"Start reading Why the Kindle Will Fail on your Kindle"

Rick Munarriz's 2007 Why the Kindle will Fail is now free of charge to Prime members. [Amazon via John Moltz]

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SpiderJon

The reviews on Amazon don’t exactly suggest it’s worth wasting electrons on.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=718104135 Mark Wintle

Is there a reason why Boing Boing is promoting a 9 page review costing $3 from 2007? This is beyond bizarre! Even for free it’s still bizarre.
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  Ironic recursion factor?
  
  Can’t imagine any other reason.
- http://twitter.com/chrnoble Chris Noble
  
  Because it’s funny.
sonikbhoom

This ironic post is ironic.. :)
kroeghe

I think Rob must have had a bad day (night?) when he submitted a link for this… detritus.
lvl99

Someone give me a tldr; stat
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  I haven’t even read it!
Shinkuhadoken

I’ll put this on the same list as “Where are the flying cars?“
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

If ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
vinculture

The problem I have with the Kindle is that the two I have tried simply did not work. The most 1st one refused to boot, and the 2nd one booted, but refused to connect to any network.

And the display gave me a headache.
- Jake0748
  
  Actually, that sounds like three problems.
- dculberson
  
  Sounds like you should try one that isn’t broken. Stop basing your opinion on ones you pick out of the trash.
  - vinculture
    
    Weak troll. Unless you’re saying that the Amazon website is the trash? Or is Amazon’s Kindle Defense Squad relying on cut-rate staff at the weekend?
- weatherman
  
  Well it sounds like your problem isn’t with the Kindle so much as it’s with a Kindle. And I’m not sure how it would have given you a headache if you weren’t actually able to use it.
  
  Amazon sells millions and millions of Kindles because millions of people love them. We’ve had three in my household and I’ve purchased another two as gifts, and we’ve never had a problem with any of them.
  - vinculture
    
    Sounds like your problem is with reading comprehension. That’s *2* Kindles I bought that didn’t work, not 1. And the headache came from trying to read the display while setting up networking on the 2nd one. I don’t know how anyone can say it’s remotely comparable to a real book.
    
    Just because you haven’t had any problems with them, doesn’t mean nobody gets a faulty one. The number of 1-star reviews on Amazon seems to back up my side of the story, plenty of people have been sold duds.
    
    Oh, and ‘millions and millions’? Get real.
http://twitter.com/ChemicalOli Oli Newsham

I’ve just come back from the Front Trends conference in Poland and my Kindle was utterly invaluable. It kept me amused on both flights and I could sit outside in the breaks and read but more importantly than that I could store bus/tram timetables on it, maps of the local area, interesting places to go and useful polish phrases without worrying where I was going to find a power socket, it fits in my jacket pocket and I can browse the net in some limited fashion on it. The Kindle is literally The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy v0.1a.
- lvl99
  
  I went to the PNG jungle with a Kindle and it sure helped wile away the time — and the expense of hulking a mass of books out into a remote spot.
- kristen55
  
  I use my Kindle Fire every single day – I adore it! So this post made ma LOL :D
Jonathan Badger

I remember reading a review of a book that came out a few years ago when e-readers were just getting started that made the claim that physical books were wonderful and e-books were evil (not because of DRM or monopoly pricing or anything like that; just because they weren’t “really books” or some such nonsense). Of course, the first thing I did after reading the review was to go to Amazon and click on the “I’d like to read this on Kindle” button, just to mess with the technophobic author.
Halloween_Jack

I’m assuming that they’re doing it for the schadenfreude.
http://goblinbox.com/ goblinbox

what’s a kindle
- http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch
  
  It’s like a calculator that you can read books off.
- Robert
  
  It’s like a book, only it breaks if you drop it.
  - retepslluerb
    
    Actually it doesn’t unless in rare cases.
Robotech_Master

This is actually less ironic than it appears. The title is a bit misleading, as the essay started out in tune with the piece Munarriz wrote for The Motley Fool that called the Kindle a “$400 paperweight” but he changed his mind while he was writing it as he considered the possible effect that Amazon’s then-new self-publishing program could have. (The blurb on the Amazon page even refers to this.) In fact, when you read his second article (which I linked above) it’s actually kind of how surprising how well he predicted the booming Amazon self-publishing market the Kindle kicked off.

I’m guessing he chose the deliberately confrontational title at the time in the hope of selling more copies. I’m also guessing that it’s priced at $2.99 instead of the as-low-as-he-could-charge 99 cents it was originally because he doesn’t expect anyone to buy it anymore but wants to scoop revenue from the Kindle library program. Which you’re helping him do by promoting the book so people with Amazon Prime will read it out of curiosity. :)

Nothing to see here, move along.
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelDawson5423 Michael Dawson

I waited quite a while before I bought an eInk reader, and eventually settled on the special version of the Kindle 4, ironically after reading nothing but scathing reviews of it, I read them and all their complaints had nothing to do with reading ebooks and everything to do with there being no keyboard or no MP3 functionality, no touch screen etc. none of which I rated at all as useful.

When all I’m doing is pressing a button to turn the page, I do like a button, really who wants smudgey finger prints all over the screen. I had to do a couple of things to it, to make me happy, one being remove the advertising, that was as simple as run a batch file some guy on the net had helpfully written, and upgrade it so you could have it refresh the screen on every page turn instead of every 5, and then it worked like a charm.

I never turned on the WIFI that it has and simply use the provided usb cable to put my books on it, in TXT and PDF or MOBI, I don’t have to worry about DRM or whatever bullshit Amazon would do if I connected it with their software, I just use it to read ebooks, works like a dream.

I did buy a faux leather case for it which came with a very helpful reading light, other than that I’m really happy with it, battery life is better than great and it just works, I even started keeping recipes on it, very handy to take into the kitchen when cooking.

And to get back to my original point I waited a while to buy one because they were too expensive, whereas this one was $180 NZD ($148 USD) new, so I thought the time was right, haven’t looked back.
- regeya
  
  I’ve got a Kindle 3. The keyboard isn’t terribly useful, the MP3 functionality really isn’t useful unless you have an Audible account (this kills the battery) and you’re right about not needing wifi. There are so many great books you can get without Amazon’s DRM being involved.
  - weatherman
    
    I disagree about the advantages of WiFi (or 3G) – it’s great for periodicals. For me there’s no more satisfying feature of technology than waking up in the morning, no matter where I am in the world, and having the New York Times right there waiting for me. Now if only they could invent a system that delivered coffee via 3G…
    - regeya
      
      There is that, but I tend to have a computer and USB cable with me, so in the morning I’ll plug in, run Calibre, and a couple of minutes later I have feeds from NPR, Engadget, and several others waiting to be read. If I was a road warrior, I’d be more likely to use wifi or 3g to snag periodicals.
iread2

There are some wonderful old books around about why the telephone was going to fail.