Staples to sell Kindle 3's and DXG this Fall in 1500+ stores

Staples will carry the three current Kindle models starting this Fall, which is just about here, and there is one store about 3 blocks from where I am.

  It's all over the news but I first heard it from an anonymous commenter at this blog, and I think it's great news.

  They have knowledgeable computer and electronics staff there, which will be a benefit for customers.

  In other news, Borders' Kobo reader has lowered its price to $129.  You can search 'kobo' at the top right here to get previous articles here about the Kobo reader.

  Wall St. Journal story on Borders and Kobo is here.


Kindle 3  (3G/WiFi or WiFi-only) (UK: Kindle 3),   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Video Comparison of 4 E-readers + another Nook and Kindle Face-off

Len Edgerly's whimsically titled Wolf Hall Tournament of Ereaders video is a comparison of features and functioning of four e-readers and is the newest feature at his The Reading Edge site, which has interesting reports and interviews in connection with the many e-readers available currently.  Here's the direct link to Len's blog report with embedded video.

 To get the larger version of the video, click on the top left image or the link at the left.

 Len loves e-readers and buys them to try them out, not waiting for review copies.  In this case, he also bought 4 copies of the "Wolf Hall" book because the alleged 'standard' of ePub between books with digital-rights-management added to the book files is not quite standard yet.  Nooks can read Sony books sometimes but not vice versa, Adobe holds the DRM reins, and the book vendors tend to add something a bit different to theirs.  Despite talking to customer support at a couple of e-book stores, there was no support given to Len for using other vendors' files on the e-readers.

The 4 e-readers reviewed for effectiveness of functions are the Sony Pocket Reader, the Kobo Reader, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and the Amazon Kindle 2.   The Sony PRS-600 has known glare and contrast issues due to an additional layer for a touch screen, and Len did not keep his, so it's not included.  Also, it doesn't have wireless at all, for the higher price.  The Sony Pocket Reader and the Kobo are on a more equal level as they both have no wireless to speak of and no basic study features such as inline-dictionary, searches for a character, highlighting or notes.   The Sony Pocket reader has long been popular for its "pocket"ability and easy-to-read contrast-ratio, but the Kobo has a slightly larger screen.

Seldom do online gadget reviews go into how the advertised features actually function and even tend to not mention basic ones like the dictionary, search, and annotations many like to use with an e-reader.  The few I have seen that do discuss functioning include the recent Laptop Magazine report on the Kindle DX Graphite and one on Sony readers by Willson Rothman of Gizmodo.
  A favorite for its description of how Kindle features work, in general, is by boygeniusreport.com, done for the Kindle 2, which Len uses for the video comparison.  And there's one by Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica actually describing how the new software update's features work.

  That's especially what I like about the video.  Len lists features important to him and shows HOW each is implemented on the two e-book readers that have screens unimpeded by an extra layer of glass and which happen to be the two leading e-readers in sales today -- the Nook and the Kindle 2.

  There'll be a new Nook soon (Nook 2 and the new Kindle 3 (and UK Kindle 3) in late August.  We know what the Kindle 3 will have but have no idea what the new Nook 2 features will be.  In this video, you'll see how each handles (1) dictionary look-ups, (2) searches for a character's name or mentions in a book, and (3) highlighting and note-taking as well as how to find a highlight or note you made.

  These are key differences and most reviewers have not gone into the functioning of these features vs other e-book readers at all.  So Len has done quite a service here.   It's 28.5 minutes long, so set aside some time to watch it if you're curious about the differences between these models.

  The one thing I'd like in the future is Len using a tripod behind him and showing the full model or full screen as he shows the functioning, because the close-ups can take you out of context, and often the video-camera doesn't focus fast enough when going close-up anyway.  The actual words are not as important as the actions with the screen and sometimes keyboard in full view. Closeups could be added as needed later.

  But I've seen no one else do such a clear comparison of book readers before, showing how features are implemented on each.  And Len Edgerly's presentation is devoid of the 'seller' characteristics you often see with video reports.  He likes what he likes, with reasons given, and is enthusiastic, but he's also fair-minded and open and an e-reader/gadget addict who cannot have enough of them :-).

  The surprise for many is usually the password-protected, private webpage we have at Amazon (if we approve server backup of our annotations) that shows all our highlighting and notes for each book we download from Amazon, in chronological order and copyable to a text file so we can edit the notes in a separate document, and of course is printable.
  It's really an amazingly helpful private webpage which I never saw mentioned in college pilot studies feedback.  In fact, students in those studies reported difficulty with just highlighting (which I find easy to do).  What i like is you can UNhighlight too :-), something hard to do with a physical book.  But notes typed in are slow-going with that keyboard.  However, I prefer it to a hard, flat-surfaced virtual one.

