QUILLBLOG

Will Kindle be the Betamax of the decade?

In the race to win consumer confidence (or, well, interest) in e-readers, one can’t help but wonder how we’ll look back on the recent Kindle vs. Sony hardware wars. With Google planting flags, and Amazon opposing the Google settlement, The Globe and Mail‘s king of tech nerds, Brian Joseph Davis, suggests the Kindle could go the way of ColecoVision, the Commodore 64, or even the once beloved Betamax.

My money is still on Sony this week as they’ve entered the fray of the Google settlement crisis. They’re on the side of Google Books. Sony’s Reader displays any e-book format and supports file copying on up to six devices. The Reader and Google are a good match.

On the other side is Amazon with their Kindle (which is a proprietary-file-laden piece of poo). Stepping into that corner with legal and monetary support, just because they hate Google, is the axis of Microsoft and Yahoo.

Meanwhile, blogger B.Kienapple weighs in on the e-reader battle, discussing the Google-supported, UK-based Interead, the company behind the Cool-er e-reader. Now that Google has provided “books” for the terribly named Cool-er, she wonders who will actually read said materials:

Academics? School kids? Everyone knows that Amazon has the selection and pricing down pat. This is the sad fact of the matter.

Also, while the Cool-er e-store is now well stocked, you may not want to read them on the Cool-er’s own e-reader. The review that came in from Gizmodo earlier this year indicated that problems abound. My biggest complaint, from what I can see in the review, is the computer-like font. The Sony and Kindle both mimic print type (easier on the eyes, I do think). The Cool-er’s functionality looks entirely primitive, too.

While it’s easy to mock twitchy-texting, Twitter-obsessed blogger-types, many of those same tech-savvy users remain staunchly old-fashioned when it comes to e-readers. Maybe if one came in a swag bag filled with free “books” this Quillblogger might accept it, if only to take on a plane thereby avoiding the ache of heavy luggage.

But you may want to hum a bar of “Video Killed the Radio Star” and keep a curious eye on the tech pages as the e-reader war unfolds. You wouldn’t want to resemble your uncle clinging to his eight-track tapes.