Gravitational Pull

Despite complaints and DRM, Kindle is a good value

Posted on 30 June 2009 | Comments

I’m starting to see signs that Amazon has successfully injected some major mojo behind its Kindle electronic book program. Dare we call them green shoots? This morning, publisher, blogger and Chris Anderson-fill-in Rex Hammock had a great post up about how his Kindle was aiding his effort to re-read David Foster Wallace’s massive novel Infinite Jest. I also came across a thought-provoking post about the Kindle by Kent Anderson over on the scholarly kitchen blog called “The Freedom of Not Owning Books.” Kent makes the argument that it’s worth buying a Kindle despite the DRM-imposed limits, pointing out the value of the wireless connection, the space saved by having virtual books, the ability to read and acquire new reading material on the go and so on. But he also crystallizes a more original factor at play:

Ownership isn’t a panacea, especially in an age of information abundance. Will I be concerned if the Kindle dies and books I’ve read on it become inaccessible on that platform? Not really. If I want to read them again, there will be plenty of alternative ways in the future. And my bookshelves long ago stopped being my collection of known facts and resources.

Joe Wikert points to a related post about how e-books still have room to evolve. I agree with the author’s points while noting that they’re already evolving in many ways. Two of my favorite old Sherlock Holmes collections are on my Kindle — for free. A copy of “Moby Dick” typeset especially for the Kindle also held sway for a while. From classics to current bestsellers, I can wirelessly get books for free and for less.

And I don’t have to own them.

It’s a fascinating point and one that is growing on me the more I ponder it. In fact, with Amazon keeping all my Kindle books alive in the cloud for instant access, I actually can go back and review a text from almost anywhere. A physical book sitting on a shelf at my house is out of reach if I’m not at home. And what about the Kindle’s indexing of every book you buy? It’s great that I own thousands of dead tree pulp books but if I can’t remember exactly which book contains the scrap of info I’m looking for, it can make for a long afternoon.

But, of course, this is the Internet so open the comments and queue the anti-Kindle-istas. In this case, the lead complainer was David Crotty, another member of the scholarly kitchen crew and the executive editor of an academic biology publication. Crotty wants to own his books, he doesn’t want any digital rights management software limiting what he does with his books and he is especially fearful that some day Amazon could take away his books.

I started arguing with Crotty in the comments but after a while, it started to feel disjointed. So, here’s why I agree with Kent: The Kindle is a good value if you are an avid reader, buy lots of new books and like to read when you’re on the go. It’s a good value despite the stupid DRM limitations, despite the fact that it costs hundreds of dollars and despite the fact that there’s a remote chance that Amazon will abandon it some day.

I do agree with Crotty that before you invest in any new technology, particularly one with a proprietary DRM involved, you need to make an assessment of the costs and benefits and the risks involved. Crotty cites examples like Microsoft killing its PlaysForSure music program or the defeat of HD-DVD at the hands of Blu-Ray as cautionary tales. One should wait until a DRM-free electronic book market opens before buying any ebooks, he argues. I guess that’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s not very far.

It’s obviously always better to buy without DRM but that’s not always an available choice. For example, see almost all major software programs with their horrendous activation schemes, current downloadable TV shows, movies, electronic books, downloadable video games, smart phone software etc. There is no way to buy electronic versions of current, popular books without DRM. There is no DRM-free substitute available. I wonder if Crotty buys any business software, video games or iPhone apps because they all have DRM? How long is he going to wait? In the meantime, the opportunity “cost” of not using software and playing games and using apps mounts. If anything software and computer game DRMs have been getting more annoying and restrictive over time, so he may be waiting forever.

Consider the PlaysForSure situation when Microsoft announced it back in 2004. The proper risk assessment strategy if you wanted current music back then was to go with the DRM that looked most likely to succeed. There wasn’t much DRM-free music at the time and CDs were priced well above the cost of digital albums (not to mention forcing you to buy 13 songs when you only wanted one). PlaysForSure was a steep, steep underdog to the already dominant iTunes/Apple DRM format. PFS was just one zig in Microsoft’s zigzagging, ever-changing, incoherent strategy that consistently failed to make any headway against Apple iTunes. It also only worked on a small subset of the total number of MP3 players out in the world (not ipods!). Buying into that DRM was a pretty obvious bad risk.

