Just reading Tony Hung's post in Deep Jive Interests about The Kindle Is Fugly, Awkward, And … Biased Against Lefties? and I was wondering if Amazon Kindle's interface, the old, 70's Selectric kinda look - is working against adoption.

"…I haven’t held one yet, but if Robert Scoble could act as my proxy, then I’d have to say that Amazon’s Kindle is one fugly awkward looking piece of … jeez, well, “technology”.  I mean, its flashing screens between pages look like something you’d see in an LCD screen back in the 1980’s — you know, the ones where you had to use screen savers to prevent phosphor burn."

"….I’m not sure if I’ll ever hold one of these myself as I don’t plan to pony up almost $400, and Amazon (unlike Apple) doesn’t have any retail stores to try it out.  Furthermore, I doubt I’ll run into any early adopters up here who will have any to actually try it out as well.

For example, why couldn't Amazon make Kindle look "sexier" more like a big IPod, for example?

And as far as having retail outfits to try it out - how about partnering with large bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble / Borders, B Daltons, etc)?   I bet they'd like to be part of Amazon Kindle - since they have the most to gain/lose by the large scale adoption that Amazon is hoping for.

Personally, I feel I'm going back and forth about Amazon Kindle - one minute, I like the idea, then I read what others are saying, think about it, and decide that, until the idea is proven, I'll probably put the idea of owning a Kindle on the shelf - which is what I'm pretty much hearing from everyone else.