Amazon Kindle DX Details Revealed

theodp writes with news that details for the Kindle DX are now available. "Specs-wise, the big changes are a larger 9.7-inch screen that rotates to landscape display, a PDF reader, and more storage space. The Kindle DX carries a $489 price tag (compared to the $359 Kindle 2)." Engadget has a series of pictures from Jeff Bezos' presentation, and the Amazon product information page has further details and a video. According to the press release, Amazon has worked out a deal with The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post to "offer the Kindle DX at a reduced price to readers who live in areas where home-delivery is not available."

Comments

Too expensive

[InsaneProcessor]

I will not pay that price as long as books are cheap and PDFs can be read on my computer.

Re:Too expensive

[langelgjm]

As someone who has to read a lot of PDFs, I've gotten sick of reading them on the computer. If they're more than about 5 pages long, it's really irritating. Printing them out wastes paper, and takes a long time when they can be dozens or even hundreds of pages long.

The whole point of an e-book reader is the e-ink display. When I first saw one, it was amazing how much easier to read it is than a computer screen.

I pre-ordered a Kindle DX today. I'd been looking at the iRex DR-1000, but it was even more expensive, and has very mixed reviews. I anticipate using the DX on a daily basis probably for the next several years (grad student)... and I won't have to be tied to a computer, or drag around a laptop. Battery life is supposed to better even than netbooks.

Re:Too expensive

[Just Some Guy]

As someone who has to read a lot of PDFs, I've gotten sick of reading them on the computer.

I'm sick of reading them, period. I hate PDFs, with their author-chosen fonts, non-adjustable margins, and unconfigurable page breaks. I'd much rather read something in HTML or the equivalent so that changing the font to my liking reflows the text, and I don't have to toggle between "zoomed in enough to read without a microscope" and "zoomed out enough that I'm not constantly scrolling left-to-right.

Please, kill PDFs for machine reading. They're fine for print but absolutely suck on dynamic displays.

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, the ability to read downloaded papers as PDFs away from the computer screen without printing out hundreds of pages a month is great. If only this thing would include a pen for note taking and annotations, I would but it immediately.

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's the point of e-ink devices like this. They are more like print than "dynamic displays."

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

i bought and returned the kindle 2. Was planning on using for PDFs also, but for reference works (science, computing). Discovered PDF formatting is pretty useless for anything but very basic text and front to back reading. I bought a couple computer books from amazon, but were basically useless. Source code listings within text don't wrap properly. No hotlinking between TOC, index, text and figures.

Re:Too expensive

[Just Some Guy]

But they still benefit from being computers and hypothetically being able to change font size intelligently.

Re:Too expensive

[Ihmhi]

Why hasn't anyone manufactured just an e-ink display?

No need to worry about all the internal components. Have the display, a stand (that can rotate from portrait to landscape), and a carrying case. Use your existing stuff to read with it, such as a laptop or desktop.

It'd probably be way cheaper than a second monitor and those of us who read looong PDFs would make use of somethin' like this.

Re:Too expensive

[slapout]

"and PDFs can be read on my computer."

Checked out the price of a computer lately?

Re:Too expensive

[Hadlock]

Refresh times would be measured in seconds, not ms. I actually was looking for a B&W passive LCD display a couple of years ago. Passive meaning the same LCD technology used in an old gameboy or digital watch. You get the same readability but with older tech and slightly more fragility. Plus you get acceptable refresh times but you're limited to well lit areas.

Re:Too expensive

[TheoMurpse]

I will not pay that price as long as books are cheap

I think you don't understand the benefit this will have on many people. But here I just wanted to point out how cheap books are compared to Kindle stuff:

• Japan's Contested War Memories: The 'Memory Rifts' in Historical Consciousness of World War II (Paperback): $37.73
• Same book, Kindle edition: $142.88

What the crap? A 375% markup on the Kindle version!

The Kindle version isn't cheaper. It's more expensive!

Re:Too expensive

[Ihmhi]

You could include a LED lamp similar to the ones used to illuminate paintings in a museum. Or, you know, turn the lights on in your basement. d:

The point is, if you're flipping through pages quickly it's not going to get the job done. That's a limitation of the technology's refresh rate. However, if you intend on reading something cover to cover (such as a novel), then it would be perfect, would it not?

