iPad competitors and Dell Mini that reads Kindle - Update

It seems the market will be flooded with tablets or slates competing with the iPad.

UPDATE 3/13/10 - Seven alternatives to the Apple iPad - Mainly large photos and specs, pro and con, at linked CrunchGear site.

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HP Slate
For those reading this on a computer, the HP Slate now has a 5-1/2 minute youtube video demo'g its flash support and Adobe Air (missing from the iPad) and it's very impressive.   Start it at minute 1:18 as he just talks for too long when introducing it.

ADAM by Notion Ink
Goodereader reports on the Adam from Notion Ink, the first gizmo that will be released with the Pixel QI screen, that can alternate between an e-paper type display and an LCD one and doesn't depend only on its own power source for the screen's light.
  Unlike the iPad, Goodereader says, its backlight can be turned on or off, reducing battery drain by 50% and allowing 16 hours of Internet usage while the iPad's is expected to be about 10 hours (the latest release info from Apple says the number of hours is subject to many conditions).

With a 10" screen, it uses the Android system, has HDMI output, 3 USB ports, can multitask, has GPS, a digital compass, a 3 megapixel camera, and is memory-card expandable to 32 gig. It weighs a bit over 1-1/2 lbs. Here's an article that includes an e-mail interview with the CEO (from India) and a chart of Adam features vs the iPad.

Smartmoney.com quotes a consultant who says the Adam "is probably closer to what the second-generation iPad will be than what the iPad currently is."

John Dvorak asks, "iPad killer from, uh, India?" and still wonders if there's a market for a tablet computer. Seems so! though not at some of the pricing we've seen when you want 3G cellular wireless capability and while being asked to forego multitasking capability, usb ports, webcam, flash support for the Web etc.

And here's iSlate headlining, "Notion Ink's Adam Considered to be a big contender against the iPad."  It's a detailed article if you want to read more on this.

The most attractive part from all that? Starting price will be about $325
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DELL MINI 5 or "Streak"
Dell is apparently creating a small one that will be able to read Kindle books !   The screen size is smaller than the Kindle though but considerably larger than most smartphones and would be an "always-On" web device, running Android 2, with a 3G phone, WiFi, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera and a forward-facing camera for video calls, 1.6G internal storage (before system files) and a micro SD card slot.

Engadget received a flyer with confirmed specs and colorful models. Their earlier article on Feb. 26 reported the Dell Mini wouldn't be out for at least another month and referenced Wired's quote from Neeraj Choubey, GM of Dell's tablet division, that there'll be " 'a family of tablets' which will 'scale up to a variety of sizes' and that it'll likely be Android all the way, while Choubey also shared his company's intention to bundle 'inexpensive data plans' with the new devices...'

Choubey confirmed to Laptop that Dell is working with AT&T  (yikes, are they the carrier for most of the e-readers and tablets?).  The leaked internal document they got states:

' The second page details a content partnership that Dell may be entering with Amazon.  The document states that the Mini 5 will integrate with Amazon's Kindle, MP3 and Video services, and will include a Kindle reader app. '

  It also refers to the Snapdragon-powered device as the 'Streak.'  No solid release date or final price yet.

Hmmm, Infomobile has a huge picture of a proposed Dell ad about the Amazon deal and, in an earlier story, a brief video of the little unit, plus a description of the not-gonna-fly price - unsubsidized (no data plan: $1098 and maybe $600-$700 with plan).  It does have a phone.  See update below: Wired's writer feels Dell would tend to undercut Apple's pricing.

UPDATE - 11:35 AM, same day. Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk adds that

' The documents also indicate that — like Kindle owners — users of this Dell mini-tablet will have wireless (3G) access to the Kindle store with “no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for a Wi-Fi spot.” If that’s the case, Dell’s tablets would have a significant advantage over the iPad, which can only access the 3G network if you pay for the more expensive version of the hardware and sign up for a $15 or $30 per month data plan in addition to whatever wireless data plan you have for your phone. '

IPAD VIDEO AD
And with all tablets, there's one unusual inherent problem for users: here's Apple's first iPad video ad.  Liliputing makes sport of the new, very effective iPad ad in that they draw attention to the odd positions of everyone using the iPad in that ad - their legs are in unusual positions because it needs to be propped up.  I guess there'll be holders for it.

Clues to new Kindle capabilities at end of year

StrategyEye has been looking at Amazon's Lab126 job ads and reports that Amazon may be planning to improve the Kindle web browser, as they posted an ad for an engineer to design new features on an "innovative embedded web browser."

