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Is the Amazon Kindle Good For Business?

10.08.2009
: Big business has learned its lesson about paper consumption: We read Word docs on laptops, use the copier sparingly and print only what we need. Yet, the paperless office is still a distant dream. E-Readers at least give the trees--and therefore the human race--a chance. The 170 dot-per-inch screen resolution--well over twice that of the typical computer monitor--lessens eye fatigue. Right now, the , with its 9.7-inch screen, is as close to reading printed material as possible on an electronic device.

: Companies such as Amazon, Sony and others have targeted the thriller-loving consumer crowd with huge marketing campaigns. Meanwhile, newspaper industry struggles have generated lots of press about e-readers as a future platform for news.

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: A big is cost versus capability: The $489 Kindle DX has a limited browser and does not support enterprise-class e-mail. Forrester Research Analyst Sara Rotman Epps has a laundry list of upgrades that manufacturers will need to address before e-readers can thrive in business, including larger screens, support for rich document types such as PowerPoint and secure VPN access. Another issue: Most e-readers are made of glass, which cracks easily and is expensive to replace.

However, says John Gillispie, the CIO for the State of Iowa, e-readers are becoming more compelling. "As these devices improve their capabilities they provide interesting alternatives for certain types of users," he says.

The devices are evolving. Plastic Logic will debut a device with a larger screen and no glass early next year. , one of the only e-reader makers targeting the enterprise, supports common file formats, such as PDF, Excel and Word. (The Kindle supports several formats as well, but you have to e-mail files to yourself at 10 cents per conversion.)