Amazon also offers Kindle subscriptions, as well as single-copy sales, of newspapers and magazines, including the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
However, as much as my wife loves her Kindle, those basic control problems still made reading on it a wash for me - almost as annoying as it was convenient. So when she started agitating to get the Kindle back, I was just as happy to return it to her.
Although it generated lots of hype at the outset, it's hard to know just how popular the Kindle has been. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos won't discuss exact sales. But Apple and other gadget makers usually trumpet these figures when they're good, so the lack of hard numbers could be the result of two scenarios.
One is that Amazon rushed the Kindle into the gadget stream; the controls are so bad that the design couldn't have been tested thoroughly by real humans. Then it couldn't ramp up production in time for Christmas. The other is that Amazon didn't want to take a chance on an expensive dud - so it made about 300 Kindles and then bragged about selling out overnight. Taking orders for a popular gadget that's out of stock poses a lot less risk than overstocking something that won't sell.
Meanwhile, there's lots of speculation about Kindle 2.0. The CrunchGear tech blog reports that Amazon insiders expect two new Kindle models starting this fall. The first would be a reader the same general size and shape as the current model, but with controls that don't drive people crazy (designers call this an improved interface).
The second would be a larger model, about the size of an 8 1/2 -by-11 sheet of paper, that would be more appropriate for textbooks, technical manuals and other business-oriented reading than the current 6-inch screen.
But if Amazon really wants the Kindle to take off, it must lower the price, which is at least $150 too high for an impulse buy. It's certainly too high to justify his-and-hers Kindles in our house - as much as I'd like a new model of my own when it's available.
mike.himowitz@baltsun.com
