Now consider the bloatware, gold-plated nonsense the pentagon is so fond of: has to do everything with bells, whistles, doodads and reports in triplicate to the pentagon.

So maybe there would be a market for a device that does one and only one thing: it Displays! A super high quality display device might indeed go flying off the shelves, but not at 400 dollars and not as a device that has high quality displays of only limited items.

People seem to be twittering alot these days, reading email, listening to voice mails, playing video games and obsessively listening to music, yet 400 dollar Kindle-books are supposedly flying off the shelves? Its not happening in the “bricks” and I don’t think its happening in the “clicks” either.

If they could make this cost $99 I think there might be market for Kindles as your carry along substitute for a … ummm…. real book.

Mom, the baby just dropped your Kindle in the swimming pool

Don’t you just wish a product like this would fly off the shelves into all those idle hands of the younger generation who seem devoted instead to listening to music all the time? Don’t you just wish they would start reading a book instead or atleast a magazine?

What is the Kindle? A portable magazine rack that might be found in a doctor’s office or a portable library? Ain’t gonna go flying off the shelves till people see the display features and ain’t nobody but these dotcom millionaires gonna shell out four hundred smackers so readily.

What can be read on Kindle that can’t be read on a portable computer? Ultra thin laptops would be able to do all a Kindle can do and more.

What am I missing here? What can a 400 dollar Kindle do that is supposedly so special?

I see iPOD and iPHONE as very different tech animals. The first has huge and heavy adoption, the second smaller and much more focused. There’s a price barrier issue as well.

I have to say, Felix’s comment got me thinking…is there really a comparison b/w the iPhone and the Kindle? I mean the iPhone is everywhere in my experience, particularly in both tech and non-tech circles, vs. the Kindle that I only see on tech Web sites (occasionally) and Amazon itself. BUT, what if Kindle really does have the kind of momentum the iPhone, iPod, etc. have?

Metro my gut says that Amazon is working hard to pretend these are popular and probably doing some deep misleading. I certainly have not studied this a lot but the gut check says they initially made a handful, sold out after selling a handful, and are now pretending it’s a big thing. But now heading to see if there are any decent sales stats.

That is truly hard to believe – not that it was what you saw, but that it was not “adjusted”. No rules, laws, etc. that I know of that say you can’t handcraft those sorts of things. . .

Boy the conspiracy theorist in me really jumped out of my mouth just then…..