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I'm not sure I've seen a gadget blogged about as much as the Kindle. Most of the posts were negative or critical when most of the bloggers had not owned, used or lived with a kindle. Were they pissed that Amazon chose to give old media (Newsweek) the scoop? And where are the in-depth comparisons to the product it is going head to head with (the Sony Reader)? And really, the fact that it doesn't do PDF is something people care about? Honestly, I bought this thing to read books purchased from the amazon store. I could not care less what format they come in... and DRM? Well we had to suffer through that for how many years with the music business? It took Apple how many years to loosen the shackles of DRM? It sure as heck did nothing to keep the iPod from experiencing explosive growth. The industry and the customers will go along kicking and screaming till Amazon can re-negotiate the DRM thing. But to do that Kindle will have to be a success.

At the end of the day, I think books are different than music. You see, I can purchase a CD and rip it with no DRM, so I've always had a viable alternative to DRM on music. But books? It's not like you can just scan them and read them on your laptop. This is a bit trickier. I think the best kind of DRM for a book would be to model it after a library or something. You can purchase a book, and "lock it" for reading. When you are done reading it you can then return it to your library and you can then:

• gift it to some one
• rent it to some one
• lend it to some one
• transfer it to some other reader format

that seems reasonable to me.

Since the Kindle has built in wireless, this could work very easily. I could for say finish a book and then let my wife read it next on her Kindle. We could have a shared book library where we could put books after we've read them. Ditto for the paper or magazines. Things that we can do today with the ones made from dead trees.

Anyway, I think the best post I've read so far is by the folks at 37signals:

One thing we have all had a chance to live with are books and newspapers. They’re stacks of dead trees. Bulky blocks of words. They take up a lot of space, need to be pushed around by plane and truck, and quickly fill up your carry on if you want to take more than a couple with you. When you buy a book, you’re buying a tiny piece of furniture that you usually carry with you the rest of your life. Moving? Time to pack up the books!

I know book lovers like to talk about the permanence of books, but I think that’s overrated and over-romanticized. Some people love to build extensive physical libraries to house their books. Not me. I’d prefer to read it and move on. Sure I could buy a book, read it, and sell it or give it to a friend or a library, but I’m just looking for the knowledge, not the inventory or an exit strategy.

That’s not to say books are bad. Books are wonderful, important things. But they’re also terrible at a lot of things. You can’t search paper. You can’t bring that many with you at once. They suck up valuable resources in production and transportation. They take up a lot of space. They leave an artifact when you’re done with them.

[37signals]

With any v1 product there are going to be problems... and really, if any company is going to make ebooks work for real, it's going to be Amazon. After all, they sell books.

Kindle isn’t the first eBook reader, but it’s the first portable bookstore. That’s novel. A book in 60 seconds whenever I want it at used-bookstore prices. And the daily push newspaper feature sounds like one hell of a bonus. I love getting the paper, but I hate getting the paper. What a complete waste of resources just so I can get yesterday’s news. I like that there’s some genuinely new thinking behind Kindle. We should embrace this, not tear it to shreds before it even has a chance.

[37signals]

Sony's hardware is nice looking but the UX is clumsy. The buttons are small and hard to use. The formatting of the books is inferior to the Kindle making them harder to read (see screen shots below). I didn't even realize I had a problem till I read a sample chapter of a book I purchased on the Sony Sore. Finally, Sony just plain sucks at making software. It's really sad. I've never seen a Sony web site that was something I'd want to use. Amazon has done a great job of building a usable site to buy stuff, browse stuff and generally read reviews and do product research. Sony's ebook web site and software is terrible.

Another thing... Amazon actually added features to the ebook that make it better than a traditional book. Sony did not. For example, Amazon:

• Lets you look up words with the built in dictionary
• Lets you get to wikipedia
• Lets you purchase or trial books anywhere in the US (like in an airport or wherever) from the device
• Lets you read newspapers and magazines
• Stores your bookmarks, and annotations in the cloud so you have them forever
• Stores your book purchases in the cloud allowing you to download them again
• Actually usability tested the device (the buttons all work well)
• Gives you a freaking AC adapter to charge it

And finally, Amazon added a little bit of magic to the device. Lets give them some credit for creating a piece of consumer electronics device that piggy backs off a cell network without requiring me to fork over a part of my soul to the cell phone carrier.

I've purchased 3 books already, one via the amazon.com website and 2 on the device itself. The process went flawlessly in all cases.

If I think of this device in perspective I think it has a lot of similarities to both the iPod and the Apple AirPort. This device has finally liberated me from stacks of books, and a pc that I need to sync with just to use the device in the same way that my iPod let me carry around my entire music collection (remember mix tapes) and the AirPort let me use my laptop anywhere in my house or at work without finding an Ethernet cable. The Kindle is a portable bookstore that provides a limitless avenue to purchase and enjoy books with an experience that feels book like.

This is the fist gadget of late that functions really well without a computer.

Anyway, I think compared to the Sony Reader, there is no question that the Kindle is a much better device... methinks it's only going to get better.

You can see my full uboxing and a bunch of photos comparing the size and shape of Kindle to the Sony Reader. Note the pictures that show how the Reader and the Kindle format pages differently.

Below are some highlights.

Kindle is only about 10% bigger than the Reader.

Kindle has an odd shape but is very comfortable to hold

Top view

Overhead

Differences in rendering book cover

A couple of things to note here. The reader doesn't format pages as well as the Kindle. Also the font on the Kindle is easier on the eyes.

You can see how the sony reader jumbles paragraphs together. That ugly black mark is a footnote. Annoying and distracting. The Kindle does this better.

You can see how much easier the Kindle is to read here. Line spacing is better and paragraph breaks.

PS - the DRM thing sucks in a way because I gave Sony money for an ebook that I cannot transfer to the Kindle.