After waiting over a month for it to arrive, the Amazon Kindle finally arrived at my door. The Kindle is one of a number of ebook readers one the market. If you are unfamiliar with the Kindle, let me summarize its two main features. The display on the Kindle is e-ink (as apposed to an LCD display on laptops). Basically, e-ink is a few million spheres that are white on one side and black on the other. The spheres are rotated to generate the display. The result is amazingly high contrast similar to that of paper, and it gets easier to read the more light you have. The second feature of the Kindle is that it connects to the outside world via a cell phone signal, which Amazon.com pays. This means that to download new books, newspapers, or blogs, you just push a button or two instead of hooking it up to your computer. This is SO convenient. For example, I accidentally deleted the book I was reading a couple days again, and I was able to re-download the book (for free) in a minute or two. Amazon stores my library now instead of numerous space hogging book shelves.
In short, I think the Kindle is the most innovative piece of technology released in years. It is much more innovative that the iPhone, which is basically a cell phone that can surf the web and store a few hundred songs. How is that innovative? My ‘el cheapo’ RAZR has been able to do that for years. The Kindle on the other will have a huge impact. When my daughter goes to college, she’ll take a Kindle and download textbooks instead of carry 100+ lbs of textbooks around. We’ll save square footage on our next house because we won’t have to store hundreds of books (after all, 1 sq ft in a house costs hundreds of dollars). Seriously, the impact of the Kindle could be huge. Excuse me now, I have to figure out how to purchase Amazon.com stock.
No comments:
Post a Comment