A free Kindle

via Andrew at quid.pro:

Michael Arrington writes this morning that Amazon is looking for ways to give free Kindles to all Amazon prime users:

In January Amazon offered select customers a free Kindle of sorts – they had to pay for it, but if they didn’t like it they could get a full refund and keep the device. It turns out that was just a test run for a much more ambitious program. A reliable source tells us Amazon wants to give a free Kindle to every subscriber.

Of the last nine books I've read, I've read eight of them on my iPhone using the Kindle app. As a matter of convenience, it's been pretty much perfect, compared to lugging books around.

But I don't think I'd necessarily want a free Kindle device; the marginal improvement to reading just doesn't seem worth it, and I'm not sure I'd want to lug it around, either. What I would love is a better experience for finding books to read (which, I think, is what Michael was also saying).

Comments

[Mat Honan]

Have you tried one? My iPhone Kindle app was a gateway drug to the Kindle for me, and now I strongly prefer the latter. The former now seems almost unusable for anything other than, say, looking up recipes in Cook's Illustrated. The e-ink is a far superior reading experience for anything long form--I now read all my long-form articles from the Web on my Kindle thanks to Instapaper. It's not very heavy, certainly it's less of a pain to carry than a hardback book. I think were you to give one a shot for a week or two, you'd be hard pressed to go back to the iPhone.

[btrott]

@Mat: no... for me, the iPhone Kindle app has definitely inspired me to do most of my reading via Kindle titles (and, fwiw, I'm reading much more than I did before), but I haven't yet tried to use an actual Kindle. I probably should try one before making a blanket statement like "I don't think I'd necessarily want a free Kindle", shouldn't I? :)