I’ve had my Sony Reader Touch for close to a year now. It’s my first electronic reader, and it’s a wonderful device. The touch screen does add a bit of glare to the screen, though it’s incredibly useful and makes the interface work quite well.
Today, however, Amazon revealed their third version of the 6″ Kindle, with a Wi-Fi only version for $140. Notably, too, the battery is larger, reportedly lasting up to a month; and they also are packing in a new e-ink display which is supposed to garner better contrast and faster page turns.
DRM improved?
Perhaps I’m a bit late to the party, though I did find on Amazon’s website a certain section labeled “Downloading to Multiple Devices,” which reads in part:
Content purchased from the Kindle Store can be downloaded to your Kindle, or Kindle compatible device, as long as you’ve registered the device to the Amazon.com account that purchased the Kindle content. There is no limit on the number of times a title can be downloaded to a registered device, but there may be limits on the number of devices (usually 6) that can simultaneously use a single book.
That means you can download and read your books on any Kindle device you own as long you’ve registered each device to the Amazon.com account where your Kindle Library is stored.
Personally, this sounds like a big upgrade. A year or so ago, it was the case that certain titles would only be allowed to be downloaded a certain number of times. That meant that with multiple devices, generations, etc., the content which you paid for would no longer be yours. Tying the purchases to the account, and having the with “no limit” to the number of downloads sounds like a great step up.
Closing remarks
I personally have no reason to want to stray from my Reader. It serves me well, is still great for my eyes, and still does have a touch screen which the Kindle series lacks. Even so, it seems as though Amazon is slowly getting their act together, and I can see that the case may be that they win this e-book stuff in the end, especially if they keep good hardware at such low prices; as well as a reasonable system of DRM to allow your content to actually be your own.