I'm starting to wonder about where I could get my hands on an e-ink display and wire up a DVA or VGA cable to it to tool around with.

Re:Too expensive

[Hadlock]

E-ink displays use a proprietary control unit

Re:Too expensive

[ILuvRamen]

well there's "your computer" as you stated it and then there's a $299 netbook that can do the same plus surf the internet and beats Kindle DX's price. I could write a landscapable text file viewer in my sleep and anyone can get a netbook to open a PDF. It's like there's some contest to see who can make a computer that does the least. When these things first came out, it looks like low end but still good laptop = $400. Kindle DX = $450 or whatever they said. Those 9" LCD picture frames that can make slideshows and hold like 100 pictures wooooow = $700+ (at the time when they came out). So apparently the less something does, the more it costs. The slower the processor, the more it costs too. This is just dumb. Soon they'll be selling an e-paper pocket calculator that's just a flexible LCD screen for $1000 and all it does is run a calculator program.

Re:Too expensive

[badkarmadayaccount]

PDF is an open format, can't someone just make a descent reader, with the aforementioned features? Doesn't sound technically challenging, you just have to tweak the PostScript interpreter. Then again, that's probably why nobody has bothered...

Re:Too expensive

[badkarmadayaccount]

Isn't it ironic that a M$ format, .chm, is the only (?) realistic choice for an e-book format. and it wasn't meant for that, either...

Re:Too expensive

[badkarmadayaccount]

For now. That's an open niche to be filled by the free market. Any takers?

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I would happily pay that price if they would let us Canucks on the bandwagon.

Great, but...

[bigjarom]

Just wait until Apple comes out with its color version.
I don't get how Amazon can get into the digital textbook market without color. Do they not understand that the colored graphs and illustrations are the only interesting part of textbooks?

Re:Great, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the colour E-Ink they've seen demoed isn't up to par yet. It's coming though, I'm sure.

Regardless, Amazon is going to make an absolute killing with these things.

Re:Great, but...

[bastion_xx]

It's e-ink technology and only comes in monochrome at the moment.

Re:Great, but...

[_KiTA_]

Apparently the colour E-Ink they've seen demoed isn't up to par yet. It's coming though, I'm sure.

Regardless, Amazon is going to make an absolute killing with these things.

And a second killing when the color eInk is out and working well.

And a third when the eInk is updated enough to support video streaming without making one's eyes bleed.

And a fourth when they add a dynamic homepage system with up to date news, webmail, etc. Basically a portal at your fingertips.

Amazon's got a really great product here. Looking 10-20 years down the line this is going to be pure gold for them.

Good Next Step

[Sponge Bath]

Good: Size and ability to download your own PDFs via USB. Price is not that outrageous for an early adopter type product.

Needs Improvement: Add SD card reader and WiFi. Switch between WiFi and 3G like the iPhone does so you can use a faster WiFi connection when available.

Bad: Disables table of contents feature for PDFs. Dumb

Re:Good Next Step

[langelgjm]

The original Kindle had an SD slot... this one has 4 GB, which is quite a bit, but I agree, why not include one? I already have about 2 GB of PDFs on my computer.

Re:Good Next Step

[fm6]

Disagree with your criticisms.

Here, network connectivity is a book delivery mechanism that's going to be off most of the time. You can use it for web browsing, but really this isn't a great web appliance even with a fast connection. So why bother with the weight, cost, and power drain of WiFi?

Don't really see the point of an SD card. Sneakernet? Use USB. Extra storage? Internal is over 3 GB; how many books do you need to carry around with you?

By "table of contents feature" I assume you mean the bookmark pane? Kind of hard to support when there's no mouse or touch screen. I suppose it's doable, but you'd complicate the user interface quite a bit. You might consider that a reasonable tradeoff, but this is not a geek device.

This is not an "early adopter" price. It's a luxury item, and priced accordingly. Notice that the 6-inch Kindle has done quite well at 75% of this price. Both will be out of the price range of a lot of people. But somebody who travels a lot can afford to drop this much on a device, and would probably find it worth it to have a ebook reader that goes days without recharging. If I fit that kind of profile, I'd consider the price more than reasonable.

