Rob's Rants

I normally hate re-posting other blog content, but this is directly related to some of my previous e-reader posts.

TechCrunch reports today that a hacker may have solved one of my major gripes about the Amazon Kindle. He’s apparently come up with a way to strip the DRM from Kindle books so they can be turned into a PDF and read on other readers.

I can only hope that Amazon and the publishing industry doesn’t go all RIAA on this and lose their mind. If Amazon has any ability to think out of the box, they might realize that they could leverage their position as the dominant bookstore and actually sell to Sony and other e-reader customers. Because the Sony bookstore certainly doesn’t have the depth that Amazon has. And it’s not nearly as easy to shop, ever after the latest 3.1 update to the software.

So bravo Labba …

Or at least your content …

As reported in many places recently, including the New York Times, Amazon decided that it was perfectly acceptable to delete copies of e-books purchased from Amazon right off of people’s Kindles without notice, warning, or apology. Although a refund was issued, that hardly negates the impact of knowing that your purchase of content through Amazon is a meaningless, hollow contract and Amazon can simply take your stuff back whenever they feel like it. How creepy is that?

And the ultimate irony? This practice was brought to light after mass deletions of Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell! How perfect!

As the Times said,

Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

One more reason to value the Sony e-reader system … no one’s going to hack into it in the middle of the night and make your legally purchased stuff disappear down the “memory hole.”

Perhaps the worst part is that Amazon didn’t just steal back their own content … they stole (and presumably destroyed) stuff that wasn’t theirs. Also reported in the Times:

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.

Can you say class-action lawsuit? It serves them right if they lose a bundle for this one…

Apology!

As reported in the New York Times, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued an apology today (7/24/2009). Read about it here…

It’s been more than a month since I bought my e-reader and I’m still very happy with the purchase. I’ve already finished three books on it and I have to say that the combination of Sony and Calibre is difficult to beat. Rather than write yet another review which covers the same ground as all the others out there, I thought I’d specifically address the areas that are most often cited as weaknesses on the Sony, particularly when compared to the Kindle.

The Screen

There is no question that the Sony screen has more glare than the Kindle. The touchscreen layer definitely reduces the sharpness and creates an extra layer for reflections to show. But I haven’t found this really any more or less annoying than any of my other mobile devices, including the smooth-screened Dell laptop I’m using to write this. In fact, the size of the PRS-700 means that there is almost always an angle at which you can tilt it to make the glare move to a different part of the screen. After using the PRS-700 while commuting by train and while waiting in a few lines, the glare isn’t a problem, whether I’m in bright sun sitting in the window seat of a train or reading at night in bed with the built-in light. I will admit that I am lucky that I have good eyesight, so the reduced sharpness also doesn’t bother me — your mileage may vary in this regard. Judging by the reactions of the friends and colleagues I’ve shown this to, the sharpness may be an issue more than the glare. Bottom line: The screen is acceptable to me and not a reason to forgo this device. To borrow from the Mythbusters, this is plausible, depending on your eyesight.

Tethering / Downloading Books

Much has been made of the Kindle’s wireless ability and the Sony’s lack of wireless. I haven’t found it a real problem not to have an immediate wireless connection to download a book. Wireless access to the Amazon store is certainly an interesting feature, and it may be the wave of the future, but I think it’s a “nice-to-have” feature more than a “must-have.” I mean, really, who needs to buy another book RIGHT NOW while in some odd location? In this world of constant connections (I’m writing this on a train via a Verizon mobile broadband connection) who doesn’t have a moment to sit, plug in, and organize your books. And another thing, the wireless connection on the Kindle is certainly good at getting books and things onto the device, but how do you manage them once they’re there? Or is the Kindle designed to be some kind of electronic bookshelf where the hot novel of the moment is read and then left to sit and rot for the next 20 years? I get that the books will be available on Amazon for future download so backing-up isn’t critical, and you can always delete right from the device, but I’m not buying it — I think I would want to easily move my e-books around and back them up on my own. The Calibre software makes this really easy, but more importantly, it does so much more including scraping news feeds that I can’t imagine I’d even want to use a Kindle without it, so I’d be tethering it anyway. Bottom line: Wireless is nice but not really that useful a feature. In homage to the Mythbusters, I call bullshit on this one … lack of wireless is not a reason to forgo the Sony.

Content

Much is made of Amazon’s expansive library of e-books compared to Sony’s and the other electronic booksellers on the web (ebooks.com, etc.). But I don’t see it. Any popular, recent book seems to be available to the Sony, and I haven’t run into anything that I really can’t find yet. And more importantly, since the Sony can digest more formats than the Kindle, I’ve been able to throw a lot of non-book PDFs and other formats at it with no problem. This includes the news feeds that Calibre gathers for me as well as PDF versions of user manuals and journal articles. And, if you’ve looked at Amazon’s magazine and newspaper selections lately, even though they’re improving, the selection is certainly limited and the editions seem to be expensive. Calibre can grab better content directly from the publisher and cut out the middle-man. I like that. Bottom line: Sony’s easy support for more formats means it wins hands-down over the Kindle.