Not so for the Kindle today. Kindle is currently the dominant ebook format, Amazon is the leading ebook seller and the DRM works not just on the Kindle hardware but also on all iPhones and iPod Touches as well as more devices to come (Blackberry and Windows Mobile support coming soon, supposedly).

Right around here, Crotty turned to the last refuge of scoundrels in Kindle debates argument that despite all Amazon’s success it was just roadkill as soon as Apple decided to start selling ebooks in the iTunes store. I can’t face repeating all the reasons this Apple/ebook dominance meme is wrong so see my old blog post about why Apple won’t kill Amazon for more on that.

But Crotty does speculate that Apple would yank all competing ereaders from the app store — a new twist I hadn’t heard before. That seems far-fetched in the extreme. There’s no precedent for it, it wouldn’t pass antitrust scrutiny and it would infuriate literally millions of customers who have bought books in Scrollmotion, Kindle, eReader and other formats. Apple started out barring competing web browsers from the get-go — a far cry from banning an entire category of apps after they’ve already been available for a year. I have not heard of an example of Apple pulling an iPhone app because it launched its own version.

And after all of this, Crotty still has to assume that Amazon would kill the Kindle program in the face of tough competition from Apple. I just don’t see it. People buying a Kindle device now are already choosing to pay for something that they could do in part for free on an iPhone or iPod Touch. And still it’s selling out every few weeks and analysts are saying it’s a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for Amazon within three years.

So stick with it, Kindle fans, and don’t go mistaking Paradise for that home across the road.
(As an interesting aside, Kent’s post was sparked by Crotty’s post a day before pointing out two of the recently-discovered DRM limits in Kindle that I wrote about quite negatively on June 20. I guess Crotty and I agree that DRM stinks and that undisclosed DRM limits should be illegal but we differ on how much those problems diminish the value of the Kindle).

(As a second aside, Crotty is a fan of John Hodgman, so we also agree on the humourous side of life.)

As feared, Kindle prices appear to be rising

Posted on 22 June 2009 | Comments

I’ll start this post about Amazon’s fabulous Kindle just like I did the last one: I really, really like my Kindle and I’ve written about it positively here and all over the web (Internet smartie and publisher Rex Hammock says I’m his go-to Kindle fanboy). And, I really want to see the Kindle succeed. That said, just like my weekend post about Kindle DRM junk, this post has negative implications for we the Kindle consumers, customers and readers.

As I’ve feared for a while, Amazon is raising prices in the Kindle store. It’s really, really hard to nail this down exactly since there’s no way to monitor the store comprehensively over time. Some people take big snapshots of the whole database, which show an increasing proportion of books being added above $9.99, but that’s not conclusive. The growing protest against books over $9.99 and my anecdotal experience looking for newly arriving Kindle books provide additional support for the theory.

But two big macro pieces of evidence arrived recently. First, Jeff Bezos declared that Amazon’s Kindle hardware business and Kindle publication business each had to operate profitably on their own. No razors subsidized by the sale of razor blades here. That put a big question mark over Amazon’s $9.99 price point for most new hardcovers, since its been widely reported that Amazon loses money after paying publishing royalties on such titles. And with Amazon already selling Kindle books for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, hardware that generates zero revenue for Amazon, there’s only so long the company could keep selling most titles at a loss.

Ultimately, I think Amazon ends up just where Barnes & Noble did a decade ago. Discounts shrink away for almost all Kindle books except top best sellers and special promotions. Maybe $12.50 becomes the new price point for Kindle books also available as new hardcovers. Now, about that $12.50 figure…

The second piece of evidence was a report by two Wall Street analysts, Claudio Aspesi and Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein, that came out on Friday (the piece isn’t publicly available and the best summary of the Bernstein piece I saw was by Joseph Tartakoff at PaidContent). The two analysts theorize that Amazon pays an average of $8.73 to acquire a $9.99 ebook versus $9.38 on a $12.50 ebook. There’s no sourcing back to Amazon but plugged-in analysts like these two have no doubt gotten some guidance from the company and talked to legions of other industry insiders, providing a one-off look at what Amazon is saying to publishers. I couldn’t quite figure out how the analysts had calculated that Amazon pays less than 100% royalties on $9.99 Kindle books, as has been widely reported, unless the analysts’ figure also includes paperbacks with lower print list prices, which it may. But looking to the future, as I explore below, it starts to make sense.

