Made the mistake of placing my Kindle 2 on the edge of a pool table and promptly hit it with a pool ball and watched it fall and bounce around and survive unscathed.
Part of the reason it was on a pool table is that lately have been carrying my Kindle everywhere – doctor appointments, lunches, the park, coffee shops, everywhere. It’s basically become nearly as important as my phone.
What reactions does the Kindle get?
The Kindle gets a lot of reactions. Women in particular notice it a lot and usually ask about it.
People have asked about it on the street, in the elevator, doctor’s office, dentist’s office, lots of other places.
Here are the usual questions -
- How many books does it carry?
- Can you change the font size?
- How much is it?
- What is the keyboard for?
- Can you get books for it?
It’s surprising that people never ask about color and perhaps one person asked about email.
Everyone just seems very curious about how good it is for reading – which makes sense when you think about it.
The one solid objection that comes in is several people who said they could never give up the physical feeling of holding a book.
What reactions does the Sony get?
Rather surprisingly the Sony doesn’t get much of a reaction. One kindle owner in a coffee shop asked about it and one other person. This is despite taking it to a coffee shop and a bar and carrying it around.
There’s something about the Kindle’s design that makes people fixate on the screen and on the device and notice that it’s not the usual type of electronic device. Makes me wonder whether the Kindle’s super simplistic design also makes reading better – suspect it does.
More on Kindle reactions
Another thing that’s really interesting is that the Kindle will sometimes attract an entire crowd i.e. people pull in their friends or people who happen to be nearby join in.
People are very impressed by -
- The screen.
- The ability to read in sunlight.
- WhisperNet (or to be precise the fact that you can get books wirelessly in the US)
- The $9.99 price.
- Font Sizes.
Again, it’s really interesting to see most people contrast it with books (which, to be fair, is the point) and not with any other electronic gadgets. No one has ever asked whether it has games or plays videos or music. Very few people (perhaps 1 or 2) have asked about Internet access.
The questions and interest revolves around books. There have been a lot of people interested in where they can get it and quite a few who had specific people in mind they wanted to buy it for.
It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens when Sony shows up in thousands of retail stores this holiday season – my suspicion is a lot of those people are going to search online to see what the best ebook reader is and most will end up weighing the Sony reader against the kindle.
Filed under: availability, kindle Tagged: | kindle reader
Coincidentally, I was at REI the other day, to get a bigger purse for my DX which is now the one I carry about, I am addicted to its larger, extremely crisp, screen and fonts, as my books now have a lot of maps and charts. I’ll even be bringing it on a trip along w/ a laptop.
I explained to one sales person why I’d bought the larger purse and made the mistake of uttering the word “Kindle” and 3 or 4 other sales guys all said “Kindle” ? KINDLE ?? K I N D L E ?
And all of a sudden I was making a presentation to a few to much enthusiasm. What cut it short was other customers who were hoping for some sales attention. One guy said he wanted one for his wife — I did explain that most people get the little Kindle 2 as it’s easier to always have on you and not so obvious when taking it out to read.
But same here as for you – dentist, bank, restaurant, and always people are very curious about it. Since I am so Net-addicted, I do show people a lookup on the Net too and people can’t believe it does that. You’ll hardly ever see that in Amazon’s publicity of course as it would raise costs for Amazon if people used it a lot.
People like to say it’s ugly or that the Sonys are much more pleasing in look — but cute as the Sonys or Cool-ers might be, there is something about the Kindle 2 – it looks less gadgety and less metallic and more of an ivory-colored mystery. The screen becomes a window maybe. The keyboard (clunky but useful) brings a promise of something beyond just-reading maybe. I thought the Kindle 1 was quite ugly but I do like the look of the K2.
People tend to exclaim that it’s just like reading book page (these are people who don’t log on to Amazon much).