Suleman Ali

You're reading my blog?  You're awesome.  So awesome, you should buy yourself an Amazon Kindle.  Click here to buy it.

I've had the Kindle for a couple weeks and, so far, I love it.  Here's why:

• It's expensive.  When you spend that much money on something, you're going to use it.  And if, like me, you can't force yourself to read, spending $400 on anything will guilt you into using it.  Even if that means reading books!
• Sample Chapters. The first chapter or two of every Kindle book can be downloaded for free. So far, I've been too much a cheapwad to buy a single book, but I have read the Samples of about 10 books.  This is awesome.  I feel like I'm getting away with something.
• The Kindle is Barnes & Nobles in your Pocket.  Amazon has done a wonderful job making it easy to browse books.  By bestsellers, by category, by books you'd like.
• Sketches of famous literary figures.  When you lock the Kindle, the sketch of a random literary figure appears.  Just like the Barnes & Nobles shopping bags.  I sincerely hope an Engineer on the Kindle team conceived this idea and got a fat bonus for it!
• Books are going to be free.  Shhh. Don't tell the book publishers.  I was slightly shocked that I had to pay to buy books.  Somone in eastern Europe will figure out how to crack the DRM and create a peer to peer file sharing network for Kindle editions of books!!
• Capitalism at work.  I kind of love Amazon.  Jeff Bezos and co. get excited about almost every consumer oriented business and decide to enter it.  They compete with Netflix, Apple, eBay.  Usually, they have no competitive advantage when entering one of thse businesses.  This time around, they do! 
  
  • Amazon owns books.  And understand books.  And their customers go to Amazon to buy them.
  • Bezos and Steve Jobs hang out together.  Bezos must have pulled a Mark Pincus and asked Jobs all about how he designs and manufactures iPods and iPhones.  Or more likely, Steve probably can't shut up about it!  Bezos put this learned knowledge to play with the Kindle.  Other eBook manufacturers (Microsoft, Sony), clearly don't talk to Jobs.
  • Once you own a Kindle, you can only buy books from Amazon.  This lockin is great for Amazon.
• Oh, and the device itself is actually awesome.  It's sleek and beautiful.  You can download books people tell you about instantly.  You really can read 10 books at once without losing track of where you are in each book.  And the eInk is way easier on the eyes than computer screens.

What I like least about the Kindle:

• Books you own in dead tree form. Amazon already sold me all these books. And, of course, I've not read most of them. I wish Amazon would give me Kindle versions of books I've bought from them in the last 6 months for free. This would make me incredibly happy. This would convert me to an active Kindle user immediately and likely make business sense (I'd probably buy more Kindle books in the long run). 
• I need to buy a Belkin case for it.  I suppose the Kindle shouldn't come with the case.  This way buyers can pick a case that matches their tastes.  But something about having to buy another thing from Belkin drives me nuts.
• Subscription service.  I wish I could pay $20/month and read any book on my Kindle.
• I'm going to drop it.  I almost wish I'd already dropped it and could move past my fears.
• It doesn't have WiFi.  Honestly, I haven't found this to be a problem in any way yet.  In fact, you can browse the internet through the 3G cell network for free.  But, nowadays, I want everything I have to come with WiFi.  Even my toiler.
• It should play videos.  Period.  I don't understand anything about technology, just make it work!

Buy an Amazon Kindle 2 Now.