Yes, I agree…the Consumer Reports analysis is too narrow to communicate the real issues that determine how much someone will enjoy one model over another.

That’s a place where I think Jeff Bezos has been very smart. He made the point that Amazon was keeping the EBR (E-Book Reader) and e-book markets separate. There was a lot of talk early in the Kindle’s evolution, when it cost over $300 dollars, that Amazon should do a “give away the razor and charge for the blades” model. People thought Amazon should give away Kindles, or make them very low-priced, but tie it into an obligation to buy a certain number of e-books.

Bezos said that he didn’t want to tie those two markets into a dependency. People can, and do, buy Kindle books without owning physical Kindles. I don’t think the reverse happens as much (that people own Kindles, but don’t buy or at least download Kindle store books), although it hypothetically could.

If iPads do great and iBooks doesn’t, that works very well for Amazon…since people buy Kindle store books to use on iPads.

If your hardware loyalty is to Apple, and your content loyalty is to Amazon, that’s okay with Amazon.

That said, I think many of Kindle Touch’s ‘soft’ features escape notice and appreciation. I wan’t blown away by mine at first. It took time, and especially the 5.1 update (did CR review KT with 5.1?) to get there. When I pull out my Nook STR to read something on it, it seems bland, crippled and stripped down by comparison. Maybe there’s some zen-like virtue to that, but to cite one example: having used wikipedia lookup (summary displays without launching a browser) I would never want to read without it, any more than I would want a reading device without a built in dictionary (yes I don’t read much on my Fire).

As another example, consider (the lack of) file management on the Nook: you cannot delete anything from the Library view. You must hook up a USB cable to load and delete side-loaded content. Even to archive B&N content, you have to open the item to be able to see the option to do this. And samples are added to your Library and show as such on every registered device. To get rid of them, you have to use a computer browser and go to your account page. Annoying. By contrast, you can pretty much do away with KT’s USB cable, and use a combination of personal documents service, dropbox, etc. You don’t have to sift through dozens of book samples that get lodged in your library. Delete/archive directly from the Home listing. But reviewers aren’t likely to discover this sort of thing.

Well, I suppose the question is that if you are outraged about this story, because you feel it doesn’t present a complete and useful picture, how then can you trust the other articles?

I’m with you on the evaluation method. They seem to have gone for the “low-lying fruit” of analyzing the stats, rather than the experience. Of course, it might be harder to measure experiential elements in a neutral manner. Since repair stats aren’t released by the companies, you’d have to do it by surveys.

I think Consumer Reports prefers to do the testing themselves. Unless they are going to give their testers each of the 22 different models, and have them actually purchase books and experience the use of each model for, oh, at least a month, I think it’s hard to replicate the consumer experience.

The ongoing relationship of an EBR may not lend itself well to CR’s methods.

You point about “browsability” is a great one! That also matches up with the free samples on the e-books. You can only get a free trial on each magazine one time, so it can’t be abused by subscribing and canceling every month.

My other point was that by subscribing directly with CR you get a subscription that works both on your KF AND your smartphone — I believe the Amazon page is for kindle-only subscriptions.

Upon reflection I think the various inconsistencies I’ve and others have pointed out is mostly due to the timing of when the devices were detail reviewed. I think the summary comparison reflects their current opinion, while the detailed reviews reflect their opinion when the detailed review was done.

I suspect the KT review was done right after it came out last year — it has fallen in their estimation since as competitors have announced better products