A Cheap(er) Kindle
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Engadget has noticed that Amazon’s Kindle 2 is now a better buy: The company has shaved $60 off the price of it’s e-reader, which is now $299:
The first Kindle shipped in November of 2007 and cost $400; Amazon has been bringing the price down, but only gradually. (It’s the e-books you download from Amazon–many of which are $10 or less–that feel like a bargain.)
I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as a magic price point that makes the Kindle an iPod-like breakout hit, but if there is, $299 probably still isn’t it. But a $199 Kindle might appeal to a much broader audience.
Amazon’s newest Kindle–the jumbo-sized Kindle DX with a 9.7″ screen–is still $489, and is out of stock for the next three to five weeks. The 6″ Kindle 2 is the better buy, I’d say–and, for now, the only Kindle you can actually get.
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Behind Amazon’s Kindle price drop | csmonitor.com Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 1:08 pm[…] McCracken over at Technologizer touches on the mythical price that lulls the masses into buying: “I’m not sure if there’s […]
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October 6th, 2009 at 11:58 pm[…] all: News Haven’t bought a Kindle 2 yet? Good. Amazon.com, which knocked the price of its e-book reader down by $60 only last July, has cut it by another forty bucks. You can now buy one for $259–and while […]
July 8th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
HELLL noo. The Kindle is a joke to me. It looks like 1989.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Absolutely not. Can you underline key phrases in a Kindle? Can you sticky note your favorites? Can you pass favorite books onto your kids as part of your estate? Can you be approached by someone on the bus who says, “I read that book, too. Are you enjoying it?”
Sorry, but Kindle is no bargain for me, regardless of cost.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Kindle DX at $199 would be great, but $489 is too rich for my blood.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I love my Kindle DX. I ended up handing my regular Kindle 2 down to my wife (who now alternates between that and her Sony Reader with the touch screen). The DX is definitely not cheap, but being able to read PDFs as well as see books full page is nice. I can actual read patent PDFs on the DX (and have done so for work).
July 8th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
My price point? Somewhere between $50 and $100 – cheap enough that a relative might buy it as a gift. Or that I won’t feel guilty for indulging myself.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Kindle: $59–no more; Books: $5–no more. Why should we have to pay more for an e-edition that requires no physical media (except maybe a tiny 50-cent chip.)
Yes, I know; the big, commercial publishers claim they only make about $3 off of each hardbound edition sold. If that’s so, does that mean they’re losing $14 on every paperback? I don’t think so. I don’t deny costs have gone up to over 10x what things cost back in 1960, but that still should put books at $5/copy for paper, not $9 or $10. For all the e-books I’ve purchased so far, I have yet to pay more than $5 for any one, including new publications. Most of my fiction I’ve obtained free from the Gutenberg Project and other legal sources.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I’d jump on board at $50.00 TOTAL.. Too expensive for something that still appears to be in gadget phase for the average person. If I was a college student, I might go up to $299.00 ONLY if I could shave 20 % off textbook costs. I have a great public library where I live, so I generally shave 100% off the cost of reading.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Somewhere between $100 and $200 MIGHT do it for me, but I’m really waiting for products like this to advance a bit, so they include color and more functionality.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Nice, but it’s still too expensive — $150 would be reasonable to me after using one for a few weeks.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:41 am
I can use my PDA for things other than reading books. Who would want a single purpose device nowadays except for a high-quality digital camera?
Add to that the recent renaming of the “kindle” to the _Swindle_ after Amazon screwed over its users, I definitely will never buy one.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Its prices will be great if it come down
May 18th, 2010 at 4:59 am
In light of release of Apple iPad and its cheapest at price of $499. Looking back to amazon.com’s Kindle DX, Oh man, $489 for that thing! Amazon really need to wake up to the reality that ripping people off just isn’t that easy anymore.
May 18th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
I love the kindle, but stanley is right the I pad is taking over the market, to bad my kindle is my favorite but the ipad has so much more to offer…..unfortunate
Regards
Alex http://www.comparisonereaders.com