The article reports fears that Kindle customers who are newspaper subscribers could just go to a newspaper website for free (specifically mentioning the NY Times) and then cancel their newspaper subscriptions.  It's not clear to me that StrategyEye knows that Amazon Users can already web to the NY Times online.

We can already read the NY Times online in its full-text format, which I have a link to in the downloadable file of mobile-device-optimized websites described and available at http://bit.ly/mobiweb.

We can also go to the regular website but that would be masochistic as that is very slow.  The text-optimized NY Times though is fully available.

Wireless use drains e-readers quite a bit, but a full-throttle web-browser would drain it very quickly.

StrategyEye reports that some believe the planned improvements are "part of a damage control exercise in prepararation for next month's release of the iPad."

  But in no way would a new version be ready by that time anyway, unless one is thinking about e-readers that are rushed to market and unreliable.
  There ARE obviously plans for a touchscreen to be ready by the end of the year and almost surely some kind of color screen with it, from all that I read (rumors are heavy about both Touchco which Amazon now owns and Mirasol, the latter dropping hints but also trying to entice all e-reader makers with their impressive technology although the colors are somewhat muted and there may be less contrast).
  EInk/PVI has stated that they could also have color ready by the end of the year also.
  So, I think any web browser improvements would be slated for a new Kindle near the end of the year.

  In the meantime it would be very good if they could improve the current model's web browsing so that it's faster and handles 'https' links. But, as StrategyEye worries, a faster browser will eat up more bandwidth, especially when people use a much faster browser much more and then 24/7 web browsing would likely be put on tiered pricing.

  StrategyEye writes that "A better browser would open up the internet to Kindle users and could put serious strain on the AT&T network."  The Kindle is already open to the Internet and is the only e-reader that gives (free) cellular wireless for this -- the other e-readers confine customers' web access to their own stores.

  And there they note the possibility that "Kindle customers could potentially cancel their subscriptions to publications such as the New York Times and access the paper's website for free."
  Certainly, with the iPad, the publishers should worry about that even more, as they could access the regular web pages of the NY Times as opposed to accessing, more practically and slowly, the mobile-unit optimized text pages of the NYT.

I've always been patient with the slow Kindle browser because it's free and I need that kind of access outside only for quick lookups.  I imagine that any decent speed capabilities will bring tiered-browsing plans, so I'm not over-excited about this.

iPad: U.S. Pre-orders Mar.12, On Sale Apr 3. Details & Analysis

The Washington Post carries partner TechCrunch's report by Leena Rao on the availability of the Apple iPad.

  Both the WiFi and WiFi+3G wireless sets will finally be available for pre-order by U.S. customers from March 12 from Apple's online store (www.apple.com), or you can reserve a Wi-Fi-only model for pick-up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

Apple announced that the WiFi-Network-capable iPad will be available in the U.S. on April 3, delayed just a bit from the expected March date.
  The recent rumors that shipment was delayed until April turned out to be true, but I hardly see it as a problem when it'll be available that early in April.

The WiFi with 3G cellular-wireless-capable models will be ready in late April.

APPS FOR IPAD
With the WiFi network (home/office), you can browse, buy and download apps from The App Store.  The iPad comes with 12 new apps designed especially for it and will run almost all of the more than 150,000 apps on the App Store, including most of the ones on your iPhone or iPod though you would likely resize them, at lower resolution, to make better use of the larger screen.

All the apps and content you download on iPad from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synced to your iTunes library the next time you connect with your computer.

However, iBooks will be available only in the U.S. until later this year, per the announcement.

  While the iBooks app for iPad including Apple's iBookstore can be downloaded in the U.S., for free, from the App Store on April 3, other countries will be added later this year.

BATTERY
Apple's announcement has only this statement about battery life.
  "*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors.
   Actual results vary."

PRICING
Pricing for the two sets of models hasn't changed.
  The pricing, as I said earlier, is very good for a web-device if you want one without the type of cellular-wireless feature that has made the Kindle, new Sony Daily Edition, and nook e-readers popular for the ability to download books to the devices from almost anywhere you are.

  In other words, the non-3G model will be used mostly in the home or in offices, but it won't be able to do web browsing anywhere you happen to be as can be done on smartphones, including the iPhone (with monthly charges) and in a slow, monochromatic, but free way with the Kindle.