The increasing frequency of higher-priced Kindle editions of new hardcovers at least come at a 15% to 20% discount versus the dead-tree pulp version. The more annoying price hike is on Kindle books that are actually priced well-above the cost of paperback editions. Look at this screen shot of the Kindle edition of Tim Russert’s book about his dad, Big Russ & Me:

The e-book costs $9.56 and there’s no box showing other editions of the book and how much they cost. There’s a good reason for that. Amazon’s also selling a paperback version of the book for…drum roll, please…$5.58 and a hardcover version — brand new, from Amazon — for $9.18. See the screenshot:

So what the heck – how is the Kindle edition page showing that you’re “saving” $4.39, or 31% off list price? Because Amazon is now showing a made-up “Digital List Price.” Unsure where a Kindle book is sold at digital list? Me, too. Could be that some publishers and Amazon have struck a new deal to cover Kindle book sales, breaking free of the older print royalty and discount model (that would explain a lot about the Alliance Bernstein report, too). But by hiding the actual price of other editions available from Amazon and showing a “digital” list price that isn’t actually charged anywhere, consumers aren’t getting the best information.

And all of this is happening, of course, as several higher-priced ebook vendors are pushing into the space, giving Amazon some cover. Scrollmotion’s ebook prices for its iPhone app reader are horrendous. And Google says it will let publishers themselves set retail prices for ebooks it plans to sell. It’s a darn shame for consumers, but it looks like the future is arriving with higher Kindle prices.

Scary complaints mounting about Amazon Kindle’s DRM (Updated)

Posted on 20 June 2009 | Comments

I’m a big fan of Amazon’s electronic reader, the Kindle, but I have to admit that stories about the digital rights management software embedded in Kindle books are starting to make me very nervous. Digital rights management, or DRM, is the euphemism for restrictive software limits that copyright owners frequently require in digitally licensed versions of their books, movies, songs and so on. Ostensibly, DRM is to prevent consumers from pirating the copyrighted works but it’s also true that DRM-enforced limits reduce the value of digital works and help preserve the market for old-fashioned analog stuff like print books, CDs and DVDs.

One of the most recent DRM horror stories is completely acknowledged by Amazon. Some publishers and authors objected that the new text-to-speech function of the Kindle2 and Kindle DX violated copyright (arguing that it infringed on their rights to separately license and sell audio books). So Amazon gave publishers the ability to “turn off” the text-to-speech function for any item sold in the Kindle store. Sure enough, vast swaths of Kindle books and other materials had the text-to-speech ban imposed. And there’s no specific disclosure when you go to buy an item in the Kindle store. It obviously should be listed in each item’s “Product Details” section. Very bad.

Other scary stories come to us anecdotally. In some cases, they are clearly exaggerated. But taken together, they paint an ugly picture of limits placed on consumers without proper disclosure. Seems like a matter that the Federal Trade Commission or one of the many enterprising state attorneys general should look into immediately. I’m not one of those anti-Amazon bashers complaining about an imagined monopoly but I am worried that consumers’ rights are being trampled in the same vein as deceptive car leases or hidden credit card penalties which harmed people in the past.

Just today, a friend sent me this link about a woman guy who discovered a hidden and undisclosed limit imposed by publishers on the number of times an ebook can be downloaded (but see below – the writer has now backtracked somewhat) to a Kindle or the Kindle iPhone app. This flies in the face of clear promises made on Amazon’s web site:

Automatic Library Backup: Download Your Books Anytime for Free

A copy of every book you purchased from the Kindle Store is backed up online at Amazon.com in case you ever need to download it again. You can wirelessly re-download books for free any time. This allows you to make room for new titles on your Kindle, knowing that Amazon is storing your personal library of Kindle books. We even back up your last page read and annotations, so you’ll never lose those, either. Think of it as a bookshelf in your attic–even though you don’t see it, you know your books are there.

