On my previous post, I stated many reasons why not to buy a Kindle DX. After sleeping on that thought , I decided to cancel the order and made a promised to myself.
- If I read finish 10 books in 3 months I will buy a Kindle.
Meanwhile, to satisfy myself, I decided to become a prime member to save the shipping fees on those books and k-cup coffee.
Yesterday around 4 PM, I ordered a pack of ear plug replacement for my etymotic earphones. They are only $14, so normally there should have been a shipping charge no matter how slow I want the item to be shipped. Since I am a Prime member, I chose 2nd day shipping option for free. This morning, I decided to see how far in the process the shipment has gone.
I got a next day delivery for free.(minus the membership fee).
Those people who does most of the shopping online,http://www.amazon.com/prime is something that you might want to look at. For $79 per year, you get unlimited 2nd day shipping from Amazon on selected products for free and $3.99 for one-day shipping. When I say selected, that means all the products that Amazon sells directly(have in their warehouse). A product from third-party store isn’t one of those “Prime eligible”. This also allows you to share the benefit with four of your house-hold members. When inviting a family member, one of the relationship includes “unmarried partner”. This can be your best friend who you have no intention of marrying but for this purpose you might consider just for the sake of invitation.
I don’t know anybody working for Amazon nor own a share of AMZN, but I wanted to share this great product. It might look like I am taking a huge advantage over them for saving on the shipping charges, but that is exactly what they want you to think/do. At the end, their profit margin per item will be greater than the shipping charges. I could be and a$$ and order bunch of cheap items individually one at a time. But that is wasting resources and environment so I will pass on that.
I am not a big reader. I hate reading. Sparknotes used to be my best friend before wikipedia came along. I know reading opens up your mind and blah blah~ which I totally agree. I am more of bullet point guy; short ,concise and to the point. So why am I buying a Kindle? I don’t know… I just wanted one, so here are some excuses is an excuse I made up.
= GOOD =
1. Paper books are heavy.
I lived in dormitory during high school and college. Every time I am moving out of my room for summer break, books are the most annoying things to move. There are some books that I wanted to keep, but due to it’s weight I had to throw away most of the them.
2. ….. paused for 30 minutes…. can’t think of any good reasons…
= BAD =
1. You can’t skim through them.
Most of the times, technical books are not read page by page. They are often used as references for an equation or a code. Since the books I will be purchasing are Programming Language books, I will be flipping through them. E-ink isn’t the best technology for fast page turns. Even though there are search and table of content on Kindle, it will take a long time to find that specific code I wanted.
2. Your bookshelf will be empty.
People say don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but who doesn’t? When I go to a friend’s house, I always look at their bookshelf to see what kind of hobby they have. In my mind, books equals knowledge. You can have all the books in your Kindle from the Library of Congress(more than 30 million volumes), you won’t look as smart as a person who has a shelf full of comics, old encyclopedia set and a bible.
3. You can’t share them.
If your friend is interested in borrowing that book from opera’s book club, you can’t. You could give the whole Kindle, but it is unlikely to happen.
4. Why pay?
Most of technical information is flooded on the Web. Also, 100% of the times, the Web is more up-to-date than a book that is published a month ago. There is the problem of validity since anyone can post information on the web, but if you are used to the web, it’s easy to spot them.
5. Who buys them?
Past year, I traveled through airport 8 times. During the period, I have never seen a single person reading a Kindle. So… is this just a hype?
6….
The list can go on why Not to buy a Kindle, but the point of this article is the opposite so I will just stop there. Anyways, that one excuse was good enough for me to buy one. I ordered the Kindle DX on the 12th when they had the availability date as the 18th. Couple days later, in the morning the availability date was changed to 19th and in the afternoon it was pushed back to 22nd. Now the availability date is 26th.
The decision to purchase a Kindle was spontaneous and probably a big mistake on my part. Maybe this delay is a message from the higher being telling me to cancel the order.
When Apple release a new product with new name, it is often a revolutionary moment for Apple worshipping addicts like me. As a iPhone 3G users watching the WWDC keynote, I wasn’t really convinced that this product was a must buy/upgrade for 3G users. After reading initial reviews, I still wasn’t very convinced. So… did I get one? Yes.
Normally, Apple would have released 3GS as just a revision if it was a Mac, which doesn’t have competitions in the market. In the smartphone market, this was different story. Palm Pre, which had it’s nick name as iPhone killer definitely was a game changer for Palm.
Can Pre compete with iPhone in general? My personal view is NO. Apple already has huge number of developers and Apps published for it’s platform. Also they were already in their second generation with many bug fixes and options added. (Although we still don’t have MMS)
Can Pre compete with iPhone 3G in terms of hardware? Yes. Since iPhone 3G is a year old hardware, it is obvious. Apple don’t like loosing, so they needed to do something to compete well on the spec sheet with so called “iPhone killer”. With the release of 3GS, when looking at the spec sheet, we can clearly say that 3GS has the cpu/memory/graphic power to compete well with it’s competitor.
In terms of software features like multi tasking, it is debatable between people, but I stand behind Apple. If you want to give your users the best experience when using that specific application, not allowing multitasking is the right choice.
So why did I buy new 3GS? Apple is known to have good resale values. Currently my old 3G 8GB goes for 250~275 on the eBay. So upgrading before that price gets lower would minimize my losses. Also, extra iPhone would definitely help out if I want to start making Apps.
I doubt anybody still follows my blog, but this is my third try at blogging. I don’t know how long I will keep this blog going, but I will give it an another chance.
For Apple users, this past couple weeks have been very interesting times. As a Mac addict, I will share some of my thoughts on WWDC, iPhone 3GS, iPhone OS 3.0, new MBP line and many more. I will also talk about my experience as I learn Ruby on Rails on my new Kindle DX.
I am not a good essay writer nor story teller, but I will do my best to keep readers interested.(if there is any)