Kindle could kick-off electronic books

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 November 2007 00:14

Opinion and Analysis

The Kindle weighs less than 300gms and is "lighter and thinner than a typical paperback and fits easily in one hand," according to Amazon. Its built-in memory stores more than 200 titles, and hundreds more with an optional SD memory card. Additionally, a copy of every book purchased is backed up online on Amazon.com so that customers have the option to make room for new titles on their Kindle knowing that Amazon.com is storing their personal library of purchased content. One thing you cannot do is generate a hardcopy version of a purchase, or, presumably, sell it to anyone else.

Kindle comes with built-in access to The New Oxford American Dictionary and to Wikipedia. It has a full qwerty keyboard and allows users add annotations to text, just as they would write in the margins of a book. Customers can edit, delete and export these notes, highlight and clip key passages, and bookmark pages for future use. Additionally, Kindle automatically bookmarks the last page a customer reads.

Amazon claims to have been working on Kindle for three years and the end result is certainly comprehensive and impressive. This has to be the best chance yet for the electronic book to take off: all the pieces are in place: hardware, content and ancillary services.

Amazon has given no indication of when versions will be launched in other countries. The initial product runs only on an EV-DO cellular network, but presumably will have been designed in modular fashion so that other wireless technologies can easily be incorporated.