[UPDATE 6/21 The Kindle 2 Review, without any real confirmation, is claiming that there is no per-book download limit and that the post above results from a misunderstanding about the six device limit. That's clearly not the case if you read the GearDiary post and comments. I've sent an email to Amazon's pr department to see if they will clarify.]

[UPDATE2 6/22 Dan Cohen, who made the original claim, has now backtracked on a new GearDiary post, saying the problem relates to a different undisclosed DRM limit. Conceding that there's no per-book limit on re-downloading, Cohen says that while most Kindle books can be shared on six devices at a time, some books have a lower limit imposed by the publisher.]

Another story appears to have been exaggerated but it’s still worth noting. This guy apparently had his whole Amazon account suspended for some reason. That meant, along with not being able to do anything on the Amazon web site, he couldn’t access the web page for managing material on his Kindle. He could no longer re-download items he’d purchased and since deleted from his Kindle. That is crummy, though we probably don’t have the full story of why his account was suspended. And it’s simply not true that his Kindle was remotely disabled or that he couldn’t read ANY ebooks he’d purchased.

Another crazy, undisclosed limitation prevents consumers from highlighting and clipping  more than a certain portion of any ebook into their “My Clippings.txt” file. Again, just anecdotal reports of the secret Kindle clipping limit have surfaced so far. And again, there is zero disclosure of this limitation in the Kindle Amazon store.

All of this sadly reminds me of the pathetic state of legally-sold digital music in the days before Apple opened its iTunes store. Each song had a variety of DRM-enforced limits like whether or not it could be burned to a CD or how many times it could be copied to a portable MP3 player. It was insane — every song had different DRM limits. Ultimately, Apple came along and initially enforced consistent limits. Later, Apple dumped the DRM altogether. Amazon and book publishers need to follow quickly or risk alienating consumers and sending them off to less-legal avenues to satisfy their ebook desires.

What do you think? And have you experienced these or other Kindle DRM limits?

(Special thanks for this post go out to the Teleread blog which chronicles so much of what is happening in the fast-moving e-book economy)

Apple gives stage to overpriced ebook developer Scrollmotion

Posted on 9 June 2009 | Comments

Fans of electronic books got a little bit of exciting news today at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference. Showing off how the new iPhone OS 3.0 will allow purchasing transactions from within apps, Apple brought out on stage an ebook app developer called Scrollmotion. The company’s co-founder, Josh Koppel, showed off how his Iceberg reader app on an iPhone will let you browse an ebook store directly without needing to jump to a web browser. And purchased ebooks immediately download into the app so you can read them right away. Pretty cool. You can’t quite do that with current ebook readers like Stanza, Kindle or eReader.

Funny thing about Koppel’s presentation of his new ebook store, though: there weren’t any prices visible. Well, not totally true — he did demonstrate the purchase of one book, the 2nd volume in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, New Moon. How much was this book, which came out in 2006 and can be purchased as a paperback on Amazon.com for $5.50? The ebook on Scrollmotion was $9.99.

Not only is the price a terrible, terrible value for customers, but I think it may even have been purposely chosen at the $9.99 level to mislead. Many people might assume it’s a more recent best-seller being offered at the Amazon Kindle store’s typical ebook price for best-sellers of $9.99. No way Jose. And p.s. the book is $5.50 for the Kindle version.

Turns out Scrollmotion isn’t new to the iPhone app store either. Turns out they’re the folks selling all those one-off, mainstream ebooks. You know the ones where each ebook is a completely separate app taking up space on your home screens? And what are the prices like? Absolutely insane. I mean wack. I mean more than you would pay for a brand new hardcover. Bob Barker’s recent memoir, Priceless Memories, is $25 from Scrollmotion versus $9.99 in the Kindle ebook store or $16.49 for a hardcover version.

You read that right — Scrollmotion is charging you a 34% PREMIUM over the hardcover for an itty bitty electronic version that is locked down with DRM and can only be read on an iPhone or iPod Touch. There’s far less value in the ebook edition, which can’t be shared or resold and remains tied forever to a particular device platform. But they want more. I won’t even get into the fact that no matter how you measure a publisher’s costs, it is cheaper to sell an ebook than a print book (debate rages over how much cheaper, a lot or a little).

