Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Kindle with Special Offers

It’s in my best interest to promote the $114 Kindle with Special Offers. After all, the more Kindles out there, the more likely you’ll buy Good Cop, Dead Cop. But I have to suggest caution until a little more is known about the new model.


In case you’re unaware of this, Amazon’s latest Kindle, available May 3, cuts $25 off the price of the current lowest price Kindle, the 6-inch diagonal WiFi model. But you have to put up with an ad at the bottom of the home screen and sponsored screensavers. Granted, these don’t sound like much of a hardship, although I’m baffled why an E Ink device needs a screensaver. From what I understand, there can be a problem with ghosting from a previous image, but it’s quickly fixed by flashing the entire display black and white once to reset. And it would make sense that an E Ink device simply power down than run the batteries running a screensaver.

Again, these are minor distractions and shouldn’t prevent you from buying the $114 Kindle with Special Offers. But I would hold off until you can find out whether by paying an additional $25 you can remove the special offers. Think of it: you really like your new Kindle but after a while you get sick of those ads, so you figure, why not pay the $25. After all, it’s just the same device as the $139 Kindle. Amazon should be able to just flip a switch after you pony up and turn off the ads.

If they decide to. I’m sure some tech website will ask Amazon this question and maybe my concern is for nothing.

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