I was given a Amazon Kindle as a birthday present last December. I recently sold it on eBay.
When I first receive the Kindle, I was very excited about it. I thought this would definitely be the wave of the future, and a great device to use for years to come. Over the holidays, I took it with me on vacation and read books for about 30 hours on it. I was able to download free, older books online as well as a few free deals Amazon had going on.
The Kindle's screen is truly nice to read on. The only downside is that there is quite a lag in the refresh rate. I didn't get rid of the Kindle due to the technology itself, the main reason I dumped it was due to simple economics.
Price of new Kindle: $259
Cost of leather cover: $35
Sold both for: ~$190 net of shipping and eBay fees
Total loss: ~$104 (but keep in mind it was a gift)
So, basically I used a Kindle for about 2 months, let it sit for 4 months, and sold it. I consider myself lucky, since it would have cost me much more to keep it.
I read approximately 2-3 books per month. The average cost of a new book is $18 or so, on a Kindle it is $10. So some would say that I would save between 16-24 a month by using the Kindle.
Not true.
First of all, a Kindle book is worthless. You can't sell it, you can't trade it, you can loan it to a friend. It is there to be read once and that's it. That bestseller you buy for $18 can be sold for something later on. And you can always buy a used book on half.com for a lot less.
And need I talk about my new best friend? The library.
Keeping the Kindle would have cost me $20-30 a month in recurring book fees to Amazon. It would make me stress over each purchase, wondering if its worth the money, since I wouldn't be able to do anything with the book once I was done.
What Amazon needs to do is lower the price of books, or at least remove the DRM, like Apple has with iTunes.
By the way, I took my profit and bought something I'll at least use: a Garmin Forerunner 305 brand new for $135.
Update: About an hour after posting this Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $189. Looks like my timing was dead on.
2010-06-21
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