Re:Good Next Step

[Hadlock]

Really bad: Costs $500
 
Supposedly a subscription to the NYT or other major paper will get you a price cut, but $500 is $150 too much for a larger version of the Kindle 2, which only costs $190 to build. The rebate ought to be $200 or more otherwise there's no savings over the print version (with the 6" kindle there's a savings of about $130 at current subscription rates). The fact that they're only offering the (so far not officially announced) discount in areas that don't already offer delivery of the NYT in print form is more depressing.
 
I had my fingers crossed for this, but damnit Amazon, offer this at a price I'm willing to pay. The 6" model is just too damn small for serious reading.

Re:Good Next Step

[MindStalker]

As I've stated the build cost might be $190 but that doesn't account for the mobile broadband they provide you for free.

Re:Good Next Step

[Anonymous Coward]

"So why bother with the weight, cost, and power drain of WiFi?"

Because this kind of machine is targeted to people who travel, and people who travel internationally often do not have cell connections. WiFi is everywhere.

Re:Good Next Step

[Hadlock]

I can't imagine a situation where you need to carry around more than 1GB of PDF files where you wouldn't also already have your laptop handy. Maybe an office copier machine repair man, but our guy already carries a laptop with 3G wireless. The idea of needing to have 3000 books on hand is sort of rediculous. I'm guessing the real reason for 4gb of storage is to hold all those image heavy text books at 200mb a pop.
 
SD card just opens the door to hacking this thing to use the free wireless for other purposes see also: Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii.

Re:Good Next Step

[fm6]

Because every little bit of hardware you add to a device raises the price. Consumer devices are sold on paper-thin margins, so you aim on the likely use case. You don't add features, however cheap, that most of your users will never need.

The exception to this is legacy features, like those infrared ports you see on so many laptops. But this is a totally new application — there's no history to impose legacy features.

Re:Good Next Step

[Aladrin]

Books with graphics get to be rather large. Books with markup tend to get rather large as well.

And just like MP3 players, you want to carry your whole collection around with you... 3GB is a lot until you start to really use the device, and then it's not enough.

Re:Good Next Step

[Sponge Bath]

Kind of hard to support when there's no mouse or touch screen.

According to the user's manual, the Kindle DX has a table of contents navigation feature that is usable with their proprietary format. Some PDFs have a table of contents information, displayed as you said in the bookmark pane of a PC based reader. The manual states that the TOC menu item is grayed out (disabled) for PDFs.

So the TOC navigation tools are there, they just don't allow them to be used with PDFs. For a large PDF, such as the USB spec, the TOC is very useful for navigation.

Re:Good Next Step

[SteeldrivingJon]

I have a large PDF that I sent through Amazon's conversion process. The "Table of Contents" menu item is disabled, but the table of contents in the text has links to the corresponding pages. So there's that.

Re:Good Next Step

[Hadlock]

I would assume that amazon buys you a prepaid 20mb data plan with the device to cover browsing their Kindle store, and after that the data (a book weighs in at what, 1024kb? 2048kb? 3.7gb/3000 books = 0.0012 GB per book) cost is built into the price of the book. It's certainly cheaper than printing, trucking to a warehouse, storage fees, and trucking to a bookstore or mailing (amazon super saver shipping is free) to the customer. It probably costs Amazon $0.30 to send the book to the customer and $0.50 worth of data for the customer to browse their site.

Re:Good Next Step

[contrapunctus]

I can't imagine a situation where you need to ...

Just because you can't imagine doesn't mean that other don't or need that capacity. I'm not trying to be a jerk but almost everything today is being used in manner not conceived by it's creator.

Re:Good Next Step

[fermion]

It is a good step, and almost enough to buy one. Native PDF means that I can load files. But it is still fundamentally flawed. It is created to read Amazon partner content. As mentioned it does not have WiFi that would let one browse the web. Even more critical, it does not allow browsing over the cell line.

Here is the problem. A lot of stuff that is pay for use on the kindle is already free, especially since the kindle content is static, and, in todays world, outdated. I am paying not for up to date content, but, in many cases, the privilege of reading it on the kindle. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just annoying that I either pay a monthly subscription or don't have access to it. This could be saying that one either pays a subscription or go to the library, but times have changed. The kindle has competition that will allow access to real time content, anywhere. for a cost that is as reasonable as the kindle.