  Now that the annotations webpage has been modified by Amazon to include the Facebook and Twitter features, I should add that the most useful first page there is the one listing your books, showing which ones have or don't have annotations, etc.  Here's a sample of a page showing a selected book and annotations for it.

Len has written about the Wolf Hall video in conversations on Twitter and in comments at Youtube and feels he should have mentioned the Nook's "Lend me" feature, which is better than no lending feature but, if the publisher allows the feature, the loan of a Nook book is restricted to one loan ever, for each book, for 2 weeks max.

  Kindlers compare that with how the account-sharing plan is implemented at Amazon, in which a book can be shared among 6 devices on an account, with no mention of 'household' or 'family.'  Kindle Customer support helps with the how's of registration and deregistation of other individuals' Kindles on your account, and many spouses use the feature, so that one book can be read at the same time by both for one purchase.  One would have to put a lot of trust in anyone who uses that account as the account owner is responsible for all the charges.  There is a long-running Amazon Kindle forum thread on how Kindle-owners use the feature.

  Where the Nook and Kobo shine is the ability to borrow public library e-books - a rich feature for a city with a large collection of these (New York City) but less exciting in many other areas.  Check with your local library.  I wish Amazon had the fortitude to work out arrangements with libraries.
  That's a primary factor for some, but if it's not very important on a personal level then how an e-reader works will be key.  And Len's video will give you a very good idea.


E-reader Faceoff: Kindle or Nook? Here's a Written Comparison
Also appearing last night is a short article by Mark W. Smith for Free Press (freep.com).  An excerpt:

' The big difference here is the Nook's small color touch screen at the bottom of the device. The Kindle features a physical keyboard and a handy five-way rocker button for navigation. The Nook's color touch screen is nice, but the navigation can feel disjointed as you touch one screen to move the cursor on another. And the bright color display can be distracting while you read. '

He has good advice on choosing wireless options and lists unique advantages of each e-reader over the other.


Kindle 3   (UK: Kindle 3),   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

The attractive but bare-bones $149 Kobo called a "Kindle killer" by press. Update

I've started another blog, E-readerworld, to focus on news of other e-readers since I'm interested in the technology in general but some Kindleworld blog followers prefer the focus on mainly the Kindle.   Among other e-readers there,  I've started following the Kobo, since it's due here in June and is partnering with Borders.

However, it seems there can't be a day without dozens of columns saying what new device now WILL (finally) kill the Kindle, since it seems to be a bit harder to kill than had been thought (wished ?).    Maybe it would help if some writers even read about the features of each device and compared those.  Before the money is put down, most consumers do comparison-shopping.

This won't be about those strange columns though. 
  However, even Consumer Reports' Paul Reynolds, in an otherwise neutral article, feels the Kindle will need to reduce its price again to approach the Kobo pricing because it's felt Amazon needs to be more competitive with other e-readers even when they don't have many (basic) features the Kindle has.

  Whatever happened to the idea of features-comparison?

  UPDATE - 5/10/10 - 11:14 AM
  I just saw that Paul Reynolds made a gracious reply to my comment to him at Consumer Reports.  Part of my concern had been that probably 99% of the online articles on this topic cite, at best, the wireless feature (and that there are costs associated with it) but don't mention the many reading-associated features that one model has that the less-expensive one doesn't and which I feel people should read about when price difference is the key focus.   The explanation Paul Reynolds gave was very well stated. [End of udpate]

As an e-reader customer I wouldn't mind any price decreases.
  But, should all models with varying features, say, by one manufacturer be priced as if they were nearly the same?  Each added feature brings more cost.  That's probably as old as the first humans on the planet.

The underlying thought by many technology reporters about e-readers seems to be that any device that is "just" a book reader has to be of very low value.  I've seen that in many stories - that the pricing should be $50 or $99  at the most.   Some of it comes from research in which people were just asked at what price would they consider an e-reader.  Counted are those who wouldn't even particularly want one.

Mashable's Lauren Indvik writes that "The Kobo e-reader is very similar to Amazon’s Kindle 2 both in functionality and in appearance, but at $150, is almost half the price."

I added a comment to the "very similar...functionality" description.

"Actually, the Kobo e-reader is not very similar to Amazon’s Kindle 2 in functionality unless you count only showing the text on an e-ink display.

