Amazon Kindle One Week Later: iPhone or Zune of Electronic Books?

Kindle eBook reader by Amazon was met with great accolades initially. It sold out in 2 days. After all, you can store 200 (medical?) books on one thin 10.3 oz (292 g) tablet. The euphoria lasted until the users actually got the device in their hands. Kindle, it turns out, is a great concept with poor implementation. It makes it easy to buy books and difficult to -- eh -- read them... Reading books, from technical point at least, is supposed to be easy. Amazon had designed some huge buttons on the sides of the device which users press inadvertently when holding the Kindle and then pages flip back uncontrollably. A reading device which makes reading difficult is unlikely to succeed. I am sure Amazon will have a better luck with the second generation of Kindle but in the meantime Apple may take over the market with their much-rumored "multi-touch" tablet. In summary, Amazon Kindle is an interesting device but I would hold on buying one until its second generation, at least.

See a few funny videos showing pre-Kindle, launch and post-Kindle opinions:


Medieval Helpdesk Solves Problems With a New Technology: The Book


WSJ's Walt Mossberg review: Will the Kindle catch fire?

Robert Scoble: Whoever designed this should be fired and the team should start over


The iPod of E-Book Reader?

References:
Kindle e-book reader by Amazon: you can have 200 (medical) books on one device. CasesBlog.
Medieval Helpdesk Solves Problems With New Technology. CasesBlog.

Related:
Hack Your Kindle: 100+ Tips, Resources, and Tutorials to Get More Out of the Amazon Kindle. CollegeDegrees.com, 06/2008.
The Kindle for Medical Education. Life as a Healthcare CIO, 10/2008.
Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold. NYTimes, 12/2008.

Updated: 12/25/2008