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You have to wonder why Amazon’s decided to keep the UK out of its international Kindle Touch release – our lucky next-door neighbours over in Ireland can now get their mitts on the touchable reader, so why not us Brits?
Amazon slipped this one out under the radar; you have to go to the US Kindle Touch page and select your country of shipping to find out if you can buy it. Some of our other European neighbours aren’t as lucky as the Irish either, with France and Germany excluded too. Debt-ridden Greece can buy it right now though too, so perhaps Amazon’s following a particularly unsuccessful-sounding trend here.
Come on Amazon. Britain wants a touchable Kindle, and we’ve been waiting patiently for it since September. Why are you making us wait so long for the “only book gadget you need”? [Amazon via Cnet UK]
You don’t mention any other countries as being able to get this. Is it possibly just a fault on the US site, rather than a launch. After all you would expect some publicity if it were a proper launch.
You can try it for yourself, Greece and Ireland can, so can Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, etc etc. The only thing I can think is that eventually we’ll get it sold through Amazon.co.uk, but as of writing I can’t see it.
Weird that they are making it available to Ireland and Greece, 2 economies that are in a lot of trouble, but not the relatively strong UK,France & Germany.
Do people REALLY want a Kindle Touch?
There are plenty of touchscreen ereaders out there already, all better than the Kindle. Kobo Touch, Sony PRS-T1 for example.
Who would anyone with a brain fitted inside their head actually buy an e-reader than can only get books from one shop. Isn’t that like buying a car that only takes petrol from a certain garage..
Consumers really are idiots sometimes, they just buy what they know, or the first thing they see on the store shelf, without putting their brain in gear.
“putting their brain in gear” You could possibly write a book on this.
Mmmm, Mik – your gaff must be bursting at the seams with gadgets and cutting edge tech? I mean, there isn’t a device you haven’t used, or have an opinion on. Personally, I couldn’t say if the Kobo, or the Sony are better or worse, the only experience I have of these, are the 5 minutes I spent trying them out on the display shelves at the local Waterstones. During that extensive testing, I decided that the Sony and the Kobo were shite and that I must give money to Amazon without question.
The scientific approach is always better… Mik.
I love my kindle. I love my ipad. I would like a touch screen kindle but its not essential. I don’t know of any kindle owner who regrets getting one. I am not restricted to buying my ebooks from one shop. It doesn’t require much brain work to do that.
The DRM prevents your Kindle showing any chargable content form anywhere but Amazon. That is FACT.
The only other content source you have, is the old Mobi format, and I bet Amazon will discontune that when they feel the need to control the amount of free content Kindle owners have access to.
Of course Kindle owners are also missing out on all the free UK library bokk lending that EPUB powered device owners enjoy.
I wonder how many of these satisfied Kindle owners have actually bothered to try alternatives?
I review ALOT of kit (I am on Amazon Vine and a few other review services), and I also love technology, it annoys me when inferior technology like Kindle, iPad Xbox all succeed purely because the companies pushing them have so much clout in the industry, nobody dare speak against them for fear of losing advertising revenue. It’s a vicious circle that consumers like yourself are unknowingly participating in by completing the sales circle by lazy purchasing by not investigating alternatives and buying the first thing in the shop.
EPUB? The kindle can display epub after a simple conversion process. It’s a piece of piss to do. Did you not research that before you made the inaccurate claim? I have lots of epub stuff – The Kindle has a great screen. The Amazon site works well. It fulfills its proposed purpose as far as I can tell.
What is your criteria for inferior technology? – Please direct me to your blog. Or any serious published work will do. Except the comments section of Gizmodo or similar sites.
PS – An opinion is not a review. Lazy writing is tedious.
Only free books, and having to convert them is a pain, and not without problems. Calibre often throws away TOC and formatting when converting form Amazon’s locked in proprietary format into the open EPUB.
If it’s a modern book, then you are crap out of luck, as it’s protected by DRM preventing you doing so.
http://www.baenebooks.com/
I have bought books from here, they are delivered direct to my kindle email address, and they work fine. I have also uploaded other, free formats to my kindle, and they work fine. Please check facts, it does you no favours to spout incorrect criticisms, because most people are smart enough to check up on them.
Actually if you buy certain cars you can only fill them with certain kinds of petrol, which only certain garages now stock as it costs a fortune.
I don’t care about Kindle Touch, I want to know why is Siri still giving me the message “Sorry I can only find locations in the US..” Do British people not need voice search maps? I can’t believe a Tech Regime like Google can’t somehow sign aboard some map provider here in the UK….
You mean Apple, right? I can navigate Google Maps (and get turn by turn directions) by voice on Android just fine.
If you really can’t wait then get a Kobo Touch. I did and I haven’t looked back.
I have a Kobo Touch and it’s a lot better than the Non-touch Kindle, and I think the Kindle touch is very similar to the Kobo Touch in terms of price, features and design. So if people can’t wait for the Kindle Touch, In my opinion they should get the Kobo Touch. I’m still eagerly waiting for the Kindle fire though