June 6, 2008

ASUS Eee or Amazon Kindle II

This article is about freedom of choice. Not meaning to sound political... but there are distinct differences between the Kindle and the ASUS Eee series regarding online access of ebooks, newspapers and blogs.

Let us consider some typical books. You can buy 2 types of books. Reference (these will include recipe books) and reading. For most people, a reference book is bought to go into their reference library at home and be brought out on demand at any time. Reading books are there to be read. The majority of time people read a book once, and then they are put away. However, a book has some value and it can be sold or given to someone else who has expressed an interest in the topic of the book or in something by the same author. You purchase a book and it is your property to dispose of as you wish when you have finished with it.

A book purchased from the Amazon Kindle bookshop for your Kindle can only be used on that Kindle with your account and not on any other. You have no rights to the text to sell it afterwards, or even to give it away. There is a promise from Amazon that in the event of your Kindle being stolen you can block the old machine and have all the books you have purchased from Amazon downloaded onto the new Kindle you buy from Amazon. After you die there is no residual value for anything on the Kindle. If you want someone else to read a book on the Kindle then you have to lend them yours, you cannot loan the book to them or sell the book to them. Personally I feel that this business model defeats the whole object of getting an ebook reader.

What about the ASUS?

Use your favorite browser and search for free ebooks. What is the result? For me I found www.free-ebooks.net, www.gutenburg.org (with over 25,000 titles), www.e-books.com.au, and the list could go on. Yes these can be downloaded onto the Kindle, but then you lose half of the benefit of having a machine with "always-on" Internet access. The Internet access is for you to download your ebooks from Amazon's Kindle shop immediately. You can get what you want, when you want it.

Consider also a growing family; there are 3 children each within a year of their closest sibling. You buy all the children a Kindle and each year you load their textbooks and reading materials onto the Kindle for that year. Then that Kindle passes to the next child and the next. They cannot keep their own machine as the Kindle license is for one machine only.

I have not forgotten about access to newspapers and blogs. In order to get updates of newspapers and blogs on the Kindle you have to subscribe. This means you may have to pay to continue, once the trial period is over. If you travel outside the USA frequently on business or pleasure, you'll get the blogs and the newspapers delivered to your Kindle when you get within range of the USA mobile phone transmitter. For the vast majority of readers the newspapers will be out of date on your return, but you still have to download them all. With the ASUS you can access the web sites of these newspapers for free once you are at a WiFi hub. The same with your favorite blogs. You can keep up to date and not have a pile of reading when you get home. Anything that needs to be looked at when you return home can be e-mailed to your home computer for a review later.

The Kindle is a great machine, but to lock all your ebooks inside it may be unhelpful. Your choice.