And Barker’s Scrollmotion ebook price is typical. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is $9.99 on Kindle and $17 on Scrollmotion. Testimony by Anita Shreve is $16 for a hardcover or $9.99 for Kindle but as a Scrollmotion ebook app it’s $26. Outrageous.

Koppel says Scrollmotion will have 170 newspapers, 50 magazines and 1 million (you know, use your best Mini Me voice for that: one meeeelion) ebooks available for its new in-app purchase store. No surprise that publishers are jumping on board at these prices. The question is why would anyone pay these prices? Lately on some of the ebook blogs, people from the publishing industry have been whining about Amazon’s low ebook prices and claiming that if only they were given more leeway to set prices things would be much better. I think Scrollmotion is Exhibit A, B and C in why that would be a disaster for the entire field.

By the way, although Apple is making the in-app purchase feature available to all apps in theory, don’t expect many of the other existing ebook reader apps to offer it. Apple is, first of all, prohibiting any free app from offering in-app sales. And further, Apple is demanding 30% of the revenue from any sales through in-app purchases. But with Kindle and other ebook vendors selling ebooks at big discounts, even at a loss in some cases, there is no margin to hand 30% of every sale over to Apple.

The high profile Apple gave to Scrollmotion, which is ripping off its customers daily, marks yet another sad episode of Apple caving in to the interests of big publishing and broadcasting corporations over the interests of its customers. In April, Apple caved to the music labels and raised prices on popular songs by 30%. And its video store has never taken off in part because it never offered good value, charging as much or more for low-quality downloads as the same shows cost on DVD. Seems like they’re running the same self-defeating game plan for ebooks.

(This post started as a comment I left on the excellent Teleread blog. UPDATE: now David Rothman is adding his voice and documenting some more of the crazy prices.)

Interviewing myself and learning about CSS styles

Posted on 31 May 2009 | Comments

I’m not sure exactly how or why I got so obsessed with the hyper-cool interviews on the web site Waferbaby but I did. It just seems like the height of hip to offer a few quips about yourself and your online persona followed by a detailed treatise on what gear and software you use. For example, see the interviews of software designer Sophia Teutschler or guru of all things Mac John Gruber.

I’m not famous enough to be asked to join along so I thought I’d see if I could brew up my own personal interview Waferbaby style. Mimicking the web design turned out to be harder than I expected and I gained new appreciation for CSS style sheets.

Amazon finally expanding and seeding Kindle ebook ecosystem

Posted on 27 May 2009 | Comments

Despite my unabashed enthusiasm for Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, I’ve had my fair share of gripes. I’ve been particularly disappointed by Amazon’s failure to do more and get creative around this new platform. Back in January, I posted a list of Kindle ecosystem shortcomings including poor file management and inflexible pricing. I wasn’t alone. Joe Wikert, a publishing exec and Kindle user, has also written some solid critiques (see him on file management here or more broadly here).

So I was delighted to discover today (via the always excellent Yahoo group KindleKorner) that Amazon has unveiled a new web portal for Kindle users that improves the experience of using your reader and opens the door to a number of side uses and other possibilities. The site sits at http://kindle.amazon.com and is not to be confused with http://www.amazon.com/kindle/ which is where you go to buy a Kindle. The new site, and improvements to the usual “Manage Your Kindle” section of the regular Amazon site, also seems to be looking forward to the day when more people, or families, own multiple Kindles.

Here’s what you see after you sign in at the new site:

Note that the first time you sign in, as above, the “Reading List” only has a few of your Kindle purchases listed. As you poke around, the list fills out. The first thing you may notice here is that your entire purchase history can now be sorted by several criteria, hopefully with more (like purchase date) to come. Also, over in the “Content” column, the site uses small icons to indicate whether you have highlighted a passage in a book or put in notes. Click on the book title or one of the icons and you land on a new Kindle-special page that looks like this:

Here you can see passages I highlighted from Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat and Crowded. On this book page below the notes and highlights, Amazon lists a few reviews of the book from its site as well. Needless to say, this makes your notes and highlights much more useful and accessible. And it’s all synchronized behind the scenes without requiring any effort on the part of the reader — what we gadgeteers like to call automagically.