Battery

This is an area that I didn’t see in many other reviews and it should be. Because if the PRS-700 has a major weakness, I think that it’s the battery. Compared to what my Kindle-owning friends tell me the Sony battery is pathetic. A friend tells me that reading a couple of hours a day, they recharge their Kindle every few weeks. With that usage, I’d be surprised if the Sony made it a full week. And worse than that, most of my normal USB chargers don’t push enough current to actually recharge it. I’ve plugged it into an old BlackBerry 8100 charger I had and a portable travel USB charger and neither will top off the battery. Ditto for the small portable AA powerpack that I carry to keep my phone going. So in this case the Sony is a big loser — you need to tether it to charge it or cough up $19.99 for the wall wart (the Buy.com price) or figure out what the current draw is and find some other charger with enough power to charge it.

Final Verdict

I haven’t regretted purchasing the Sony PRS-700. I’ll admit that the battery thing is a bit annoying, but it’s manageable. If you’re like me and carry a laptop almost everywhere, there is really no need to worry about the Kindle’s wireless connectivity being an advantage, or about not being able to charge the battery. And the screen has acceptable sharpness and the glare isn’t an issue.

Given the chance I’d still buy the PRS-700.

This is a quick one:

The software that ships with the Sony series of e-readers is truly horrible. I should have believed the other reviews regarding this. So, if convenience is a major factor for you, then the Kindle is definitelty the better choice.

But, as usual, the Open Source community has come to the rescue of all e-reader users, this time in the form of a program called Calibre which is an amazing e-reader management tool. And free! I’ve been using this program for a week now and I can’t say enough about it. The main feature that I like is the ability to use pre-made “recipes” to download and package RSS content into an e-reader format. So Calibre is able to pull down all the important blogs that I follow for work and load them onto the PRS-700 for me so I can read them on the train during the week. Amazing.

Get it at http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/.

I finally took the plunge and joined the latest technogeek craze and purchased a new e-book, or e-reader since it displays more than books.

There are a few choices on the market today, but the category is dominated by either Amazon’s Kindle family (now the Kindle 2 and larger Kindle DX) or Sony’s e-reader family (now the PRS-505 & PRS-700). If you aren’t already familiar with the idea of an e-reader, it’s an electronic device dedicated to displaying text using e-paper technology. E-paper differs from a standard LCD display (think laptop) primarily because it isn’t back-lit. This has plusses and minuses; the biggest benefits are that no backlight means dramatically lower energy consumption (current e-readers can go weeks without recharging) and less eye-strain. Downsides are that, like regular paper, you can’t read in the dark.

Anyway, I spent the better part of several weeks researching these two device families. The differences are subtle in many ways. Because there are only two e-paper manufacturers in the world right now, and one is developing its own reader, both the Amazon and Sony devices use the same screens. So all of the differentiation resides in the design and execution of the other, non-core functions.

Cutting to the chase, I bought a Sony PRS-700, for which I will write a detailed review after I’ve spent a couple of months with it. For now though, I can outline the comaprison process I used to decide.

My Characteristics

Most reviews I read dive right to the devices and then describes which the author likes better. But rarely do the reviewers give us pertinent information about themselves up front. And this is critical t weighing any opinion. For example — one of the common knocks on the Sony PRS-700 is the slight reduction in resolution caused by the additional screen necessary to make the built-in light work. I’ve compared the Sony side-by-side to a friend’s Kindle and the difference doesn’t bother me. But I have perfect 20-20 vision and above average night-vision. If I wore Coke-bottle thick glasses, this might be a bigger problem! So here are some critical things I think you should know.

• I have perfect vision and great night vision. I’m the kid whose mother yelled at him constantly to turn on more lights or I’d ruin my eyes. She was wrong. I read in near-dark all the time. So display clarity is not super-critical for me.
• I commute to work by train, approx. 1-1/2 hours each way. This is where I do most of my reading. I rarely read in bed.
• I don’t read many books. Maybe 3 or 4 a year. 90% of my reading is periodicals, including The Economist (which I will continue to receive in print), and then selections from The Atlantic, The Nation, Newsweek, and National Review.
• My job requires me to stay aware of both industry trends found in blogs (like ePatients, Running a Hospital, Adam Bosworth’s blog, etc.) and in medical research, which are articles typically published in PDF format.
• I am a gadget and techno-geek. I don’t mind hacking my devices, using 3rd party or open-source software, and generally making things work for me. So convenience isn’t my #1 criteria.
• I don’t annotate my books or articles. I just don’t. All my life I’ve been fortunate to have an incredible memory for written material. Even in college I didn’t highlight or underline a single textbook.
• I live with my laptop. I take it everywhere and use the same laptop for home and work. It goes on vacation with me. So having a device with independent connectivity isn’t really important.