  Here's what is part of the Kindle functionality but not at all present in the Kobo:
         [  I've separated the features by lines here. ]
  . an in-line Dictionary
  . a Text-search mechanism (for the book or the device)
  . the ability to Highlight or make Notes
       (and to see them automatically organized and viewable
        on a private webpage if wanted)
  . the ability to use 3G wireless and at no added cost, 24/7 in the States
  . the ability to use Wikipedia via 3G globally for free
       while reading a book and wanting to know more about
       a word or phrase or a character in the book.

*Less important functionality* that the Kindle has but the Kobo doesn't:

  . Text-to-speech on any documents, periodicals, or books while busy
      w/other things but wanting to continue 'reading' 
  . the ability to listen to mp3's in the background.

The Kobo can't use WiFi networks instead [of 3G celluar], as the Nook does.

However, the Kobo does have the Adobe licensing to use the public library and if your local library 'Overdrive' program has a lot of good e-books, that's worth quite a bit.  [ It also reads ePub files.]

Too many are looking only at price (which isn't done normally because you usually have cost-comparison of features),

With the Kobo and its $149 - you get what you pay for, bare-bones functionality. For $110 more, the Kindle gives a lot more long-term value. That free 3G access for mobile-text webbing is useable anywhere, including when in a bus or in some waiting-room somewhere.

The Kobo has neither 3G wireless nor WiFi - it's actually quite limited for $149. [Bluetooth transfers can be relatively cumbersome.] BUT I recommend it for the public library access for some, though that depends on what the local library stocks in the way of e-books and how many can borrow one at the same time..

Amazon has 20,000 or more free books, easily downloadable 24/7 from anywhere. The Project Gutenberg's 30,000 files can be downloaded directly to the device over the air at no cost via the "Magic Catalog."

WORD doc files are accepted by Amazon for free conversion to Kindle format, which is very helpful, but these can also be done [converted] by the user.

Also, the 16 shades of gray [Kindle] vs 8 shades [Kobo] can make quite a difference in photos."

Well, that's my bit for the current onslaught of articles about the Kobo as "Kindle Killer" - a term much loved by the media for some reason. 

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 See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
   Check often:  Latest temporarily free non-classics or late-listed temporarily free nonclassics.
  Also, a prepared links that confine searches to mid-range priced e-books.

E-Readers with Web Browsers, and WiFi vs 3G cellular access

At the right is a photo of my Kindle being used to look up reviews at Costco before any purchasing decisions.

  (You can click on the picture to see the larger image.)

 Now that Spring Design's $360 Alex is out and the Barnes and Noble Nook has been updated to enable web-browsing (I tried it out the other day), it's a good time to review what the differences are between those units' web-access and the Kindle's.

  A good example is from an email sent me two days ago by a woman whose son is in Spain with his Kindle (Int'l version sold since Oct '09) and who had just sent her an email from his Kindle --

" He is riding on a bus in a very rural area between Madrid and their destination city in northern Spain. "

 As a U.S. resident with the International Kindle, his cellular wireless web browsing is enabled also, when travelling abroad, at no added cost (as Amazon's wireless costs in the U.S. are said to be considerably less expensive for the company than is possible in other countries right now, though Jeff Bezos has said he hopes to make web-browsing available globally eventually).
  The speed of access of the Kindle's experimental browser has improved in the last few months.

  I have tips on speeding up the access and a downloadable file with links to mobile-device optimized sites and a guide for that.

Almost two years ago, I was riding in an Airporter going across the San Francisco Bay Bridge and used the older, original Kindle to send an email to someone.  With the shallow keyboard, you will not want to send a long email, but you can send short notes.

  Many gadget sites don't know that this almost-anywhere web-browsing is possible with the Kindle but not for the Nook, Alex, Sonys, Kobo or iPad (although the latter's web access when you're near a WiFi hot spot is a lot more pleasureable and colorful).

A LISTING OF THE DIFFERENCES
  1.  Cellular Wireless access from anywhere - That's 3G cellphone-type access from anywhere you happen to be if there is a cellphone tower nearby (AT&T or Sprint for the Kindle, depending on the model).
  The bookstore can be accessed wherever you are while reading a book.
  For the Kindle, that's true globally as well, and residents of the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico have general, unlimited web-browsing enabled, at no additional cost.
  Non-USA residents not in those 4 areas have 24/7 free 3G wireless access to Wikipedia on the Kindle.  The other devices are limited to accessing only their stores with that 3G access for downloading.

  The Kindle, Nook, and Sony Daily Edition all use cellular wireless for book-downloads from their bookstores and at no added cost to the user.  Book downloads are doable essentially anywhere.

  That is not doable with the Alex, the Kobo, most Sonys or the current WiFi-only iPad.  I've read that many current iPad owners are trading up to the later 3G model due in May.

