I want to believe...

Amazon's Kindle is the latest ebook reader to come along and I believe this one has the best chance of "making it." The first picture released for it isn't very flattering, but Steven Levy says it's not actually that bad. He covers his experience in his latest Newsweek article.

I just can't believe the prices though. Even for a gadget lover like myself, $399 for the device seems high when you can get a full-featured Asus EeePC for the same price. That being said, I think the Kindle has the right feature set to succeed. There's no need for a computer, the size is right, a 30 hour battery life, access to newspapers and blogs, and most importantly, the backing of Amazon.

The prices for the individual books are $9.99 which seems high - it's in between the price of a softcover and hardcover. I suppose they will be available on release day one once things get rolling, so it would end up being a bargain for hardback lovers like me. It's probably the cheapest they could make it. I would like to see how they justify charging "between 99 cents and $1.99 a month per blog" (emphasis mine) though. There has got to be something going on here, perhaps they are going to set up a system to pay bloggers for their content?

Levy makes some good points in his article. People are doing more reading on (computer) screens, so we've probably crossed the acceptance barrier. This reader has a much higher dpi of 167 which is about double the average computer screen dpi (current LCD screens are around 92 dpi). It also supports variable text sizes, something current computers do poorly. Next to price, readability is the real key to this succeeding and it seems the kindle reader will definitely have done right.

I have no doubt that someone will pull this off in the next 5 or 10 years - the technology is finally available, someone needs to just put all the pieces together. Bezos just might be the person to create the next iPod - for books.