Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle, At Last, But Wait...
It's finally available in Europe, but at a fairly hefty price premium. Darn it. So much for that Day One purchase...
Posted by Richard, October 7th, 2009

Yes, after much waiting, Kindle is available in the UK. There's only one problem. You have to buy it from America. What does that mean? About $50 in import costs, another $20 in shipping, another $20 if you want something to carry it in. That makes a grand total of... wait for it... $387.85.

As the great Oscar Wilde once said: "Holy crap! You could buy a PC for that!"

And how right he was. On the plus side, there's a European version of Whispernet built in, so we can still do the online purchasing-without-a-PC thing. On the other hand, we don't get the web browser or support for blogs, and the official website is a bit hazy on any content restrictions. It doesn't specifically say "you might not be able to get the book you want", but at the same time, it doesn't say "Buy anything!" And given the convoluted rights issues surrounding more or less everything...

(There are restrictions on magazines though, which are stated up front)

Apparently Amazon plans to have a proper UK store up at some point, where hopefully the price will be more sensible and it'll be more obvious what we can actually get. I won't lie, I'm still tempted to pull the trigger just to play with the thing, but at these prices, it's certainly not an essential Day One grab.