Good Kindle Bad Kindle
One of the features of Kindle I’ve really used a lot is its ability to have your documents (PDFs, Word Docs, etc) converted and sent to the device simply by emailing the file to a special address that only your Kindle knows about.
Now the good new is that Amazon have extended this service to now support RTF files (that some way have worked since Kindle 2 anyway) and the new Word format DOCX. More is better right, so this is a good thing….
The bad news is that instead of the old flat fee per doc, Amazon is now going to charge 15c per megabyte, rounded up UP to the next nearest MB. So a 1.1MB file is going to cost you the same as a 2MB file would. If you’re like me, most of your Word docs or PDFs are way over 3MB in size on average with some getting close to 10MB. It suddenly starts to look a lot less attractive to pay a buck and change just to be able to read content you already own on your Kindle.
I’m not just being cheap here. Theseamlesswireless, always on, connectivity of Kindle was the deal clincher that made me buy the device in the first place. Moves like this on Amazon’s part just start to undermine the value of that feature which is a ridiculous move on their part as it one of Kindle’s biggest differentiators. I’m sure the decision was triggered by some bean counter pointing out “Gee, our Whispernet bill just keeps getting bigger, what can we do about that?”, totally missing the point of the wireless connectivity. The other aspect that Amazon should consider is that people buy Kindle’s books over Whispernet. If you use your Kindle more as a result of having personal docs on it, you’re more and more likely to buy more books via Whispernet. Isn’t buying more books what Kindle is really all about to Amazon?
This is a dumb short-sighted move on the part of a company that seems to be getting further and further away from it’s golden customer service roots. Shame
Amazon Kindle’s Blog: Kindle Personal Documents Permalink.
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