Talk about price cuts–Amazon has slashed the price on refurbished Kindles to $150 (for 1st gen models)
However, I MUST WARN YOU: before you buy a Kindle you have to make peace with a very serious aspect of book ownership. In particular, you have to give it up.
You see, you don’t “buy” books on the Kindle. If you actually read the user agreement, you’ll note that what you pay for when you click the “buy” button next to a title is a license to access Amazon’s rights-protected copy of that book. Yes, they let you download a copy of the file for backup, but what you own is a license. Not that copy.
(And if you’re buying via the iPhone app and you don’t physically own a Kindle, you can’t even download those backup copies.)
If for any reason Amazon decides to pull a book–and they’ve done it at least a few times in the past year–your license no longer works. After all, what would it be used on? The book is gone!
As long as you’re cool with that, it truly is a great little device and a great store. You just have to change your expectations of what “ownership” means when it comes to books.
If you can pay $50 to $100 more, consider a Sony Reader device. The books are still rights-managed and locked, but you actually get to own the files, which is an important distinction.
Sep 16, 2009 @ 11:52:13
You don't really get it, do you. The Kindle store surpasses anything at SONY. The whispernet is excellent. Sony isn't near that and the Daily Edition is MUCH more expensive. Your anti-Amazon bias is showing.
Sep 16, 2009 @ 12:15:41
My anti-Kindle (not Amazon) bias was never hidden. I think the Kindle does a lot of stuff very right–the store experience is amazing and I have spent a lot of $$$ on it–but you really don't own any book when you buy from the Amazon Kindle store. They're very misleading about it, and I suspect most Kindle owners don't grasp this because it's sort of confusing.