Following my post on Kindle (Three reasons why I chose Kindle) some time ago, let me tell you about what I don't like with it, after using it for some while.
- Penalties for international users (limited availability and int'l surcharge of $2)
- Poor UI - visuals and input device
- Poor text handling within blocked texts
Penalties for international users
From time to time, when I click on a link to a Kindle ebook on Amazon, I will see something like "It is not available for my location which "Asia & Pacific" in my case. I can logically understand that there is a rights issue behind that, but still I am not happy.
Another thing here is international surcharge of US $2. If you are a customer outside of US, you need to pay $2 more for every ebook purchase for international wireless delivery. Probably it's because Amazon's margin for ebook is very thin, which is good for us, but I will love the option for us to eliminate the surcharge.
Whether I would give up wireless delivery for $2 saving, I am not sure, though. Whispernet, or wireless delivery, is so comfortable and I need to admit that's a great advantage of Kindle.
Poor UI - visuals and input device
Because we are using cool gadgets like iPhone daily, Kindle's UI is clearly out of date. Yes we use traditional mobile phones with browsers, which Kindle's UI is somewhat similar to, but that's not that of next generation devices.
Poor text handling within blocked texts
Reading ebooks on Kindle, large portion of the content can appear in blocked texts. So you'd probably want to highlight a word in the block to look up a dictionary, or to make an annotation. But that's not supported so far.
I don't have this problem with Kindle Reader on Windows, so I really hope that this will be fixed soon. I can say the first two is "nice to have," while this is a strong wish. I can even call it a bug.
But anyway, I can say again that I love Kindle, and I look forward to improvements of this cool device over time.
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