Now that we know more about the Kindle, not that people are actually using them; it seems that the Kindle is a “get it” kind of device. Either you “get it” or you don’t.
The one’s who don’t are the ones who focus on the look of the device (to me it looks like a kind of retro homage to the Mac 128, and the Apple ][, but that may just be me). Or they get caught up in the DRM, or the business model. I think these people are the ones who think that the N-Gage died because of sidetalking
The ones who seem to “get it” are the ones — Like Paul Thurrott, and Andy Inatko — are the ones who seem to see though Amazon’s marketing and to the device itself.
Here is my take (and bare in mind that I have not used one or even seen a working one): The Kindly is like an iPod for information. Except that it is freestanding. From day one it never needs to be attached to a computer. You can buy DRMd book directly from it, but you can also put any Mobi formatted document. Amazon will convert PDFs to Mobi for free, or for $0.10 if you want it mailed directly to your book.
But get this, the EVDO wireless is free. The thing has a web browser. It has a Askville like, community answer service (it is unclear if they are using Askville or Mechanical Turk for this). It is a handheld, pockable, device for all of your information. If you subscribe to a major newspaper, or the big newsweeklies then you can get them delivered directly to your Kindle. Read for you when you wake up.
Now let us hope that Amazon really planned this to be a “get it” device and just aren’t marketing it very well. Because if they really meant it just to be a walled gargen DRM machine, then sooner or later they are going to come crashing down on all of the people who figured out what this device should be about.