Still, the site needs improvement. I want to be able to manage my whole Kindle ecosystem from one dashboard-like panel that the new site could evolve into. There’s also a direct link to the “Manage Your Kindle” section of Amazon’s web site but clicking takes you away to that page — it’s not integrated and there’s no way back to the new page without using the back button on your browser.

As I mentioned earlier, the “Manage Your Kindle” section is also seeing some added features. There’s now a cool pull-down list for every ebook you’ve bought that sends a fresh copy to any Kindle, iPhone or iPod Touch registered to your account. Also added at some point is a delivery list that shows what’s been sent to each of your Kindle devices recently and anything that’s pending to be delivered.

There’s still plenty for Amazon to work on but with recent improvements to the Kindle web site and iPhone app, the company appears to be on the case. Of course, pricing may be going the wrong way — instead of new models we’re getting higher prices — but you can’t have everything and that’s a subject for another post.

Previous coverage:

Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading (11/24/07)

Ignore that Cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine (11/29/07)

The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers (6/20/08)

Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close (8/20/08)

Amazon: Follow Apple’s lead and don’t blow Kindle opportunity (1/27/09)

Too many black boxes, too many power cords

Posted on 26 May 2009 | Comments

Heading off for the holiday weekend, I grabbed a bunch of gadgets and junk to stuff in my bag. Amazon Kindle reader – check. Multiple iPods and headphones for the kids – check. Blackberry – check. New Verizon Mifi to test in the boonies – check. Macbook Pro – check. Canon camera – check. They joined the usual assortment of odds and ends that live in my Crumpler Bag of Considerable Embarrassment (actual name) full time.

Of course, with all those gadgets come the required power cords. What a mess. At least the totally awesome  yet horribly named Belkin “Mini Surge Protector with USB” allowed me to forgo most of the bulkier plug-in cords since it can power any gadget using just a USB cord connection. For example, instead of carrying an iPod wall charger, I can just plug in an iPod syncing cable to the Belkin’s powered USB port.

By Monday, the Mifi was out of juice so it was time for a charge. But what’s this? The Mifi can’t use the standard mini-USB to USB connector that works for Blackberries and a few of my other gadgets. It actually has a micro-USB port. What the hey? It’s just like the mini-USB port only — wait for it — smaller. I couldn’t find that cord in the bag so the Internet connection ended early. On such a beautiful day by the shore, no great loss. But can’t the world standardize a bit more? The Kindle and iPods all have their own weird charger connections. I guess it’s too much to hope for everyone to get on the same page to benefit the consumer.

Unpacking it all today, I noticed there’s been a proliferation of little black boxes in my bag of late. Starting from the top left side in the picture below (click through for a bigger photo):

• a Sony digital recorder
• a Miquelrius paper notebook
• a Sandisk Cruzer memory stick sitting on top of the still wicked cool Kensington portable battery pack (mini-USB to power up/any regular USB to power out)
• a crazy-useful miniature Atech compact flash to USB port reader
• Sandisk’s handy MobileMate that reads seven kinds of memory cards and goes into a USB port sitting on top of the aforementioned Mifi
• (Now on the bottom row) An iPod Touch
• a Blackberry
• the Belkin power strip
• the Sprint Novatel cellular modem, soon to be gone

And what did I find smooshed way down in a corner pocket? Why the Mifi’s micro-USB to USB adapter of course. Next time I’ll have to look harder.

For some further good advice about what to carry, Dan Frakes has been writing a fabulous series of columns at MacWorld. The other day he had some good advice on cable selection and Friday he reviewed some miniature gadgets you might want to carry.

Verizon Mifi connects laptops, iPods, whatever to broadband

Posted on 20 May 2009 | Comments

After a couple of days wait, my new mobile hotspot, the Verizon Mifi 2200 made by Novatel, arrived today. Out of the box, the battery needed a charge but once the Mifi had sat plugged into the wall for a bit, it was ready to go. Simple as plugging into my Mac via the included micro mini USB to USB port cord (more on USB power cord confusion, if you’re curious). It appeared on the desktop as a CD with the Verizon VZAccess Manager program available to install. A double click there got that bit installed and running, which was required to activiate the Mifi. After the initial activation, no cords are needed to use the Mifi.

