Ellen Wallace
Two gadgets have just made it onto my Christmas shopping list and I hope Santa is listening, because no one else I know will think they are in the Christmas budget: the iPhone, assuming it reaches the point where it will work in Switzerland without hassle, and now, the Kindle.
For those of you who still think books are something that exist on paper alone, you’re in for a surprise. The Kindle is Amazon’s hot new electronic reader for books, blogs, magazines and from a safe distance (California to Switzerland) it looks better than hoped for. You can easily download and store 200 books and Amazon pays the download cost, as long as you’re in the US so you can use Sprint. That’s the point at which I feel the grumpy old "but I’m in Europe!" reaction surfacing, an inner voice that comes out too often when I look at American marketing. Sure, the Amazon site will let me buy it, but can I use it? I’ve written to ask them: stay tuned for the answer.
Meanwhile, the goods: slim as a pencil and weighs less than most paperbacks, downloads using wireless in under a minute, 90,000 titles available, good readability even in bright sunlight, comfortable to hold even if your legs are tucked under you. Turn the wireless off and the battery will last a week but it takes only two hours to recharge. It comes with wikipedia and a dictionary built in, for diligent readers who actually look up what they don’t know.
The price is a stumbling block, coming in at more than, gulp, the iPhone: $399. But Publisher’s Weekly’s review makes it sound like something I might like to slip in my pocket next year. Meanwhile, here is a much less expensive but attractive hot water bottle, spotted at Interio today for a mere CHF9, in case gift-givers’ budgets don’t stretch to a Kindle. This is about the same size as the Kindle.
GenevaLunch, 19 November 2007.
Filed under: Business, Society
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.