Kindle: Usability vs. Nostalgia
Redd Horrocks has written an article up for UX Booth about the Amazon Kindle and its MASS ERADICATION OF PRINT. Well, perhaps that’s over-exaggerating a bit. Hit the jump for some highlights from the article and my thoughts on the issue.
Horrocks poses questions in his article like “Isn’t Amazon putting themselves out of business?” He also give a bit of an overview of Kindle pros/cons and discusses why books are more awesome. Clearly he has a bit of a bias, but he offers a neat look at this recent technological development.
While I think the Kindle is a neat gadget, it is electronic, which makes me hesitant to switch over to it exclusively. It’s the same reason I still buy physical CDs, and the same reason I’ll buy games new in the store instead of digitally downloading them: I’ve seen electronic devices fail repeatedly. However, it looks like Amazon has made it easy to get your books again should you delete them, or should your memory go out. Ideally though I think it would be nice to see books come new with a download code for a kindle version. On the negative side of things with the Kindle, you might have to worry about battery life, book sharing (books with DRM! …yay..) and the like. On the positive side, you’re able to store many books AND newspaper subscriptions, change the text size if needed, and many more.
I think the Kindle is a neat gadget, and I would definitely nab one if it wasn’t $350. :)