Now, on to the device comparison.

Physical Characteristics

First, a side-by-side photo (borrowed from the Computerworld review located at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130624)

Kindle to the left - Sony to the right

The design of the Sony appealed to me from the first time I held it. It’s more compact than the Kindle 2 and it’s made of metal. It feels more dense and substantial. Since I carry this back and forth to work each day, the durability advantage of the Sony (even if it’s only perception) appealed to me.

I also really liked the way that the Sony fely in my hand. Compared to the Kindle, it feels … well … like a book. And isn’t that the point?

Also, the Sony has a touch screen. For some reason that was important to me, and honestly I don’t know why — I would normally tell someone else expressing this that they were acting rediculous. The main benefit of the touchscreen is that you can turn pages on the Sony with a finger-swipe. On the Kindle you must use the buttons on the sides. I really love the finger-swipe. I admit it’s petty, but I rated it as an important feature.

Connectivity

The main differentiating feature of the Kindle is the built-in 3G wireless connection. Touted as a game-changing feature, the connection is clearly designed to facilitate purchases from the Amazon store. I will admit that I wasn’t impressed by this for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t read that many books and other than books, the Amazon store doesn’t sell much. Second, I dislike being tied to the cellular carrier which Amazon has chosen. Call it my net-neutrality streak, but any relationship between industry behemoths (Amazon & Sprint in this case) can ONLY server to screw the consumer. And the fact that the wireless costs are hidden only reinforces that for me. For what it’s worth, this is the reason I don’t have an iPhone either – the satanic bargain struck between Apple and AT&T is a horrible deal for consumers and should be declared illegal, in my humble opinion. So, unless I’m buying books from Amazon, which I’m rarely doing, both devices need to be tethered to a computer to work. And at least I can choose any carrier’s 3G card for my computer.

Content

The Kindle is pretty well tied to Amazon.com. It’s clearly designed for people who read and buy a lot of books and its features are all tuned towards making these purchases an easy and efficient process. But my research indicated that the Kindle falls down when other content is involved.

First, people other than Amazon sell e-books and these come in a variety of more “open” formats such as EPub or Mobi. And in the ultimate irony, Mobipocket was purchased by Amazon in 2005 and the Kindle doesn’t even support the format! So I am leftwith one of two choices: either Amazon is too disorganized or too rushed to incorporate support for their own technology into their new hardware, or, more probably, Amazon is trying to quietly squash more open formats which might compete with their book sales. Either way I am not impressed.

Because non-Amazon content needs to be converted there are only two choices – tether the device and get 3rd-party software (like Calibre) to manage the files or use Amazon’s service via wireless and e-mail which charges per download (there’s the satanic link again). Even after this, I read that the support on the Kindle isn’t spectacular:

Bonus 16th Update: Having copied over .DOC, .TXT, .RTF, .PDF, .GIF, .JPEG, and .PDB files directly to the Kindle via USB, only the .TXT file showed up for viewing.

The .DOC file I sent over the air to the Kindle arrived as a .AZW, the Kindle format, which implies to me that the only two file formats this thing can read natively are .AZW and .TXT. That’s a huge bummer.

- from http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/15-things-i-just-lea.html

And regarding the lack of support for open standards, I am inclined to agree with Tim O’Reilly who wrote this in a recent Forbes editorial:

Yet I have a bold prediction: Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years. . .

. . . In developing the business plan for the Kindle, Amazon was no doubt influenced by the great success of Apple ( AAPL – news – people ) with the iPod: Proprietary hardware and proprietary file formats made Apple into the kingpin of the digital music industry. But what Amazon seems to have missed is the important role that “free” played in the success of the iPod. People didn’t populate their iPods solely with music purchased from Apple. It was easy for them to “rip” their own CDs into the standard mp3 file format and load their entire music collection onto the device.

While users can load some of their own documents onto the Kindle, there is no easy way to “rip” a book. But with epub-based readers, there are millions of free titles available, and books are available from many vendors, each able to experiment with new business models. . .

Because I read so few books and so many other formats, this was a no-brainer for me. The more open nature of the Sony system was appealing.

Conclusion

So, this all lead me to the Sony PRS-700, which I picked up a couple of nights ago at a local Borders. In the coming weeks I’ll let you know what life is like using this daily.