Bottom line: the Kindle machine may be as unattractive as a Commodore 64 (to paraphrase David Pogue’s review in this morning’s New York Times), but it is a remarkably complex, sophisticated device. Indeed, I found myself muttering, “With a little more work, they could have made this as good as a Mac!” — and I had to remind myself that the Kindle is not intended to compete with a Mac, or even (shudder) a Windows machine. It is, first and foremost, an electronic book-reading device; but to play that role successfully, it does indeed need a lot of the functionality we’ve all come to recognize in our laptop/desktop computers.

With that in mind, here are a few comments about the non-book-reading aspects of Kindle that I’ve stumbled upon during my brief period of ownership:

1. Contrary to the concerns I raised in a previous blog posting, you can tell how much storage you’ve used, and how much is available; it’s displayed at the bottom of the “Settings” screen. In these days of 100+ gigabyte hard drives, it’s initially disconcerting to see that Kindle is shipped with somewhat less than 200 megabytes of storage; but we forget how compact a text-only document can be. I’ve now downloaded two full-length books, a couple magazines and blogs, and several issues of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; and I still have 171 megabytes available.
2. Also contrary to the concerns I raised in a previous blog posting, it’s relatively straightforward to move documents between Kindle’s internal storage and an SD card, as well as performing basic functions like deleting obsolete documents. It’s all in a section of the device called “Content Manager.” Once again, this is not a PC: it doesn’t have the abilities of the “Finder” on a Mac, or the equivalent mechanism on a Windows machine … but it’s adequate.
3. Contrary to the criticism voiced by Melissa Perenson in her November 21, 2007 PC World review of Kindle, I found it quite easy to locate the slot for the external SD storage card, and to insert that card. Ms. Perenson claims that Kindle will only recognize storage up to 2 GB, which I haven’t had a chance to confirm. But as it turns out, I had an extra 2 GB SD card from an old digital camera (the two cameras I currently use have been upgraded to 4 GB cards). So if Kindle’s advertising claim of having enough storage for 200 books is correct, that means my SD-augmented machine can now hold about 2,000 books. That should be enough to last me for a little while … like a lifetime or two.
4. It took me a little while to find the built-in Web browser; it’s located in a section of the Kindle called “Experimental.” Kindle comes with roughly a dozen built-in bookmarks, as well as the ability to add and delete bookmarks of your own. As several reviewers have observed, it really is a bare-bones browser, best suited to displaying Web sites consisting primarily of text. But this is a good example of my earlier point: if you really want FireFox, Safari, or IE 7, you should put down the Kindle and turn on your PC.
5. The whole concept of an “Experimental Section” is intriguing; it’s apparently where Amazon will segregate the experimental features it’s currently providing on a prototype basis. There are three services in that section now: the web browser, an MP3 music player, and a real-time research service called “Ask Kindle NowNow,” which claims to provide up to three answers to any question, “usually within 10 minutes.” Since the service is free, I asked, “What is the meaning of life?” I’m still waiting for an answer …
6. The long battery life is a real benefit of this device; it basically means you don’t even have to think about turning it off during the way. That’s just as well, because the on-off switch for the main machine, and also for the wi-fi connectivity, is inconveniently located on the back of the device. But who cares? I just plug it in at the end of the day, and just ignore the battery issue during the day. For someone accustomed to PC’s that run for only two or three hours, if you’re very careful about power usage, this is a real joy.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Kindle is following the familiar Apple strategy of providing a closed, controlled environment — with the hope of being able to provide a superior, well-integrated product that the marketplace will love. This was almost the Mac’s undoing in the 1980s, and one of the main reasons for the dominance of the far-uglier DOS-based Intel machines; but Apple’s strategy certainly seems to be succeeding with the current generation of Macs. And it certainly has succeeded with the iPod … and, with some reservations, with the iPhone. Whether Apple will continue to thrive and succeed with this model is a discussion for some other time; meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how Amazon fares with a similar strategy.

Think about it: you can only buy a Kindle machine from Amazon, and you need to have a one-click credit-card account already set up. That means Amazon knows the identity of each customer to whom it sells a Kindle; and it means that Kindle is already pre-configured and pre-registered for your account when you open the box. All you need to do is turn on the machine, and start choosing books and magazines: click, click, click, and your credit card is debited while documents download quickly and invisible onto your machine. (And, of course, you can only buy your books and magazines through Kindle’s Amazon-based bookstore; sayonara, Barnes & Noble.)

The tight control and integration with the WiFi network is also a key strategic part of Kindle. You don’t have to negotiate a Wifi account with yet another obnoxious telecom carrier; you don’t have to worry about installing, configuring, or registering anything; it just works, right out of the box. True, it’s not as fast as a high-speed cable modem — but you’re not downloading YouTube videos or full-length movies. It really does take less than a minute to download a full-length book, and I don’t see how any reasonable person can complain about that.

Peter Brantley makes the interesting point, in his November 19th review of Kindle, that this “closed” approach may eventually be recognized as a strategic mistake — especially if Google manages to provide an equally extensive collection of downloadable e-books through the open-source Android system it’s planning to release next year. He may well be right; this could turn out to be another titanic struggle between the followers of “open” and “closed” environments, just as we’re likely to see in the mobile-phone world. Or — if Apple’s decision to partially-open its iPhone with an SDK release to developers in February is any indication — perhaps there will be a compromise. Maybe Amazon will let you buy your books from Barnes & Noble someday, if there’s enough pressure.

My crystal ball is inadequate to predict how all of this will play out. I do think Kindle will survive and succeed, and I think it will provide the “critical mass” that the e-book marketplace needs. Thus far, it’s been a lot of fun …