Kindle: Web Browsing Experience Is Horrible

Call me crazy, but… Maybe that’s why it’s under experimental? Just a thought…

That was far from a fair test. You compared typing a URL in Kindle to going to a book mark in iPhone. I’m sure it would take far longer to type the URL to TechCrunch on iPhone’s virtual keyboard than on iPhone. Now the Kindle is far from perfect. I looks like something out of the 80’s in terms of style, and, therefore, it can learn a lot from the iconic iPhone. However, let’s be fair.

yes, although it wasn’t a bookmark, it was an auto-complete that it offered up because I’d been to the site before. I don’t think the Kindle offers auto complete.

Watch the video closely and see how many steps it takes to actually load the web browser. I couldn’t figure it out just by playing with it, I’d need a lot of time to learn the UI, or I’d have to get out the manual. The iPhone, by contrast, is just completely intuitive.

OMIGOD! A device with CPU that last for a few hours outperforms a device intended to run on as little power as possible!!!

You know what’s pathetic? It took you 14 seconds to do that on an iPhone. Intuitive my ass. It takes less than 10 seconds on a Crackberry.

Mike, you’re suffering from over-experience. You bring too many expectations about how to use the device.

Treat it like a souped up book, not like an electronic igizmo, and suddenly it’ll all make sense.

again, take out the iphone comparison if you think its unfair…and the web browsing experience is still completely unacceptable.

Maybe … but its first task is reading books … not browsing the web. They don’t advertise it as such - even though they do push blogs out to it.

book. reader.

Another biased review by the apple fan-boy! The comparison is not even relevant to the intended purpose of the Kindle.

Mike: do you get some satisfaction in throwing your little d$#$# around?

Michael, assuming this Kindle device ‘works’ and displays text well in your v.2 hypothetical example…

Would you prefer to read a newspaper/book using the Kindle, or would you prefer the traditional medium?

To be fair, the iPhone’s main feature are three things: phone, web, and iPod.

To be fair, Kindle isn’t a web browser. The e-ink’s refresh rate is a killer.

To be fair, the strength of the e-ink screen is that in bright and dim lighting situations, though not in pitch dark party environment, it’s a very clear and readable format that doesn’t strain the eyes and doesn’t use up a lot of power.

To be fair, people have to be comparing this device with other devices such as Sony Reader, Sony Libre, iRex iLiad, or the plethora of Korean/Japanese/Chinese e-ink devices. I don’t understand why people insist on comparing this to an iPhone.

But, that’s only if you want to be fair.

I think it gets compared to the iPhone because it’s state of the art in design for consumer electronics. I’m not sure the design of the Kindle was meant to be retro, it is probably that Bezos taste is all in his mouth. At the price, you’d expect more, at least I would.

dude, no more kindle coverage please

i wouldn’t mind seeing an iphone book reader. have the background to black, have it load up pdf’s, and just flip the pages with a touch of the screen.

Maybe Alaska says it right when says that “eink is refresh killer”. Point is that eink like screen is needed for reading experience. And of course its unfair to compare it to iphone since their purpose is different. Even though buy and download idea of kindle is great, no body can deny that interface could have been much better.

Try reading a book on the iPhone. See how that goes.

Who cares if it browses the web - its an ebook! Anyone who buys it for its web capabilities is buying the wrong device. Cant believe you put such a biased and irrelevant review up on Techcrunch…

E-Ink screens have been known to suck in web browsing. I’m surprised that Amazon even tried.

what was up with those two geeks from Yahoo. I think that’s the bigger story.

who cares about the stupid kindle. i think it’ll be good to do what it’s name suggests … “kindle a fire”.

Anyone tried textonphone.com on iPhone? No need to say anything more…

So, how long do you give before someone hacks their Kindle into a free service EV-DO modem?

Come on, he was explaining and showing how to get to a website, not racing to show you how fast it could be done.

It’s a device for reading books. Jeez…

I think your video completely disagrees with what you say in your blog post — even Scoble says it’s too dark to read a book in that room.

>But web browsing on the iPhone isn’t the key feature of that device, either.

W.T.F? Tell that to Apple. I’m sure they’ll want to change their website because it breaks out web browsing as a core function.

I’m not kindle fan but this comment makes you look totally clueless. Seriously. What in god’s name are you talking about? There are better phones, email devices and music players but no communication device offers a better web browsing experience which Apple (and the reviews) tirelessly tout.

Blogosphere has already made Kindle a big hit. Thats the problem with blogosphere, even a -ive coverage can become a big marketing campaign. TC - Please, enough of Kindle. Its another facebook experience for your readers.

This thing is a total disaster and will get filed in the same bin as the Audrey and Newton (except the Newton had better Industrial Design).

I cannot believe how much attention this thing is getting. YUK!

Why is everyone complaining about “too much” Kindle coverage? At least it’s a real story for once. And Amazon really should be ashamed of that thing, it looks like a Fisher Price product.

Kindle is Butt Ugly and a total waste of time. score:0

Whoever decided to add web browsing should have made sure it worked reasonably well because it will always compared to other similar or not so similar devices with browsing capabilities even the feature is not a core one. The quicker an improved v2 is out the better for everybody.

will people ever give up real books though? Maybe if it gets some people I know who never read books to read something other than trade magazines then it’s good.

What’s an Orange party?

Antje,

Have people given up buying CDs or LPs completely ? No, they’ll always be a market for a hard copy … but once eBook technology matures I think people will flock to device like this for the majority of their reading needs, especially:

* Technical manuals
* Textbooks
* Government publiciations
* Business reports … etc.

