Gadget Wisdom

Amazon is cutting the price of its Kindle 2 to $259, the second drop in the last few months. It is also offering an ‘international’ Kindle for $279, with shipping to begin on October 19th. Books downloaded internationally will cost an extra $1.99. This does free up a gap in the service, namely overseas, and connects Amazon to AT&T over Sprint.

Amazon has said  that Kindle books now represent 48% of total book sales when both Kindle and paper versions are available, up from 35% in May and 13% in February, but no statistics have been revealed on how many units have been sold, but Kindle owners seem to buy a lot of books.

So, with the latest price drop, is it finally time to buy a Kindle? Maybe. But we’d prefer it to hit around $200 before it becomes too tempting to resist, especially with the bulk of new e-book readers coming and Google’s E-Book initiative.

Competition produces innovation. Amazon has said it would not mind selling Kindle books to people with other E-book readers, which would be a smart move for the company. But either way, in another few months, the price will likely be where we want it to be. What do you think?

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• International Kindle ships October 19 to over 100 countries for $279, ‘US’ edition falls to $259 (engadget.com)
• Kindle now $259, available worldwide with wireless delivery (arstechnica.com)

Yesterday, we wrote both on Roku Netflix Player, and on Amazon Video on Demand. EngadgetHD reports today that Amazon Video on Demand will be available on the box after a free software update early this year. Any of Amazon’s 40,000 other titles will be able to be purchased and played back to the TV for a 24 hour window. Unfortunately, the maximum bitrate is only h.264 compressed 1200Kbps. No HD as yet.

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