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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 07/16/2008 Why pay high prices for a low tech
device – Amazon’s Kindle Ebook reader ? Last week
I talked about Amazon’s new electronic book reader, the Kindle, which
lets you download books to it and read them anywhere, but it seems to be more
of a beta-test model than a final market accepted product. It
appears that the Kindle’s human user-interface isn’t quite what
it should be, the black&white graphics leave a lot to be desired, and the
biggest obstacle to market acceptance seems to be both the price – List
is $ 400 - and the price you then pay to download books to it, at about $ 10
a book. To give
you some price perspective between Kindle – an Ebook reader
– and the current
low-end laptop computers you can buy today, here’s some comparisons. You could
buy a Lenovo
Ideapad laptop – Lenovo is the new name
of the old IBM Thinkpads when IBM sold their pc
division to China – for $ 649, which includes an Intel Dual Core
processor, Windows Vista home premium, 2 Gigs of Ram, 120 Gb hard drive, DVD
drive, webcam, and startup software.
Over at
Dell computers you could buy a Dell
Inspiron Laptop for $ 599 with twice the hard disk size but a lesser
Celeron processor, 2 Gigs ram, dvd drive, and software.
And over
at Hewlett Packard you could buy a Compaq
C700T Notebook for $ 499. with a little less ram
and hard disk space, but still similar in functions.
So
comparing the price of the Kindle at $ 400, against the average price of
these 3 laptops you can buy today, which is $ 582, that’s a price
spread of under $ 200.00 And
remember this is not an apples to oranges comparison – this is
comparing a relatively dumb electronic device – an Ebook reader with
limited functionality and poor graphics capability – to a real laptop
computer, with full computer and internet capability, hi-resolution
graphics, tons of storage, and the capability of downloading Ebooks or
anything you want – games – movies – mp3 files –
pictures, mostly for free. So with
the exception of tech fanatics who always have to have the latest and
greatest leading edge technology – most people would not spend that
much money for just an e-book reader. Remember 3 things about leading edge
technology – you can get cut to death by the leading edge, you can fall
off the leading edge, and Leading Edge computers went into bankruptcy decades
ago. The
possible good news for the Kindle is that there are already rumors of a
Kindle 2.0 which will correct some of the technical faults of the original
Kindle. Amazon is supposed to then discount the cost of Kindle 1.0 heavily.
But the market problem is that an E-book reading only device just isn’t
worth much in today’s market, so it either has to cost a whole lot
less, or do a whole lot more. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2008 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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