  The $629 iPad coming out officially on May 7 will use 3G and that will also require an additional $15-$30 for any month that this type of access is used on the iPad.

 The Alex will not have this type of access either, on its first, current model, but it's planned for a later model.

Web-browsing (in addition) using the 3G cellular network access
Only the Kindle has this (in the 4 geographic areas listed above), and it's at no added cost.
I'll indent the next part so that it's clearer as it's about a unique feature.

This particular cellphone-style access to the full web instead of just to the bookstore means you can access Google or ESPN or NY Times, etc. (preferably in their mobile-device versions for speed) almost anywhere you happen to be, whether in a bus, in your dentist's waiting room, in the car (as a passenger or stopped), in any restaurant, etc.

  The portability factor is large with many.
You can also download books directly to the Kindle from a few other online book sites this way, detailed at the free-books page.

  What's unique about the Kindle's access is that if you're sitting, waiting somewhere (almost anywhere in the world) reading a book on the Kindle International, you can begin a highlighting of a word or phrase on the page, finish it with a spacebar and the Kindle copies that word or phrase into the search bar -- and then you can press the 5-way navigation button to the right until you see and click on "Wiki," which will take you to the Wikipedia pages that match the search phrase (your Wireless feature would have to be turned On of course).

 When finished, press the Back button, and you're back where you started on the page in the book.  The Wikipedia feature works for any Kindle International model, globally, with wireless access available in their area (most).

  2.  WiFi wireless access - This works when you are set up to use a WiFi network that is in your home, your office, or in certain hotspots you might find such as Starbucks or McDonald's.  You'll normally need to do a special connection to the network the first time, and if it has the minimal security recommended, you'd need the private code for it.  Sometimes it requires a log-on screen.
  Barnes and Noble Nook users would be able to use it at that store.

 This is the type used by the current iPad, and Alex. (Turns out the Kobo uses only either bluetooth or the simple USB cable method to get e-books onto it._

 The cellular-wireless iPad ($130 extra, or $629 total) will be ready late April for those who pre-ordered it, and the official release is May 7.  As mentioned, there are web-access fees ($15-$30) charged for any month you use that type of wireless for an iPad.  AT&T will provide the web-access.

  SPECIAL NOTE:  Apple has identified a WiFi problem in some iPads and they readily replace the iPad when you contact them.

  WiFi networks, although limiting you to local areas, are faster, generally, than cellular networks, for web-browsing.

NOOK web-browser upgrade
When I was at Barnes and Noble, a very helpful customer support person named Amanda (El Cerrito, Ca) took me through quite a bit of it.

  The Nook's newly enabled web-browser, although limited in where you can use it, uses the bottom LCD panel to 'Goto' the web.  When you get a webpage, the slice of it that you can see in that small window is in color, and when I tried a photo site, it was really pleasing to see that, even if you can see only maybe a 5th of the photo since part of the lower screen is still used for other things.

  The one thing that was somewhat problematical was that when I was on a webpage and wanted to go to another one and called up the GoTo or Location box and started typing the URL, the Nook's e-Ink screen above would flash and refresh after each and every keypress.  That was disorienting.  I spent only 20 minutes on it, but maybe there's a way to avoid it, or they'll fix that with the next update.

  If I'd never used a Kindle and known about its ability to use the web browser anywhere, I still probably would have bought it on the spot.  I saw it on the first day, so everyone was very 'up' about it and I enjoyed getting webpages on it.  The Nook is a great looking reader but, as a Kindle user, I still find it has too many menu steps and I don't enjoy controlling the top with the bottom controls on a separate screen, as it makes me feel as if I'm operating a remote control with accompanying mini-delays.  Nook owners have no problem with that though.

  My 2nd choice now would be the Nook, unless they improve the Alex, which has a full screen at the bottom, but it's $100 more expensive than either the Nook or the Kindle.

FUTURE COMPARISON OF MAJOR DEDICATED E-READER FEATURES
  I'll probably update this and will eventually do a a blog entry comparing the various features of the dedicated e-readers mentioned.  By then, there'll probably be another dozen e-readers out.

IPADS AND OTHER TABLETS.  IPADS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON MARKETPLACE
  And now, other tablets competing with the Apple iPad are also gearing up for release, while the iPad is often out of stock at stores.  Amazon marketplace stores have new iPads at elevated prices for those who don't want to wait, but I'd check the quality ratings and number of ratings for the stores.

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See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
  Check often: Latest free non-classics, shortcut http://bit.ly/latestfreenonclassics.)