Anyone ever use....

[FactoredReality]

I would read up on the hidden ability to disable functionality that has been discovered in kindles Link. Personally with the DRM (digital rights management) mess going on in the world I would avoid the tech for now. Unless you have $ burning a hole in your pocket.

[bigwhiteash]

I was looking at a Sony reader the other day... very compact and thin, looked very nice. About $60.00 less than the Kindle.

[Silencei2]

I would read up on the hidden ability to disable functionality that has been discovered in kindles Link. Personally with the DRM (digital rights management) mess going on in the world I would avoid the tech for now. Unless you have $ burning a hole in your pocket.

Meh... disabling text-to-speech functionality on an e-book isn't as significant as they make it out to be in my opinion. If you wanted to hear a book, people would just buy and download audio books and throw them on their MP3 player which is cheaper, smaller and more capable than a Kindle. I'm pretty sure that the Kindle is marketed to people who would rather read than listen to an audio book. Just my two cents.

[cinda]

Wow it reads to you. So you tuck the kids in bed and you say kindel will read you and me a story...!

[FactoredReality]

True, but if it has a disable for text to speech, what else does it have a disable for? Will they enable the ability for you to only read something once, or what about not being able to turn back pages?

[Silencei2]

I believe they disabled the text-to-speech on the Kindle is because it basically makes it easier for people to pirate e-books. The way it would work is that text-to-speech engines on a e-book basis can be translated via a speech-to-text software.

If you have something consistently pronouncing words in a perfect manner (text-to-speech, eg. the Kindle's text-to-speech feature), there is nothing stopping you from downloading the latest voice recognition software (speech-to-text, eg. Dragon Naturally Speaking) and having it scribe the entire e-book you paid for onto a MS Word document or PDF. From there you upload that to your local file host and POOF! no more DRM.

I understand what you are saying about other features possibly being disabled, much like how they had those 1-time use rental DVDs back in the day, but I think the text-to-speech is a feature that definitely needs a killswitch due to its potential usage.

[MasterCylinder]

I remembered reading about the audio bit of the Kindle, and I think it's the only thing effected because of a possible lawsuit. Here's an article that talks about it: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs...e/?postID=8881