Why I won't be buying a Kindle

I've been chasing the specter of a good e-book reader for several years, and I've checked out a number of them. All have had their faults, mostly in contrast and readability, up to this point. Lord knows I tried reading books on a Palm device, but the page size is just too small. I've read a number of books and magazines on my laptop, and it's okay, but not exactly a "take a book to the park and read" item. However, the new e-paper technology has shown a lot of promise, having high contrast, a paper-white background without need for a backlight in most situations, and a far less gluttonous need for electricity. I looked longingly at the Sony Reader, but its first-generation aura and Windows-only connectivity kept me from diving in, though I've long had a tendency towards bleeding-edge technology adoption (I have yet to check out the second-generation Sony PRS-505, but it's still Windows-only). When I heard about Amazon's Kindle, I was excited, thinking to myself that perhaps this time somebody's gotten it right. Unfortunately, Amazon has not designed PDF support into the Kindle, which makes it a no-go for me. You see, I already have a large collection of e-books, almost all in PDF, as well as my subscriptions to the electronic versions of Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog, also in PDF. I'm not about to buy a reader that doesn't support books I already have.

Though it's not surprising that Amazon made the decision to go with a proprietary format, making Amazon's online e-book service the only source for material, I think that's extremely short-sighted. Every other e-book reader that's taken that path has disappeared from the market fairly quickly. While I understand the appeal from a profit-making angle ("and once they've bought the reader, they have to buy all their books from us"), people who are interested in e-books are likely to already have some, most likely in PDF or in the DRM-laden Palm Reader and Mobi formats, and will be unlikely to dive into a reader that force them to repurchase books they already have. Oh, sure, the Kindle supports HTML, .doc files, and ACSII text files, but those aren't used for e-book releases unless you get all your reading material from Project Gutenberg. Now supposedly the Kindle is Linux based, which means that somebody may get in there and provide a hack for PDF support, but until they do, I'll still be lugging either paper or my laptop around with me.