The machine really needs a cell based wireless browser. Amazon would still make money on books. Some would still buy subscriptions to magazines. But I could also use it to read magazines that are not on Amazon. I could download books from Gutenber. It would be a true reader. I don't know how this would work, I suppose it could be a bluetooth tether to the phone, or the ability to interface with a separately acquired dongle. I don't know how much success Amazon is going to have with a basic book reader, or how many units the really need to sell.

Re:Good Next Step

[AmiMoJo]

The Achilles heal is still the eInk screen update speed. It looks like it's faster than the Kindle 2 now, but it's still not quite at the level where you can just flick through pages. For things like textbooks and datasheets that's pretty much essential. Even for web sites it helps a lot.

Looks promising though. Maybe in a year or two...

Re:Good Next Step

[mixuone]

Indeed, looking at the FA links, the most common gripe is the price - with the suggestion that a netbook would be better. It obviously depends on how serious one is about reading, but for me the cost is fine and I would not want a netbook. Netbook screens suck (small, low quality screens in this price range at least), and given that current models still weight a lot I expect that a dedicated reader is much more comfortable to read on.

I want to read books in a variety of places and love lying down on my back to read. Can't imagine that would be very comfortable with a laptop/netbook with all the weight and fans etc. And printing out books sucks, I have given it a try.

As for cost, it will go down and then this will be worth it for more people. I just hope that the DX will be available in Europe as well. I buy about $900-$1000 in books each year, and getting them shipped and stored is both costly and space-consuming; I do it for the convenience of reading a real book and because recent niche non-fiction English titles just aren't available in public libraries in my country.

When Amazon Prime is not an option, shipping tends to be pretty expensive and just getting rid of that would save me money. But the thing that really is exciting is the prospect of reading academic articles without having to deal with paper. Any information on whether the Kindle DX will be available in Europe?

Re:Good Next Step

[MindStalker]

Kindle 2 (And I assume this device) comes with a webbrowser that can browse sites other than Amazon. You can browse any site, of course its DHTML support is minimal, its akin to browsing with lynx plus images.
Apparently its pretty painful, but its good enough to check your webmail or whatever.

Re:Good Next Step

[Ucklak]

Am I missing something here?

Good: Size and ability to download your own PDFs via USB. Price is not that outrageous for an early adopter type product.
$489 is pretty outrageous for something that Sony's product did from the get go and you can get used for about $100.

Even new, Sony's reader is still cheaper than the Kindle DX.

To change the gear a bit, we're just witnessing the beginning of a new proprietary format war just like Microsoft vs. X in the 90s.
I don't want to buy a Sony CD player if I can only play music published by Sony.
Amazon did just that from the get go and it looks like they're opening up a bit but $500 is too much for a mostly locked in format reader.

Re:Good Next Step

[MindStalker]

Slight retraction, while according to what everyone is saying broadband internet is free on the device, according to Amazon's terms of service they can charge you for it. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=kin2w_ddp?nodeId=200144530&#wireless

So they may someday start charging for non amazon access.

Re:Good Next Step

[Nyeerrmm]

I think you've been reading too much FUD. While you're quite free to continue to avoid it, particularly due to the cost and the embedded DRM, you seem to have a few facts wrong.

1. It does have an experimental browser built in, and you can access it over the cell network. It's not that great for non-article content (e.g. forums, discussions on Slashdot), but it works well for articles, and even has convenient access to wikipedia (search "@wiki topic" from any screen). I really don't understand the blog subscriptions.

2. You can load many free books on it. If you can, use a *.mobi file, although *.txt works natively as well. There is also conversion for reasonably simple PDF and HTML files. Loading them is even simpler than you're suggesting. It comes with a USB cable (standard mini-usb plug) and it attaches like any other flash drive. No fancy directory structure, just drop it in the available space and it shows up on the home screen.

Re:Good Next Step

[fm6]

Books with dense graphics are not the sort of thing you'd read on a monochrome display. And what's this nonsense about markup? It doesn't take a lot of data to indicate where text styles change.

Consider the hassle of carrying around your entire library on SD cards. If you really want that much storage on an ebook reader (which I don't believe), support for thumb drives would be more to the point.

