News Kindle is the top-selling product on Amazon

Amen to this. DRM is the mark of the Beast (something the Jehovah's Witnesses still need to catch on to... they can have it for free if they want... and read Bit-Tech). It's like DVDs having anti-"piracy" warnings. Seriously, I just bought the goddamn DVD. The last thing I'm going to do is download it. (And our lovely pirates just cut off all the anti-piracy crap/advertisements for other releeases anyway!). Their DRM crap is the only reason I have stopped buying DVDs, and only buy non-"copyprotected" CDs from small labels/bands themselves (luckily, I don't have a very popular taste in music). Aargh and bah to the vomit the industry produces, which I can definitely do without (which they themselves have taught me by being dicks).


To the person who said he only reads one book at a time: you *****, I read two at a time! Oh, yeah - you little girl, you!

I do completely agree, though. Paper books > screen. Not to mention that a real book never runs out of battery power. ****, even if you don't pay your electricity bill you can read real books (provided you shelled out for candles and a lighter/matches prior to not paying your bills ).

On a serious note, though: when you buy a book, you own the physical item, which is what buying stuff is all about! You wouldn't buy a car if it meant you couldn't re-paint it, change the lining of the seats or open its hood yourself!
When I buy a book, I know I'm not allowed to make 100,000 copies and sell them myself, but at least I can make a copy for myself (because, apparently, when it comes to books, no one cares if I copy it page per page for personal use), share it with other people (i.e. loan it to them, not give them one of my 100,000 potential copies) and all that. It's mine. As it should be.

If you treat people reasonably, they will treat your "intellectual property" (the worst term ever) with respect. If you treat them like potential criminals from the second they spend their hard-earned money on your product, you won't get any respect. ****ing douchebags.

Apologies for the rant. I just really hate DRM

 

Missing the point...

Some of you may remember the XKCD comic dealing with the kindle, it stated that the main benefit was free Wikipedia access through the 3G network for life and that this seemed to be suspiciously like the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in practice.

The only reason I ever wanted a Kindle was for the Wikipedia access and if somehow Amazon do manage to strike a deal with some phone networks then it's going to be practically the best thing to own from a long term point of view. Unfortunately it's not available here in the UK for the reason that some phone companies think it will be expensive (AT&T didn't think so so stop whining) to provide all this text to people.

To summarise - the kindle beats all other ebook readers due to wiki access

 

I'm waiting for Plastic Logic's Que. Jan 7th here i come.

 

And these four libraries now loan her books in kindle format?, or is she just going to buy a book a day?

For those into SciFi, Alternate Reality and so on : http://www.baen.com/library/
Free books here, provided you can read RTF (like.txt files) and a few ebookformats:

Ebookwise/Rocket Format
Mobi/Palm/Kindle Format
EPUB/Stanza Format
Microsoft Reader Format
Sony Digital Reader Format
RTF Format

 

The ONLY reason why I really want a Kindle is free access to wikipedia wherever the f*** I am! That is a revolution!

Related link: http://xkcd.com/548/