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The Kindle Index

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Re: The Kindle Index

#61

Post by why-el »

bambax wrote: post #55
tomkarlo wrote: post #33

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locat…

Absolutely! The Kindle is a wonderful device that is already very good and doesn't improve enough to justify upgrading all the time like Apple devices. And it's very cheap, which makes selling old ones not very appealing. I own a Kindle 3 (with a keyboard) and couldn't live without it. Even if I eventually buy a newer one I will keep that one to leave at home for example, or give to my kids. But sell it? Never. This…

Off topic question, but you seem like a long time Kindle user, did you ever have screen problems with it? Mine is just two months old, and its screen half-froze and I can only read half of the documents. I googled this around and it looks like its a frequent hardware problem people face.

Re: The Kindle Index

#62

Post by AJ007 »

tomkarlo wrote: post #33

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locat…

My understanding was that Amazon kept their Kindle sales closely guarded. The type of person that purchases a Kindle off of craigslist must be completely different than one that buys it off Amazon.

I might be wrong, but Amazon already sells cheaper refurbished Kindles where as Apple does not do the same for iPads.

Re: The Kindle Index

#63

Post by thmcmahon »

why-el wrote: post #61
bambax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! The Kindle is a wonderful device that is already very good and doesn't improve enough to justify upgrading all the time like Apple devices. And it's very cheap, which makes selling old ones not very appealing. I own a Kindle 3 (with a keyboard) and couldn't live without it. Even if I eventually buy a newer one I will keep that one to leave at home for example, or give to my kids. But sell it? Never. This…

Off topic question, but you seem like a long time Kindle user, did you ever have screen problems with it? Mine is just two months old, and its screen half-froze and I can only read half of the documents. I googled this around and it looks like its a frequent hardware problem people face.

Just call Amazon - I broke mine by dropping it (completely my fault) and they replaced it within a week.

Re: The Kindle Index

#64

Post by [deleted] »

thmcmahon wrote: post #63
why-el wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic question, but you seem like a long time Kindle user, did you ever have screen problems with it? Mine is just two months old, and its screen half-froze and I can only read half of the documents. I googled this around and it looks like its a frequent hardware problem people face.

Just call Amazon - I broke mine by dropping it (completely my fault) and they replaced it within a week.

[deleted]

Re: The Kindle Index

#65

Post by why-el »

thmcmahon wrote: post #63
why-el wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic question, but you seem like a long time Kindle user, did you ever have screen problems with it? Mine is just two months old, and its screen half-froze and I can only read half of the documents. I googled this around and it looks like its a frequent hardware problem people face.

Just call Amazon - I broke mine by dropping it (completely my fault) and they replaced it within a week.

Will do. Though I have two issues. One is that I bought it from Staples, not Amazon, and I am not sure what they would do in this case. Second, though I bought it in the US, I am currently in Sao Paulo. I hope they can send it overseas.

Re: The Kindle Index

#66

Post by achompas »

AJ007 wrote: post #62
tomkarlo wrote: post #33

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locat…

My understanding was that Amazon kept their Kindle sales closely guarded. The type of person that purchases a Kindle off of craigslist must be completely different than one that buys it off Amazon. I might be wrong, but Amazon already sells cheaper refurbished Kindles where as Apple does not do the same for iPads.

where as Apple does not do the same for iPads.

They do: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad

Re: The Kindle Index

#67

Post by gbog »

bambax wrote: post #55
tomkarlo wrote: post #33

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locat…

Absolutely! The Kindle is a wonderful device that is already very good and doesn't improve enough to justify upgrading all the time like Apple devices. And it's very cheap, which makes selling old ones not very appealing. I own a Kindle 3 (with a keyboard) and couldn't live without it. Even if I eventually buy a newer one I will keep that one to leave at home for example, or give to my kids. But sell it? Never. This…

And they add to the abuse of Confucius apocryphal quotes. (Confucius was talking about studying, hardly equivalent to reading Da Vinci Code...)

Re: The Kindle Index

#68

Post by gbog »

What annoyed me the most in this post is not the lame analysis, it is the assumption that all readers are US citizens. No printable words can describe this.

Re: The Kindle Index

#69

Post by tomkarlo »

andrewpi wrote: post #51
tomkarlo wrote: post #33

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locat…

I agree with you. In addition, compared to the price of living in a city like New York or LA, a Kindle is quite cheap and almost disposable. It makes sense to me that less New Yorkers would be trying to sell their old Kindles.

I didn't think about this before but yeah, with the price of a _new_ Kindle at about $80, a used, unwarrantied one from the prior generation must run as low as $30-40. At that level you're starting to get too low for most people to bother selling it on CL.

Re: The Kindle Index

#70

Post by dkarl »

personlurking wrote: post #23
dkarl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a Kindle once. Lost it in a breakup. I still read more books in the Kindle app than dead tree books, and I don't miss not having a Kindle. Thanks to the Kindle app on my iPhone, reading serves as the mortar of my life, filling up all the cracks. I only used my actual Kindle at home for sit-down reading.

Interesting, the trend in calling regular books "dead tree books" and in leaving out the "e" in e-books. I have my own ideas as to why this is happening though I fear they would derail the conversation on the article at hand, thus I'll just leave it as food for thought.

I agree "dead tree" is a little bit derogatory, and unjustifiably so. Until e-books are strictly superior, until they are as good as physical books in every important way, we should respect what we've got.

I think my primary motivation for putting down dead tree books is that the e-books I've bought and haven't read are invisible. They don't sit on my bookshelves openly shaming me for not reading them :-O

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