Here are the pricing options:
For Wi-Fi network use only:
  16GB $499
  32GB $599
  64GB $699

For addition of 3G cellular wireless capability (like the Kindle's)
  and (before monthly web-data charges)
  16GB $629
  32GB $729
  64GB $829

Monthly web-data charges are $15 for an almost useless amount of data (mainly email-type use but not much web browsing) and $30 for almost unlimited data, which is a very good deal.

In other words:
  For the 3G wireless capability we have with the Kindle, Sony, nook, etc., in addition to the WiFi feature:
    the lowest actual cost (for the model with the smallest amount of memory for a device usable for videos) is:

$629 + ($30/mo. x 12) which gives you
$629 + $360 for the first year = $989.
    Add the kit that lets you use USB & photo-transfers: + $29
Total of $1,018 - Lowest model with 3G cellphone wireless network + WiFi .

One can choose month to month and opt out, but it's not likely that people who pay $130 more for the 3G cellular wireless would then choose not to use it.  With 3G (rather than with WiFi-only), you can use it in a car on trips or anywhere there is no WiFi network available.


However, if you can do without the ability to carry the iPad to do any web-surfing or email wherever you're out and about and would be satisfied to be able to do this only when finding WiFi hotspots or using home/office WiFi networks, then the price is only $499 + a $29 adapter kit (not yet carried at Amazon).
Total: $528 for lowest model with WiFi-networks only.

  The "camera connection kit" includes an adapter that is needed for file transfers (it provides USB-equivalent connection for that) as well as a Dock Connector-based SD Card reader for transfer of photos.

Engadget has an article on the optional keyboard (for more intense writing), dock, the camera connection kit, and Apple case.  The article includes a hands-on report with photos.

  I was interested to see that Amazon already offers 76 search-results for iPad kits and 234 results for iPad accessories

There is no general, direct USB port nor SD slot.  For people new to the iPad details, the much-discussed missing features, important for some and not for others, include:
  . no multi-tasking capability
  . no support for Flash video on web pages
  . no webcam for video conferencing
  . no dedicated, directly usable USB port (adapter is buyable)
  . no SD slot (an SD card reader is included in the optional camera connection kit)

But you can choose, move, resize, etc., with the Multi-Touch(TM) interface, which will be a fun way to browse the web or email while on your couch, watching tv -- although probably email-writing would be best with shorter notes with a virtual keyboard, though this keyboard is said to have, relatively, a very good response.

I wrote a more detailed analysis, on January 27, of what the given and projected pricing actually includes.

Again, beginning March 12, U.S. customers can pre-order the device (all models) either online or at their local Apple retail store and pick up a WiFi-only one on April 3.
  The iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April. Other countries will be added later this year and announced in April.

International pricing will be announced in April.

The new iBooks app for iPad includes Apple's new iBookstore, of course.  As most following the news on this tablet device know, Apple's publishing partners include the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both the Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple's online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

Read the full article for much more detail on the iPad features and Apple's full announcement.

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Photo Credit: Wired.com

Amazon wants a physical presence in Canada

Quill & Quire's Stuart Woods reports, with help from Scott MacDonald, that Amazon's seeking government approval to establish physical operations in Canada.

According to documents, Amazon’s application to “establish a new Canadian business” – filed on Jan. 27 – is currently under review to see if it complies with the Investment Canada Act.  The new business would be called Amazon Fulfillment Services Canada Inc.

The article explains that if Amazon were to be given the go-ahead to open a Canadian warehouse or home office, it could mean the end of its distribution partnership with SCI Logistics.  It could also be a sign that Amazon plans to expand its offerings of non-book products in Canada.

Certainly it would be helpful for Canadians to be able to get some books that are not available to them via the U.S. Amazon site.

Apparently, members of the publishing community were the first to learn about the Privy Council review.

An unnamed industry source feels that an expanded Canadian presence for Amazon wouldn’t be a bad thing if it improved the company’s services for Canadian publishers.  In particular, the source said, a Canadian office might lead to more stringent enforcement of territorial rights on Amazon.ca: “If opening their own business in Canada means they’re going to tidy up their website, which is very frustrating for a lot of us now, that would be great.”
  I'm not sure that a more stringent enforcement of territorial rights is a great thing for customers though the publishers like restrictions that benefit them, of course.

When Amazon.ca was launched in 2002, there were objections from many in the bookselling community.
  Woods writes: "At the time, the Department of Canadian Heritage ruled that the Investment Canada Act did not apply to Amazon.ca because the company was not establishing a physical presence in Canada."

Best (paper) Books of the Month: 40% off

*NON*-KINDLE - These are paper books, but the 40% discounts should be noted, especially for books wanted when no Kindle edition has been made available.

