sindre-almost

I have a love / hate relationship with my iPhone 3G, however the faults and strenghts of this phone and it’s successor the 3GS
have been discussed enough here on the interwebz without me reiterating it all. If you want to read about smartphones I suggest  reading Stephen Fry’s 3 part blessay on the subject here

However I suspect I have a new love / hate relationship coming my way. I recently ordered the international version of Amazon’s Kindle2. I read up on the subject, while I have my reservations on closed systems/standards such as the Kindle e-book format the practicallity of it  seemed to outweigh my concerns. I have the same concerns over the iPod  / iTunes lock-in, but practicallity and ease of use is unmatched by any other solution and untill someone does it better or at least comes near it, I will consider it a necessary evil in my everyday digital life.

What I discovered before ordering it:

*Magazine / Newspaper subscriptions will not include pictures
*Will not be able to subscibe to blogs

What I suspected before ordering it:
*would not allow web browsing, such as Wikipedia and WikiTravel

What I discovered after ordering it:

It does not come with a country specific power adapter plug, US only. (adapter is OK, but need a plug converter, see comments)

Now I can live without pictures in my newspapers, and even magazines even though as they say “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is a trade off, I subscibed to “The International Herald Tribune” paper edition, and even when I chose the “bundle 3 editions together” option  for delivery it was expensive. So for 19.90USD a pictureless edition is not a deal breaker for me.

Magazines are in my view more visual than newspapers… Pictures can be more essential here. However I do not read to many of them and even if I did The “no color images” would probably be a big a let down as the utter lack of them.

Browsing Wikipedia and WikiTravel however would be very practical, and it was a big dissapointment to learn that this would not be available on the international editions of the Kindle. But still being a gadget geek, I went ahead and ordered it.

But today I read on several tech-news sites that the Kindle will ship with US power adapters and international buyers/users will have to buy their own US-to-whatever adapter.

Dear Amazon

You are now pushing your luck, you strip away functionality that has made the Kindle the equivalent a killer application on the US e-book market, You make no effort to mention the limitations on pictureless newspaper and magazine subscriptions, in a byline you mention that there is no surfing available.

The only killer function left is the Whispernet delivery system that eliminates the need to connect it to a computer to deliver books and newspaper issues. But frankly that only gives you so much wiggle room to play with, and you have exceeded that by a mile in this case.

I understand the reason behind the no-picture issue it is probably the same as the no-browsing issue; data transfer fees from AT&T’s international roaming partners. Pictures requires more bandwith and thus incurs a higher distribution cost. Why not give us the option, a cheap text only edition and a slightly higher “full content” version ?

I will still buy your Kindle, but it is a far less superior product than it could have been, than it actually has the capability of being.  And this will leave at least this customer with a sour taste in his mouth that could have been avioded.

I hope that these features available to your US customers will be available to us international users as well.
We have after all been patiently awaited the arrival of the Kindle and watched with envy to those who could use it at it’s full potential.

Don’t keep us in the dark still, now that we actually can buy it. And please start shipping it with the appropriate poweradapters quickly.

Signed

An already less-than happy customer.

On a side note:

Now why do I still buy this, the Kindle does not ship internationally before the 21.Oct. ?
Because other e-book readers lacks these features as well, and they do not have to potential to enable them at a later date. The Kindle has these features available on a hardware level, they just need to be made available as a service. So I’m crossing my fingers.