Within seconds, the Mifi was connected to the Internet over Verizon’s cellular EVDO mobile broadband network and, simultaneously, acting as a Wifi hotspot for any Wifi-enabled devices in the area. Sweet.

Mifi worked great connecting my laptop and my iPod Touch. The tiny Mifi runs an encrypted wifi network, so only someone who knows the password (listed on a sticker on its base) can join. There aren’t many buttons — just one that turns the power on and off. It’s also quite tiny and featherweight. In addition to the USB cord, there’s a power adapter and a felt-like carrying case. Very simple.

Upload and download speeds were excellent, as measured by Speakeasy’s speed test. The Mifi downloaded at 2,467 kilobits per second and uploaded at 464 kbps. The download rate easily beat my existing Sprint Novatel U720 modem, which averaged a download speed of 1,186 kbps. The Sprint modem (which connects via a USB port) uploaded at 505 kbps, slightly faster than the Mifi. Neither mobile broadband solution can match my home FIOS connection over 5 GHz Wifi. FIOS hit 6,253 kbps on downloads and uploaded at the astounding rate of 3,657 kbps.

So the bottom line is that the Verizon Mifi 2200 is a great mobile broadband solution for laptops and provides the added benefit of letting all sorts of other devices you may have — from iPods to Nintendo DS’s — get online, too. That’s a gamechanger for me. My iPod Touch becomes so much more valuable on the go now that it’s got its own mobile wifi hotspot to go along.

The one downside, of course, is Verizon’s download cap of 5 gigabytes per month under the $59.99 plan (after that, it’s 5 cents a megabyte – ouch). Sprint has the same deal but it stinks if you’re planning to rely heavily on a Mifi.

Prior Coverage:

Oh Verizon Mifi, why can you not delight like Apple? (5/17/2009)

Sprint USB Modem Smacks Down Verizon (3/27/2007)

Oh Verizon Mifi, why can you not delight like Apple?

Posted on 17 May 2009 | Comments

Ok, say you’re a big technology company and you have a hot new product. You put out a press release enumerating the many amazing features and announcing a release date several weeks hence. Even better, one of the most-read tech columnists on the planet, the New York Times‘ David Pogue, raves about your new product in print, on the web and on television. You are really psyched now. Then it turns out that even though a competitor will be offering the same product for the same basic price, you’ve got a two-week jump on availability.

So when your release day finally hits, what’s your strategy at the hundreds of retail outlets you own all over the county?

Did anybody answer act like any other day and don’t even stock the hot new product? Because that was the answer from Verizon Wireless when I went in to order their new mobile wifi hotspot, the Mifi 2200. “Sorry, we don’t have them in stock today – they’ve got plenty at our warehouse and we can order it for you and send it to your house,” a helpful Verizon clerk tells me. They’ve got plenty in stock but none at any of the stores in the Boston area, he tells me.

That’s fine – it’s fine – but really, is that the best customer service? Is that any way to delight your customers? Just imagine the interest and word of mouth that might be drummed up if they had the Mifi’s in stock and activated them at the store in front of all of the customers on a busy Sunday afternoon. Opportunity lost. When it comes to selling and promoting new tech products, it’s still Apple at the top and everyone else trailing far behind.

p.s. when I actually get my mitts on the new Mifi, which is replacing a Sprint mobile broadband USB stick (the Novatel U720), I’ll post Here’s my full review of the Mifi 2200. Surprise – it’s a rave.

I’m Doomed, or the latest, greatest Fran’s Chocolates

Posted on 1 May 2009 | Comments

Remember back in December when I discovered those addictably delicious Fran’s Salted Caramels and promptly ate about a zillion dollars worth? Well, Fran is back. Among recent birthday presents, my fabulous wife found that Fran’s has extended their line to some kind of super-powered, dark chocolate-covered Snickers bar redux called the Almond Gold Bar. Let’s just say it lasted about as long as the box of Fran’s Caramels that came with it. Highly recommended and available in Wellesley at The Cheese Shop.

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