Amazon has just created a new page that highlights what they consider "the best new books" to read every month.  These feature "editors' picks" and "reviews of the best new reads in fiction, nonfiction, and books for young readers, available at 40% off all month long."  The new page is titled Amazon's Best Books of the Month Store.  Again, these are not Kindle books.

My guess is that this was made to offset the delay in Kindle books being made available at the time of a book's release because the Big 5 (Random House excluded) want the Kindle releases of new books to be at higher rates or they delay their availability.
  Another reason would be to keep a focus on hardcover books, as publishers have been concerned that e-book sales will "cannibalize" sales of the hardback books.   And of course, it's another way to get revenue to offset losses on Kindle $9.99 books still being offered, as the traditional payment to publishers is 50% of the publisher-set List Price.

Amazon announces Free Book Collections page

At the Amazon Community Discussions area, there is an official Announcement tonight from the Amazon Kindle Customer Service account about the new Free Book Collections page:

' With over 420,000 titles, the Kindle Store contains the largest selection of the books people want to read including New York Times® Best Sellers and most new releases at $9.99, unless otherwise marked.  And Amazon provides thousands of the most popular classic books for free including titles like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, and Treasure Island with more coming.

But of course, the Internet is huge and there are lots of older, pre-1923 books online.  We wanted to make it easier to find these collections which today represent nearly 2 million titles [emphases mine].

Visit amazon.com/freebookcollections for sites with free book collections and download instructions. '

  This has an advantage for Amazon as now they can say that the Kindle can access all those books, which is, of course true, which the Amazon Community Forums have discussed for a long time and which you've seen on blogger sites such as this one's regular reminders and links.

  But this makes the free books available to the Amazon Kindle a bit easier for most people to find, and Amazon has been working on improving the formatting of free books that had been uploaded to Amazon in the past.

  The set of almost 20,000 or so free Kindle classics at Amazon now has its own page.

  At the new Free Book Collections page  (free classics and out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books available for Kindle), Amazon tells us:

' But of course, the Internet is huge and there are lots of older, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books online.  We wanted to make it easier to find these collections, which today represent nearly 2 million titles. See the sites and instructions below to download free classic and other out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books and transfer via USB to your Kindle device or read on Kindle for PC.

Note that these large collections of older free books are typically created from scanned copies of physical books and can have variable quality. '

  In fact, the 30,000 Project Gutenberg books are very well formatted and Amazon now links us to that website, but with that particular link they encourage you to browse the site on your computer (rather than the catalog on your Kindle) and you then need to download the books to your computer and transfer them to your Kindle -- instead of directly downloading a book to your Kindle via the catalog on the Kindle (see next paragraph).

  There are ways (one of them promoted on this site) to get the catalog of Project Gutenberg onto your Kindle and browse or search it on your Kindle and when you want to download a Kindle-compatible e-book ('Mobi' format), you just click to get it, direct onto your Kindle.  The problem for Amazon is that Whispernet is used for such a download but it's direct from the Project Gutenberg area and is not chargeable as it doesn't come from Amazon servers.

  So, give that a thought.  Amazon wants to keep use of the webbrowser free (as it is now a defining, unique feature of this e-reader), and I imagine too much use of it could threaten Amazon's ability to keep that feature free.  Downloading time is extremely brief though, for a text-based book, and can't compare with time and bandwidth spent actually browsing the web, something they still encourage with their built-in web bookmarks on new Kindles.

The new Amazon page also makes it easy for people to know about and find The Internet Archives, which I wrote about here in January and which has about 1.8 million free books.

  Amazon has been paying attention, it seems, to customer interests as expressed for a couple of years now on its own Kindle Community forums in that humongous thread about free books elsewhere and on many blog pages.

  It always interested me that Amazon did allow the extremely-busy message discussions about how to find free books outside Amazon (while the world of news reporters and even e-reader analysts were -- and still are -- constantly writing that Amazon customers could buy e-books for their Kindles only from Amazon, which was never true).  In the last 3 months, I've noticed many Kindle customers now correct those news stories in the comment areas.

Amazon closes its new free-book collections page with
    "Have you seen another great collection of free Kindle books on the web?
     Drop us a line"
  So, they are really into this now.  

  It was needed since Barnes & Noble, and Sony, were advertising over a million books for their e-readers after getting the half-million free, pre-1923 Google books that are readable directly on their devices, and counting the ability to read ePub formatted ebooks.  As regular readers of this blog know, while the Kindle doesn't read the Google books direct, Kindle users can easily convert an ePub file to a Kindle-readable one in about 3 minutes using Calibre.

