OLPC vs Kindle

Craft & Design Workshop
OLPC vs Kindle

Make Pt0196
Mike @ Radar has a good review comparing the OLPC and Amazon’s Kindle… different devices, but Mike as you’d expect (O’Reilly/Safari) is looking at these for reading books…

Both the Kindle and OLPC can browse the Web. However, the Kindle was designed to browse Amazon’s library of content to purchase. The OLPC has a Firefox browser and it truly operates like it was meant to browse. The Kindle uses Whispernet from Amazon, which is quite impressive in its coverage. It is not painfully slow either. I have read GMail with the Kindle and checked basketball scores on NBA.com. I did a quick bit of math. If you are paying roughly $49 a month for an internet service provider, you could buy a Kindle and use Whispernet for free. After about eight months, your Kindle would have paid for itself in the savings you were shelling out for an ISP. I am not going to do this myself, but it is possible for low-volume browsing and internet useage. I am hoping the browser delivered in the Experimental section of the Kindle improves with time. I believe Amazon has a good opportunity to make this a very compelling device, even more than it already is. I do like the reading quality of the Kindle. The reading experience is excellent if you keep your thumbs off the sides. I have well-trained/controlled thumbs now. I have a Sony Reader as well and, I am sorry to say, that it just does not compete well with the Kindle’s intuitiveness and readability.

– OLPC and the Kindle – [via] Link.

10 thoughts on “OLPC vs Kindle

  1. yachris says:

    But… but… but… the Kindle ISN’T A COLOR DEVICE! It can’t do today’s web. Sorry, just can’t. Two colors is not enough…

  2. Jay Bryon says:

    The Kindle is also DRM’ed, which I can’t support in any way. OLPC on the other hand, is severely tempting, even if for just the altruistic element.

  3. atomicthumbs says:

    Next: Nintendo DS versus electric lamp!

  4. Ibrahim says:

    Actually, the DS Lite is almost as bright as your average reading light, and can read ebooks too with homebrew.

  5. HeavyG says:

    The Kindle is not DRM’ed. The Kindle supports a file format that has DRM. The Kindle also supports other formats tat do not have DRM.

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