niks blog

A little over a year ago, the Amazon Kindle was stealing the tech headlines all over the world. Some experts proclaimed that the Kindle would revolutionize and resuscitate the industry. Who can argue with them? The Kindle was, in my view, a remarkable device that combined an e-book store and hardware seamlessly. One could argue that the Amazon Kindle is to e-books as the Apple iPod/iPhone is to music.

Fundamentally speaking, there are three flaws with the entire e-book landscape:

• available content does not replace print media
• e-ink technology is pretty crappy
• all e-book readers are primitive (currently)

Print vs. electronic format

The best use of the Kindle and its primary competitors is the fact that it can easily handle subscriptions to a multitude of respectable media powerhouses such as Time, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, etc. The best part is that electronic format of these popular magazines and newspapers is that they are extremely competitively priced.

For instance, a one-year subscription to the Chicago Tribune in print form will cost $4.75 per week, coming to a total of $247 per year. A one-year subscription to the electronic format of the Chicago Tribune for the Kindle will cost $9.99 per month, coming to a total of $119.88 per year. That’s a total savings of over $125 per year.

This is where print versions win

For that extra $125, you receive crossword puzzles, sudokus, advertisements/coupons, and dirty fingers. Let’s face it, none of those things merit the extra $125. But here’s where print media wins. The print version of the Chicago Tribune is far more well organized with complete stories and details.

The Kindle version seems like a dump of all the articles from the Chicago Tribune. Reading one review from a customer on Amazon, here’s what he had to say:

The Kindle version of the Tribune is simply a ‘dump’ of the Tribune articles…Occasionally items are clearly missing (e.g. ‘Here are 5 items …’ and then the 5 items are missing)

E-ink sucks

We’re in the modern age of portable computing and yet, the majority of all e-book readers use crappy e-ink technology. The biggest downfall of e-ink technology is its dreadfully slow refresh rate. Imagine ‘turing’ a page on your Kindle and having to wait a couple of seconds until the page appears. Sure, it’s only two seconds, but those two seconds will feel like eternity.

The best advantage that e-ink has is its ability to render text that virtually mimics text on a page. So how come not a single e-book reader has a built-in backlight so that I can continue reading even in low-level light conditions? And don’t give me the argument of decreased battery life. All of these products use mundane battery technology that is obsolete, in order to save manufacturing costs.

E-books are babies

So now I argue that E-books are like ‘babies’ and extremely primitive. Not a single e-book reader is market innovative in my mind. An innovate e-book reader would have:

• WiFi & 3G connectivity for downloading content
• Backlighting so that I can read my e-books in low-level lighting
• Ability to write my notes on the actual screen
• Ability to view high-resolution images
• Color screen (so I can view actual magazine-like images
• Battery life that lasts over two weeks without a charge with constant use of backlight and WiFi

Sure, I know that what I want is not really technically feasible or cost-friendly. However, any successful e-book reader would do more impact if it were priced at $100 – $200 with most of the features I mentioned. I don’t mind paying for content, but I do mind that if I spend upward of $200, I can’t do what I want.

In case you haven’t figured it out, tablet PC’s will make e-book readers obsolete. My guess is that tablet computers will replace e-book readers as the preferred way to consume books, magazines, and other electronic media.