Chatter about Amazon's Kindle reveals nothing

I think that the CEO doesn't

I think that the CEO doesn't know what's going on with the device and is floundering like a desperate man at a poker table trying to get his opponent to reveal his hand without giving away his own...

I'm going to get a Kindle for my wife as soon as the next version arrives.

Cheap shot

I am not a Kindle owner, and probably will refuse the temptation to get the gadget for another several years, despite the fact that I am an avid reader. Nevertheless, I have to say that Elgan's remark about there not being a fourth through ninth version was a pretty cheap shot. I didn't really find anything else he said in his article to be all that newsworthy, either. I encourage a thumbs-down rating for this non-article.

Kindle isn't for me.....

even though I already have had a rather large collection of e-books for quite some time. However, mine are on my HTC smart phone (AKA AT&T Tilt) from either eBooks or Mobipocket as well as periodicals from other sources should I desire them. There are more than enough titles on those two services to keep me reading for any future I can see.

While perhaps not as pleasant to read as the larger e-ink display devices, I find the smart phone to be quite readable AND I don't have to find space in an already full travel bag for ANOTHER (fairly large) device. Further, while the e-ink devices typically have better battery life than my smart phone, I just carry a second battery for those 12 hour flights on airlines with no seat power. So far, I've had enough battery life for any amount of reading I care to do on such flights and still have enough left over to call my wife when I land.

I had looked at all the readers about a year ago and, while nice, I decided against all of them. The negating criteria was the physical size coupled with the fact that most are tied to a single content source. Price was another factor. Given that I could comfortably read on a device I already had purchased for other reasons, I saw little reason to spend more money on another device.

There is increasing talk (including articles here on computerworld.com) of combining more and more function into a device we're all carrying anyway and this seems to be another logical extension.

In my humble opinion, devices like Kindle and the Sony e-book are nice but the closed nature of them with a single provider source available may well be their doom. It seems to me that eBooks and Mobipocket (and other similar vendors) may have the right model; lots of titles at a great price and support a wide variety of devices for their specific reader software.