The guild is missing the use case. Do you use TTS 100% of the time? Or, do you flip-flop to TTS for chunks of content when the situation demands audio (e.g., driving). This is what “multi-modal” interfaces and best for.

The major one is that you can easily carry many books around with you. If you’re on the bus/train/subway a lot, it’s much easier to have one Kindle with many books than to bring separate books every day (sort of like having an iPod with your entire music collection, instead of bringing a CD player and a separate CD every day). This can be incredibly handy if you’re going on a trip someplace. Suitcases have limits, and this can free up a lot of space.

Beyond that, you can buy books wirelessly, and download them right away, so if you want to get a book you don’t have to wait until you can get to a bookstore to start reading it.

There are other benefits too, but those are two major ones.

I’m uneasy about centralized control of post-purchased publications reversing the emancipation the printing press gave us.

it’s downright creepy when no one at Amazon will even respond to three simple, basic questions about it

It’s just another corporation, and it doesn’t appreciate your “love” in the slightest, and it’s not your friend.

This seems like a whiz-bang “cool” toy with no real benefit over the original.

Don’t buy a Kindle.

P.S. Books smell better.

–chris

I bought my kindle used from a colleague for about 150.00. I am a train commuter (1 hr) train ride and adore my kindle for reading and easily downloading books (not to mention the ‘sample’ feature).

My gripe with DRM has come to light with Sony’s support for library ebooks (http://scls.typepad.com/techbits/2009/03/rekindling-ebook-enthusiasm-.html). Using ‘igorsk’s infamous de-drm script’ should not be an option, as your average ‘Joe’ / ‘Susan’ is not going to want to hack their Kindle.

To me this is a show stopper for Kindle and would force me to buy a Sony reader.

I like the idea of Flooding Amazon support line with complains about DRM. Has anyone given serious thoughts how to coordinate such a protest?

The Writers Guild is still wrong about Text-to-Speech. And Amazon just proved that they’re not out to champion anyone’s rights — they’ll roll over for anybody.

As for your question about the Kindle file format containing anything, patent or trade secret, that would prevent generating your own files… The patent issue may or may not exist (though I suspect not), but the trade secret “issue” is a non-issue if the file format is reverse-engineered in a “clean room” fashion. I know this may not apply everywhere, but in the United States at least, reverse engineering for the purpose of compatibility or interoperability is completely legal.

Anecdote Time!
I have a friend in the military, stationed in Iraq. His wife was going to get him a kindle because the T2S feature would be nice, since he’s dyslexic and loves books. Reading along with the speech helps him read faster. But thanks to the Author’s Guild, no Kindle for him.

The Author’s Guild hates our troops! =P

Also, remote disabling of licenses in DRMed software is very “Rainbows End”. The fact that this is possible should make anyone wary of buying a Kindle. What happens when they stop supporting it? Like they get bought out or just decide to go in a “different direction”? Congratulations, you’ve just bought a brick, and all of those books you thought you were buying were just rentals.

“The experimental category represents features we are still working on to enhance the Kindle experience even further. Try them out and let us know what you think. We have no plans to remove the experimental featuresin fact, we are working hard to make them even better for you.”

I’d never switch to a reader that didn’t have at least this level of openness and usability. Will Kindle let me import my whole library of .lit files and annotation files? Will it let me export to other formats? If not, why the hell not? Seems like a no-brainer if you’re trying to design and sell a piece of hardware to a market of users.

The problem is that the Kindle is a piece of hardware, but it is designed and sold by people whose only motivation is selling you their content. Of course it’s going to be designed with their interests in mind, not the users’.