Kindles Going for $1,000

If you missed your chance to pick up a Kindle at the Oprah discounted price of $309, you are out of luck if you want one for Christmas at a reasonable price. While Amazon is selling them for $359, they won't be shipping them for 11-13 weeks. Amazon's site sellers are charging $650 and over at eBay prices are all over the place with many going for $700+ and one selling for $995.

How Amazon could bungle the manufacturing of the Kindle so that there are shortages for Christmas two years in a row is beyond me. Amazon should outsource the manufacturing of these devices to people who know how to make a good looking device, and just focus on managing the Whispernet service to sell digital books.

TechCrunch hypothesizes that Amazon will release the new Kindle 2.0 at about the same time they are promising to ship, so maybe they will be shipping out the new version to customers.