one is £109. The one with Wi-Fi and mobile phone is £149, so a little bit more for the mobile phone part of it, but yeah, Amazon just wants to get it in people's hands, so they are doing it at a very cheap price. Obviously, they're going to make their money off the sales of the books. You've got to get your books from Amazon. You can get some free books on it, you can also put pdf files on it, but people are going to really be downloading from Amazon. So it's in their interest to make it a cheap device, and get it into as many hands as possible.
What I have noticed is Waterstones have just slashed the price of their readers, so they're clearly worried that the Kindle's just hit the market. The Sony Reader's now dropped to almost £100.
Carl:
So how much are the books?
Pete:
Still cheaper than a paperback. We looked at one - £7.99 for the paperback of a top ten best-seller, electronically you can get it for £3.79, so maybe half price?
Carl:
So in fact, you're going to make your money back on the device within about a year, if you read about 20 to 40 books a year?
Pete:
Yeah, probably a fair way of reading it, definitely.
Supplied with the UK Kindle
Carl:
Cool. We've literally just got this - is this available to everyone at the moment? Or have we been special?
Pete:
Well this UK version has just come out and ours actually turned up this morning by courier. And from what we've seen, Amazon has been struggling to get these things out the door over the August Bank Holiday. We'd actually like to say "hi" to all of those in the Amazon forum who've been acting as a bit of a support group for us folks waiting for that CityLink courier to turn up. Special thanks to Chris O'Neill for a little bit of inside information on what happens at Amazon's warehouse.
If you do want a Kindle - they have currently sold out, but if you order one today, you'll get one by mid-September. If you pop over to our show notes, I'll stick up a nice picture of us holding this device, a few more details of the spec, and details of how to get one these on pre-order.
As this is such a powerful device, we might also do one of our Unofficial Guides, perhaps. So, Listeners - let up know if you'd like a more detailed review, and fire over your questions and let us know!
Carl:
Fabulous! So, just looking through the list of things to do today, we've also got Project Canvas - oh Canvas, yea - what is this? I've heard quite a bit about this on the news recently.
Continues: Project Canvas Overview Transcript
Listen to FrequencyCast Show 55 - Kindle Hands-on Also, try our 25 minute UK Kindle Review!
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More information:
- Order the Kindle
- Kindle Information
- Amazon Kindle Unofficial Guide - Our audio review of the 2010 Kindle
- Electronic Book Readers
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