Well, not like you might think. I mean, the job thing, sure, but that's not a problem for right now.
The problem for right now is ... what's my reward? You know, for losing weight. It was going to be a Kindle (I think ems suggested this), but see, there's this thing about DRM, and mysteries (not the book kind), and Amazon not clearing them up for you.
Now, I'm not allergic to DRM like a lot of techies are – I mean, I have a 360, and of course the DRM is terribly executed there (it cost me hundreds of hours on Bejeweled, just as well, that achievement probably wasn't worth it anyway) – but I do have my limits. And I like to read. I have books from some of my college courses, probably even from when I was a kid. I might want to keep books for a while.
And when there are still all these limits around that Amazon doesn't really know about in the first place and can't clarify for you in the second, well ... I'll probably like the Kindle, and at some point in the future I'll probably want another one. If I can't be sure I can read my books on both devices (or on alternate devices) ... the last thing I need is another pile of outdated electronic crap in my house. (No, really. Would you like a 100-disc CD changer? How about a two-deck VCR? A 20-year-old analog TV?)
sigh. Back to the drawing board ... perhaps literally, now that I have Photoshop ...
A profile of zlionsfan
- zlionsfan
- Indiana, United States
- I like cats. I play a lot of games. Sometimes I develop web-based applications; this keeps my current employer from firing me too often. My favorite color is blue, or maybe green.
I will pass on the 100 CD disk changer, but I remember the days when I couldn't wait till I could "afford" to buy one.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the Kindle. Who cares about the proprietary stuff. It works well. I hope to get many years of use out of it. I also like the instant gratification of wanting a book and then viola it is in my hand within two minutes.
Of course, I would recommend getting a new job before you spend $350 frivolously, but who am I to judge, I bought a new car the last time I was unemployed.
The irony is that when I bought it, I could absolutely afford it – I had no debt and had money in the checking account for it – but I had so recently cleaned up my finances that I almost literally couldn't buy it.
ReplyDeleteIt's not bad to have that kind of reaction. Better than to shell out money automatically and worry about it later.
You should worry about the proprietary stuff ... for example, you may already have bought books that you can download onto exactly one place, but you won't know until you get a Kindle 3 or whatever and you can't download it. That's the main problem with that model, as opposed to, say, Amazon's music model (irony again), where you pay for a track and use it how you like.
The problem is that publishers feel like they need to protect their work (not necessarily incorrectly) but never took the time to work out a reasonable model with Amazon (bad move).
How would you feel about the Kindle if, in two years, there were another service that offered twice the books at the same cost with no DRM? If the reader were comparably priced, you'd feel cheated in some ways ... which is what happened to early iTunes shoppers. They spent all this money on protected tracks and suddenly the market changed on them ...
Do you already have the Kindle and are waiting to open it till you reach your goal?
ReplyDeleteI agree about the proprietary stuff and I feel that the book market is not ready to move with this technology. They seem to be dragging their feet a bit.
Oh no. I can't do it that way. That just leads to opening the box under some other excuse ... not to mention if you have a limited amount of time to return a defective product, it doesn't make sense to buy it when you're not going to use it for weeks.
ReplyDeleteYou know, if you're trying to become more financially responsible, maybe the Kindle isn't the best thing for you. How often do you find yourself buying books for it?
Something about the way you wrote your post made me think you already had it.
ReplyDeleteSince you have asked, I have spent a total of $157 this year on books and magazines. This includes purchases for the Kindle, on Amazon and in bookstores. That is about $26.17 per month. I am OK with this expenditure. I think that I go through patterns of book spending. On occasion I do utilize the library, but not for every book I read. Sometimes I like the instant gratification of having the book in two minutes.
How much do you think you spend on books? Would it be cheaper on the Kindle?
That's not so bad. I suppose it's much better to be getting $1.99 impulse book purchases than a lot of other things.
ReplyDeleteI spend very little on books outside of book club ... I read fast enough and discuss what I read so rarely with other people that I have a hard time spending money on books, and despite the efforts of another friend, I just don't visit the library much (which is silly especially now that I could ride to it).
With the Kindle, I don't know that it would be much different. Maybe. Probably if there were other books that people suggest, like when Nicole mentioned the one Tolle book, I'd get it right away instead of filing it for some future Amazon physical purchase.