Not all MP3 player users insist on carrying around their entire library. I think most don't. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and even so my old 1GB MP3 player holds several weeks worth of listening.

If I wanted to carry around more than a couple of gigabytes of library, I doubt that I'd want to do it on a device like this. That much data has to be organized somehow, and that's be a pain to do on a device that's as deliberately simple as this one. This is a device for casual reading; the portable Library of Congress hasn't reached its financial sweet spot yet.

Re:Good Next Step

[fm6]

OK, I agree, that's uncool.

Re:Good Next Step

[keithpreston]

$500 is $150 too much for a larger version of the Kindle 2, which only costs $190 to build.

People are just way too spoiled with PCs. Granted there is so much competition in the PC market that Gross Margins are in the 10-20% range. There are tons and tons of electronics(Music Players, GPS, etc..) that sell at 50% and greater margins. Especially if that product is in a Niche Market where volume doesn't make up for development costs. If you think $500 is too much, the buy the smaller version, books or newspapers. If you want stuff at 10% over cost then either get ready for Chinese made (and engineered) junk, or hope that there is a mature market with lots of competition.

Re:Good Next Step

[innocent_white_lamb]

I can't imagine a situation where you need to carry around more than 1GB of PDF files
 
I can, easily. Many people work in remote areas (mining and logging camps, forest fire lookout stations) where they stay for weeks and months at a time. Many other people spend their lives on the road (truck drivers, salesmen). For all of these people, it would be extremely handy to be able to carry their own personal library around in a tiny gadget.

Re:Good Next Step

[homer_s]

but $500 is $150 too much for a larger version of the Kindle 2

Maybe you mean "$500 is $150 too much than what I'm willing to pay" - if it is back-ordered like the earlier models, it means that $500 is too low. What it costs amazon to build is irrelevant to the sales price (if it costs them $5000, you wouldn't pay that, will you?)

Re:Good Next Step

[k2enemy]

3.3 GB really isn't that much. I would mainly use the Kindle DX for reading academic papers in PDF format. I have only recently started organizing them on my computer, and so far I'm over 700MB. That is only two semesters' worth.

An SDHC slot is really a no brainer on this device.

Re:Good Next Step

[Bellegante]

Well, I'd love to use it for the 40 gigs worth of DnD 3.5 PDF's I have. Yes, I own the books, as well, simply because they are better as reference amongst a group of people.

But if I could put them all on an ebook reader? It depends on the interface, but that would be great, I think. And I'd surpass that 4 gig limit with pdf's within 4 months, even without the DnD crap.

Re:Good Next Step

[fm6]

I guess I can see your use case. But no brainer? It's not that much more difficult to keep your files on a laptop and transfer them to the Kindle as needed. And laptops don't tend to get lost under couch cushions, or at least not as often as SD cards.

Re:Good Next Step

[j_166]

"I have a large PDF that I sent through Amazon's conversion process. The "Table of Contents" menu item is disabled, but the table of contents in the text has links to the corresponding pages. So there's that."

I've had mixed results with Amazon's PDF conversion. Sometimes I get the links in the table of contents and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I get nothing at all. It makes me wonder if they are doing the conversion process with mechanical turk.

There should be no need to 'convert' PDFs with the DX though with its built in PDF reader, so it will be interesting to see that in action.

Re:Good Next Step

[Hadlock]

I agree we should pay good money for American designed products sold by American companies. From my point of view this isn't a PC replacement though, this would replace my lunchbreak NYT paper ritual every day at lunch. At $350 the Kindle DX would pay for itself in the first year, at $500 it actually costs me more to read it electronically, and you lose a lot of the advantages of the paper based version (story pairings/placement, among other things). So it has two strikes against it. Now if you're using this to read more than 5-10 books a year it's probably a worthwhile investment, but the news companies are trying to sell this as the second coming of jesus for the news industry, and that's precisely what I'd use it for. A 6" screen is far too small to do any serious reading IMO. I read the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy and some shorter scifi novels on my palm pilot back in the day, but if you're used to reading for 2-3 minutes before flipping the page, a 6" screen is going to drive you crazy. A 7.5x10" screen is big enough you can leisurely read an article for at least a minute before "flipping the page".