For causal non-fiction reading, I think it’ll be a question about pricepoint. $9.99 vs $25 is a huge difference. If the reading experience and UI improves (the Kindle is clearly not there yet….) I think you’ll see the transition begin in earnest, but people will still persist in reading hardcopies… they’ll have to pay for the privilege however if it becomes a niche product.

what a silly comparison. NEXT!

Does *anything* work properly on there?

Huh?

Michael, how is reading books on your iPhone?

I can’t believe you even posted this.

“The Kindle can be given some slack since web browsing isn’t its core function”

i suspect that no one except bloggers who want to see a crappy experience would ever bother to browse the web on a book.

Its a fair comparison of two wireless devices that offer web browsing.

Web browsing may not be the primary focus of the Kindle, but it is a very important feature. Do you spend more time reading books or the web?

I for one am glad to see this comparison. A $400 device with free EVDO web browsing is itself tempting, even with the e-ink screen, and I appreciate knowing such a potentially useful feature is just an “experimental” afterthought.

The entire device appears graceless and unconsidered, and those attributes ensure disappointment, and perhaps outright failure, when Apple products are available for comparison, even when the products are not direct competitors.

I think this is the first defensive comment I have written about the thing I love to hate. The screen is for reading books and not straining the eyes. Its not designed to be an lcd and therefore not going to act like one.

Never mind the web browsing, the core function itself is useless.

Amazon is just the latest in a long series of big companies that have tried to come out with an electronic reader, and all have failed miserably - even in Japan, where people really love gadgets and need to read on commuter trains so crowded that it’s hard to unfold newspapers, or even turn the page on a magazine.

I wonder when companies will start to understand that electronic readers are as far off as personal air-cars. Paper is just too good.

Mike, you are an apple fan boy! =P

Michael > “I couldn’t figure it out just by playing with it, I’d need a lot of time to learn the UI, or I’d have to get out the manual. The iPhone, by contrast, is just completely intuitive.”
Well in fact, thanks to Apple marketing, you’ve been teached how to use an iPhone before having one in your hands.

Hey, Mike try the same test without Wi-Fi.

The Kindle’s experimental browser does have auto-complete URLs.

The Kindle’s EVDO and processor is probably much faster to load the actual website then on the iPhone’s crappy EDGE.

- How can you expect a better user interface for an E-Ink based ebook that does not have a touch-screen? I guess Amazon could have used Wacom stylus function as an additionnal user interface, but they chose not to, possibly because of cost and battery consumption of the Wacom touchscreen system.

- How can you expect a better blackberry-styled keyboard?

- How can any Ebook screen be any better then E-Ink? E-Ink is the absolute best quality you can get for text, it’s the only way to read an electronic book.

The Kindle is the first device in the world that lets the user take books, newspapers and blogs on a portable electronic device. And this technology here is able access the whole worlds books, newspapers and blogs contents. And not only that, but most probably that a few firmware updates can add to the already awesome Wikipedia access an open RSS aggregator(to load any blogs while just paying Amazon for the EVDO bandwidth used), reading of Forums, reading of Google News websites, basically the Kindle is the first device to confortably be able to read the web.

That is why I think that the Kindle is pretty revolutionary and probably worth much more than your 1/10 rating. I hope that the European version will have HSDPA and WiFi, a Wacom touch-screen like the iRex Iliad and a few more firmware features.

What in the world made you think that this video is up to the standard of showing up in a tech magazine?
It’s shaky, dark, noisy and full of annoying camera flashes.
I’ve seen better drunken party videos on Youtube

Sorry for trolling, never done this before

There are Exabytes of text on the Internet, all of it looks better and is more readable on the Kindle than on your computer screen. And all of this worlds text is potentially available in one click on the Kindle, depending just on the Interface quality of the Interface. This is the beginning of the revolution, finally digital text is readable as printed text on paper and is available magically in one click. It’s one piece of paper that contains the whole Internet and the library of Alexandria.

IMO the biggest feature of the Kindle is the wireless anywhere with no setup. If Amazon can do it then others can do it - like Garmin providing the same thing with their GPS Navigation systems.

Web browsing with an etch-a-sketch?

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

This comparison is just totally silly. Only thing that the Kindle should be compared against is other book-reading devices.

Arrington, no wonder so many people treat you like a pariah, and call you out. You act like a douche.

Also…it takes a tremendously long time for me to pull up a webpage when mobile safari locks up my iphone, and I have to reset it before I can access it again.

I have to agree with comment #42 Arrington. You are killing your brand by publishing videos that look like this. How can anyone take it seriously?

Get a new cameraman, that guy is a dick.

#37 is dead right - ebook readers will never take off because they are worse than the technology they are attempting to replace. I remember reading somewhere that the definition of a paper page is thousands of times better than any screen. That’s why your eyes never hurt after reading a book for hours.

Who brings their kindle to a party

I think I heard this conversation once before when digital cameras first came out.

I still read ebooks on my Palm Treo’s eReader.

omg scoble and arrington are such nerds

“so… that took 55 seconds, and mine took 14″ *adjusts taped glasses and snorts* “is that a 3.5 out of 10, hehe”

lame

Ever read instructions? Slapping at the screen when it isn’t touch sensitive? Reviewing something in a bar? Bitching about the browser when it’s meant for reading digital books?

You don’t come across as an exceptionally bright person after a piece like this.

Another dumbass Maczealot compares Apples and oranges.

Best part: Scoble types “www.” Someone tell him it’s 2007.

I just want to jump in and say that Michael Arrington sounds like a real idiot trying to use the touch screen on a device which doesn’t have one.

LOL.