Head over to the ALA TechSource blog to see my take on the new Amazon Kindle announcements. The new models announced yesterday, along with pricing, are:
- Kindle Fire: $199
- Kindle Touch 3G, no ads: $189
- Kindle Touch 3G with “special offers”: $149
- Kindle Touch Wifi, no ads: $139
- Kindle Touch Wifi, with “special offers”: $99
- Kindle, no ads: $109
- Kindle, with “special offers”: $79
There’s lots more at TechSource, but the pull-quote from the article is probably:
For libraries, however, with the exception of cheaper cost-per-device you want to provide…well, nothing really changes. Amazon is still providing books at the publisher’s set cost that are licensed in such a way that limits the ability of libraries to circulate them (the books, not the devices). The Kindle/Overdrive deal doesn’t change at all…you can just buy a Kindle to circ to patrons for $40 less than you could yesterday. But the technological hurdles for our patrons on the user-experience front as well as the backend limitations of the DRM provided files are still the same as ever.