  The Amazon Kindle reads free MOBI files (offered on many book sites) -- in addition to WORD doc files through free Amazon conversion, and also reads pure text-files (*.txt) direct, the latter two not supported by the Nook) but has not counted the free MOBI files elsewhere.  Now it can count non-rights-protected MOBI files on other sites as directly accessible, a good thing to point out, finally, even if that takes customers away from busily buying at the Amazon store itself.  It's probably more beneficial to let people know what the Kindle can read.

Again, Amazon's own set of almost 20,000 free classics, directly downloadable by the Kindle from Amazon for some time, now has an Amazon page of its own.

You can read the Amazon forum discussions for customer reaction to this new welcome feature.

UPDATE - March 3, 2010
I've updated the ongoing Free and Lowcost books page.  Amazon's free book collections don't include feedback.com or manybooks.net, which have good formatting on them.  That continues to be covered by the free-books page here.

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LINKS FOR SEARCHING FOR FREE OR LOW-COST E-BOOKS
  As ever, here is the ongoing set of links for various Searches for free or low-cost Kindle-compatible books.

Walletpop: Kindle books much cheaper than Nook, Sony

Walletpop reports "Battle of e-readers shows Kindle books much cheaper than Nook, Sony."

For Kindle Edition subscribers, I'm inserting Walletpop's chart into this news alert to make it easier, but website visitors and RSS feed readers can easily use the link to walletpop to read the full story.

ALSO, Kindle Edition subscribers may use this article and chart as a very good example of what you can do on the Kindle if choosing to browse mobile-unit-optimized websites.

  This Walletpop article is a good way to get familiar with the Kindle's built-in and free web browser.  If you're at home or in an office, you can even plug in the adapter if wanting to play with the web-browser features without draining the battery.

To get the Kindle-friendly version of the walletpop article with your Kindle, click on the following link to the same article optimized for mobile units, and you'll see that when away from home you can use the Kindle pretty nicely for lookups if you know the links to mobile-device versions of various sites.
  For the sports-interested, there's a mobile version for ESPN also. As usual, when on a computer, see my mobile-web article for a downloadable Kindle file of mobile-device optimized sites linked.  That article also includes a link to my blog entry on how to use the Kindle's web-browser for faster and more readable results.

Back to the Walletpop story
For the article, Tom Barlow chose the New York Times selection of the 10 best books of 2009 -- five fiction, five non-fiction and avoided current bestsellers because they're often subject to price wars and loss-leader pricing.

He found the results startling, and I agree.  While I did not think that Amazon had raised prices already in any finalized greement with major publishers, he found that prices had risen on Amazon above the $9.99 price point for what were bestsellers in 2009.

  However, I've noted that when a book is a bit older and no longer on the NYT bestseller list, Amazon has often raised the price, which helps them recoup some of the money lost in selling bestsellers at $9.99 when they traditionally pay the publishers about $12.50-$15.00 (50% or so of the LIST price SET by the publishers).

Book	Amazon for Kindle	Barnes & Noble for Nook	Reader Store for Sony
Chronic City by Jonathan Letham	$15.37	$20.76	$9.99
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy	$14.27	$18.53	$18.16
A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore	$14.27	$19.27	$9.99
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls	$9.99	$9.99	$9.99
A Short History Of Women by Kate Walbert	$9.99	$17.82	$9.99
The Age Of Wonder by Richard Holmes	$23.76	$29.71	$40.00
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel	$9.99	$18.57	$9.99
Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr	$9.99	$22.27	$9.99
Lords Of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed	$9.99	$9.99	$9.99
Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life by Carol Sklenicka	$19.25	$26.00	$24.50
Total	$136.87	$192.91	$152.59

As you can see, many books remained at the $9.99 price, nevertheless, and Barlow notes

' the shocking difference in price between Amazon, the Reader Store and Barnes & Noble.  In just this small sample, books for the Sony Reader were 11.5% more expensive, while the ones for the Nook cost 41% more. '

 He asked Mary Ellen Keating, senior vice president of corporate communications and public affairs for Barnes & Noble, about this price disparity.  To be fair to the writer and the paper, please go to the story to learn how she explained the price differences.  It's sort of a marvel.

Barlow sums it up this way:

' ...those of us who read books on another platform, Blackberry in my case, have a choice between versions of the Nook and Kindle readers.  Guess which one I'll be using. '

Photo credit: Librarian by Day