Kindle 2 Just Got Cheaper
Amazon has lowered the Kindle 2 price from $359 to $299, as the company looks to push more of its small e-book readers out the door. The newest Kindle, the larger DX, remains priced at $489, and Amazon expects to start delivering them in three to five weeks. The Kindle 2 is shipping now.
Kindle books now count for a full 35 percent of Amazon’s book sales, which works out to about two Kindle books per device sold per month. It would appear that e-books are here to stay, given these huge sales numbers.
I still keeping my sony prs-505.. I do not support amazon’s DRM at all w/this thing.
Ok, so you are supporting the Sony DRM. What’s the difference?
I’ve been seeing an interesting trend on trash talking the Kindle with the DRM and lock in. The Kindle supports many non-DRM encodings, either people are ignoring that fact or just misinformed.
For the record I have a PRS500 and just switched to a Kindle DX. I have some Amazon purchased books and some pdfs and free books. (note – the current pdf I’m reading is from Manning.com which sells the pdf for less than the dead tree version. Each page has my name and email addr on it but that’s the extent to the DRM. I can live with that.
My PRS500 will be going to ebay when I get the time.
This is tempting. But I still want to read some end user reviews on the Kindle DX. That big screen is appealling, but I want to hear how comfortable it is to use for extended periods.
My local buddy Dwight Silverman reviewed the DX and addressed comfort:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/silverman/6503870.html
mobileread.com has a nice forum that covers all of the current (and some past) ebooks.
I like the DX, yes it’s bigger and next week I’ll be able to tell how it works on a flight (coach class) and traveling.
For reading it’s nice but they really needed to have the page turn buttons on both sides of the device.
the response is nice and most of my pdfs are viewable.
I don’t think it’s for everyone (heck you can buy a netbook for the price) but since I spend many times the cost in books each year I can justify it by just having a large portion of my library with me on the road.
This does mean that I don’t buy tech books without the ability is to get a pdf version.
I remember Matt Miller saying that he had to go down the street with his Kindle to pick up a Sprint connection. I live in Wyoming and there is no access to Sprint in most of the state (Verizon and a local GSM carrier, Union Wireless are the dominant providers). Does the Kindle use a Verizon signal without penalty or additional cost to the user?
I’ve not heard of any roaming charges on the Kindle.
How many Kindle ebooks are sold outside of the US though?
I won’t even consider an ebook device until there is no DRM. I read books over and over. Some of my books, even paperbacks, are over 30 years old (admittedly I’ve scanned them all in to my PC – as unDRM’d books so I can read them on any device I want). Will people be able to read DRM’d books in 30 years time that they have purchased today?