Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon has been renting out Kindle editions of textbooks for sometime now, but not all the educational tomes you need may be available in electronic form. And, believe it or not, some people just plain prefer paper to E-ink — especially since its much easier to take notes in the margins. Now many of the more expensive texts on the site also feature a rent option. Most are in the $30 to $60 range and are rented by the semester, which Amazon counts as 130 days. Should you need it for a bit longer, you can extend your rental period by 15 days, but only once. On the plus side, Amazon will pay for the shipping on the return of the books. For more info, check out the FAQ at the source.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Amazon begins renting paper textbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When internet mega retailer Amazon kicked off its fiscal year this past spring with $13.8 billion in net sales, the prognosis for the quarter ahead was dour, to say the least. At the time, the company projected its Q2 2012 performance would see an operating loss of $40 million to $260 million versus Q2 2011, as well as a slight down tick in revenue at $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion quarter to quarter. Well, the numbers are in and it looks like the forecast was right on the money. The Seattle-based outfit posted $7 million in net income for the quarter, a year over year loss amounting to a whopping 96 percent decrease. As for net sales, that picture’s a bit rosier given the 29 percent increase over Q2 2011 that saw the Bezos-backed co. pull in $12.83 billion — a figure that would have risen to 32 percent were it not for a $272 million hit due to “changes in foreign exchange rates[.]” Operating cash flow for Q2 2012 was down by nearly half at $107MM compared to the same segment last year.

Unsurprisingly, the company’s budget Kindle Fire tab — which has enjoyed relatively weak competition up to now — is still the number one item across Amazon’s site, with titles in its Lending Library growing to over 170,000. Bezos also made note of Prime’s growth, pegging that subscription offering’s catalog of items at 15 million and highlighting the addition of 18,000 movies and TV shows to its streaming service.

As for the future, the company expects Q3 net sales to grow by at least 19 percent year-over-year, landing somewhere between $12.9 billion and $14.3 billion, with a projected operating loss of $50 million to $350 million. Hit up the PR after the break for the full load of financial highs and lows.

Continue reading Amazon Q2 2012 earnings: net income down 96 percent to $7 million, net sales up 29 percent to $12.83 billion

Amazon Q2 2012 earnings: net income down 96 percent to $7 million, net sales up 29 percent to $12.83 billion originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those of you who own a Kindle 3G, it looks like those days of free, unlimited web browsing have come to an end. According to reports online, some users are starting to receive 3G bandwidth cap warnings. Apparently users were just browsing with the e-book reader as normal and were then presented with warnings letting them know that they had hit their 50MB monthly quota. They then received another notification saying that they’d be able to surf for another 24 hours – after that period, they will only be able to use the 3G to access Amazon.com, Wikipedia and the Kindle Store. For anything else they would have to do it over WiFi.

While the limit has been in place before, it seems that it wasn’t enforced until now. Considering how users can still use the 3G to access Wikipedia and shop on Amazon without any problems, it shouldn’t be that huge of an issue. But for those of you who use the Kindle to surf the web a lot, I guess you’ll have to start changing your habits. Any of you experienced these data cap notifications yet?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Amazon Kindle Touch 3G now on pre-order to customers across 175 countries , Amazon Announces Its Attractively-priced Next-generation Kindle,

Sad news for global freeloaders travellers looking to keep up with Gmail and Twitter on their Amazon e-reader. The online book seller has started closing in on excessive free web browsing, policing a 50MB data limit on its keyboard Kindle iterations. According to users on MobileRead, you’ll still be able to browse Amazon’s Kindle store and Wikipedia, but anything beyond that gets locked down. After some further investigation, it looks like Amazon added a provision outlining the data limits on its site, dated around July 1st. It stipulating that users “may be limited to 50MB of browsing over 3G per month.” The data cap only applies to older Kindle versions, including the Kindle Keyboard and Kindle DX. If you’ve got Amazon’s latest e-reader hardware, then you’re not missing anything — the free web browsing option was sidestepped on the likes of the Kindle Touch.

Filed under: Internet

Amazon puts 50MB limit on 3G Kindle’s ‘free’ experimental browser originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we expect Amazon to refresh its Kindle Fire tablet sooner rather than later, Demos Parneros, president of US retail for Staples, has told Reuters that the online book-seller has bigger plans. Amazon apparently aims to introduce five or six new devices (or SKUs, stock-keeping units), though as noted by Android Central‘s Phil Nickinson, these could thin out to just two tablet models and several storage variants. According to the exec, the tablets will come in a range of sizes and would include a new ten-inch device — going directly against another popular tablet. No word on whether these five or six device would include a smartphone, as screen sizes get increasingly closer. Amazon has also announced that it’ll be creating a new R&D hub in London, focusing on its services and APIs for TVs, consoles, smartphones and PCs, aimed squarely at rolling these out across the globe. The original Kindle Fire — and its Android app store — is still not available outside of America. However, public plans for the new Amazon base currently center on relocating both Lovefilm and Pushbutton to this new hub. However, it’s been about a year; about time for Europe to get a taste of Amazon’s wallet-friendly tab.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Amazon plans for ‘five or six’ new tablets, will include 10-inch model, says Staples president originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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