The holiday season is upon us, and a lot of people are making their plans to buy and give away gadgets this season. It’s true that the state of economy is not as well as it could be, but e-book readers are expected to be very hot this holiday season. And the competition will be mostly among Amazon Kindles and Sony Readers. In fact, a recent study by retrevo shows that while Amazon will have a lead going to this holiday season, Sony will be more than holding its own with its latest e-book readers (62% vs. 32%).

Unfortunately, the study doesn’t give us a break down based on generation. A lot of people are expected to pick up a Kindle this year but will they spend the extra few bucks to get a Kindle DX? Perhaps the better question is whether Amazon will finally drop its prices on Kindle DX.

There was a time that a lot of us were openly questioning what Amazon was doing with refurbished and re-certified Kindles. It took Amazon a while to come around and finally release refurbished Kindle 1.0 to the market. At first, they were presented as cheap alternatives to those more expensive Kindle 2.0 and Kindle DX units. Refurbished Kindles are finally catching on however. You can get them on eBay and Amazon. Buying on eBay is a bit tricky as you never know who you are dealing with. The fraud rate seems to be a bit lower on Amazon, but you can never be too careful.

What Amazon does have is warehouse deals. The items listed under this brand are open box and refurbished units for the most part, and they cost you a lot less than you have to pay for new units. Here are Amazon Kindle prices:

• Kindle 1.0 Refurbished — $149.99
• Kindle 2.0 Refurbished — $219.00
• Kindle DX Refurbished — $399.99

If you are lucky, you may be able to find a slightly used or refurbished Kindle unit on eBay and other auction sites. But don’t expect to pay too lower than the above prices for your refurbished e-reader.

Your take: would you consider purchasing a refurbished/re-certified Kindle?

We all remember the headaches that Amazon had to deal with when it removed a few books from Amazon Kindles around the nation without the consent of their owners. One student was unlucky enough to lose his homework in the process as well. It was obvious at that point that Amazon was going to face a bunch of lawsuits over that fiasco. And one belonged to the above mentioned student. Losing your homework and all the work you have done on a book is certainly painful, but it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. In fact, many students lose their term papers, thesis documents, and many more important documents when their computer crashes on them. But this lawsuit was about more than that. It was about showing Amazon that it’s wrong to remove things from Kindles without notifying their owners first.

Amazon has settled this lawsuit by agreeing to pay up $150,000. Now the student does not get a piece of that money. In fact, most of it will go to a charity (and lawyers of course). But will Amazon learn from this? Companies such as Amazon and Apple like to keep a close control on their gadgets. Apple has been more controlling in the past, but it is opening things up a bit with the iPhone. But what Amazon did proves that no matter how much control a company wants to have over a gadget, it needs to respect the rights of its customers.

Amazon did not have the right to sell those books through its store, but that doesn’t mean it had the right to go in and delete all the instances of those books from those Kindles. I suspect after all the bad publicity that Amazon has received over this issue, its management will think twice before pulling the trigger on such a move in the future. Then again, these top companies always find a way to make a “bonehead” move and surprise us all.

After months of waiting, the UK fans will finally get their chance to adopt Amazon Kindle as their e-book reader. While many have considered Amazon Kindle to be to Amazon what the iPod was to Apple, Amazon has been very conservative with its globalization plans. One of the biggest challenges for Amazon has been addressing the issue of Internet connectivity in Europe and other continents for that matter. Sprint did step up in the U.S. to provide free wireless connectivity to the Kindle owners. But the systems and protocols are often different in Europe. The wireless connection is a big part of Kindle experience, so Amazon can’t afford to launch its device in a brand new market without a wireless partner.

Amazon Kindle has been so successful that it has made a few companies change their mind about the potential of the e-book industry as a whole. When Amazon entered the market, Sony Reader was dominating the market but it was not making any headway. The Sony device was sold, but it was not exactly earth shattering and mainstream. Amazon came in and changed the perception that was out there about e-book readers. Unlike most of its rivals, Kindle is easy to use and decent on the eye. And it saves you money (even though we still complain about high e-book prices). It’s safe to say that Kindle is doing better than most people expected it to.

What Kindle has done is open the eyes of companies such as Apple and Microsoft. Both companies are planning to introduce their own tablets in the very near future. That would mean the device will have two mighty new competitors to contend with. So here is an interesting question: with all the information available on iTablet and Microsoft Courier, which one in your opinion has the best chance of dethroning Kindle?

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So much for Amazon making a headway among college and university students. Amazon was banking on Kindle DX being a hit among college students. Amazon even dropped prices to make Kindle 2.0 a more affordable alternative for those students who didn’t want to pay close to $500 for Kindle DX. However, the feedback from students has been a mixed bag. Princeton University was one of the few that started their own Kindle pilot program to find out whether using Kindle DX in colleges is a viable option. Students in select classes were each given a Kindle DX with all their books and everything they needed to complete their coursework. The feedback was not what Amazon was hoping for:

…It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate

One student said. Here is a more detailed explanation:

Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes… All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking.

These comments are not by any means an indication that Kindle doesn’t work. A part of the problem seems to be that people are not used to using e-book readers to go through their coursework. That was always going to be an issue, and there will be some who will resist new technologies. I do agree that Amazon Kindle and other e-book readers are not where they need to me when it comes to emulating physical interaction for students. That’s why Apple iPad and Microsoft Carrier seem to be better equipped to become a hit with students.

Amazon did drop the ball with Kindle DX. The company did not properly target students with that device, which could be the reason why some students are not too open to the idea of using Amazon’s e-book reader in their schools. It would have been much better had Amazon introduced a “Kindle – Student Edition” with features tailored towards the needs of students only. Amazon is not yet ready to take on that risk, and Kindle DX’s hardware is not too superior to Kindle 2.0. While I do expect Amazon to improve its hardware and software in the near future, it does seem Apple and Microsoft are better equipped to capture the student market in this industry. But Amazon can always surprise us and improve Kindle’s hardware/software dramatically with the next update.

Your take: is Amazon going for too much too early in the game?

Amazon Kindle and the first generation iPod have a lot in common. Just like iPod 1G, Amazon Kindle does not come with the best design. The hardware is somewhat limited as well, though it is being improved with each and every generation. In the hindsight, the first iPod wasn’t really something you would write home about. It’s true that it was highly popular and truly changed Apple’s fortunes, but people wouldn’t buy it these days. The hardware and software have improved so much that you couldn’t even tell that the classic iPod and the iPod Touch come from the same family. I firmly believe that we may be in for the same development with Amazon Kindle. The device is still in its infancy, and it’s still a niche device, even though thousands of people have picked it up.

In order for Amazon to take the Kindle to the next level, it needs to take advantage of its community to help expand Amazon Kindle’s capabilities. One way to do that is by introducing a software development kit for the Kindle. With every Kindle release, I have hoped for Amazon to finally introduce a SDK for the Kindle product line. But according to many experts, Amazon is not close to doing that. For starters, Amazon Kindle’s hardware/software set is not ready to handle sophisticated Kindle applications. Let’s not forget that Amazon does not use a color screen either, and the device is not a touch-screen gadget either.