Re:Good Next Step

[Hadlock]

This is true, but in most cases people are using it in a manner not conceived by the creator simply because there's a better tool for the job, but they just can't afford it right now. I would imagine the Kindle is pretty well locked down, and if you're buying the Kindle for something other than it's intended purpose (at $500!) you're wasting a lot of money. Those who absolutely need more storage space will figure out how to attach a USB thumb drive to the device, or tear their Kindle open to access the unused SD card reader or IDE interface inside.

Re:Good Next Step

[Hadlock]

Interesting. I only glanced at the site after seeing the price, but I thought they'd dropped that with the Kindle 2. That's pretty cool, and if I didn't have internet at home (like a grandparent perhaps) this might be more worthwhile at that price. I'm guessing Amazon in that case is paying half price for data, at the cost of being a low priority connection/device on the network. It's probably in the buisness model to run the kindle internet access at a loss for the first five years or so to build marketshare. At that point they'll probably be able to offer a data rate that you could bridge to your laptop for $20 a month or so, ala T-Mobile and their blackberries.

Re:Good Next Step

[Philip_the_physicist]

I can't imagine a situation where you need to carry around more than 1GB of PDF files where you wouldn't also already have your laptop handy.

When your !@*&% prof uses a brain-dead PDF creator which doesn't use text boxes properly and so has each individual character in a separate box int eh wrong order (rumoured to be to prevent copy-pasting from it), when each page is a single uncompressed image, when they embed their own fugly pseudo-handwritten font (and use the wrong character codes for them so that if you try to copy the text you fet a mess of accented 'o's) or when they shove videos into PDF files. All of these have produced bloated files, and were produced by at least one of my lecturers over the years. I am also told that Word 3007 produces pretty godawful PDFs, but I have never investigated form myself.

Re:Good Next Step

[badkarmadayaccount]

What IDE interface? SD is a separate protocol, incompatible with PATA/IDE. I think you are thinking of CF. That's basically PATA with a wire adapter. As is PCMCIA, without the Card[Bus]/[Bay] extensions. </interconnect geek>

Before the FUD creeps in again:

[aussersterne]

1. Yes, you can read non-DRM eBooks on Kindle in several formats, includint text and PDF
2. No, your Kindle does not die if you close your Amazon account
3. No, Amazon does not remotely kill your Kindle if this happens
4. And all of your books (including DRM) remain readable if this happens
5. And Kindle DOES have a USB port so you CAN copy files to and from it
6. And this USB port DOES work just like a flash drive so it's not Windows-only

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[melikamp]

Can we turn off updates? Can Amazon remotely kill Kindle? If yes, why? What is the utility in that for a user? Why do we have to pay almost $500 to get a Linux-based (!) platform without root access, with Amazon having as much access as they want over the net?

I cannot find any info about hacking Kindle, so I am making assumptions. Correct me if I am wrong.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. #2 and #3 have already happened. #4 remains to be seen.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[MindStalker]

"Why do we have to pay almost $500 to get a Linux-based (!) platform without root access"

Because they give you free mobile broadband access, but the kindle isn't fast enough and won't download videos or other large files so its safe to provide you this. If they gave you root you could and would tether it and whomever they are contracting with to provide the unlimited broadband would shut it down.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[SnarfQuest]

Can we turn off updates?

Yes. just turn off the wireless service.

Can Amazon remotely kill Kindle?

No

If yes, why? What is the utility in that for a user? Why do we have to pay almost $500 to get a Linux-based (!) platform without root access, with Amazon having as much access as they want over the net?

Since these features don't exist, why comment...

I cannot find any info about hacking Kindle, so I am making assumptions. Correct me if I am wrong.

You're wrong.

So, you don't know what you're talking about, but make extremely anti-* comments bassed on such knowledge. Definately a slashdot poster.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[s0lar]

But what about non-English texts?

I had asked Amazon and they don't support Russian with their existing Kindle 2 product. There is a half-assed workaround - Russian .txt titles can be converted into a .pdf made out off vector-based letter shapes. Naturally, that blows the file size up and requires processing on your PC. More to the point, Chinese texts would need a new conversion app...

So, what's the story with the new product? Can it handle Unicode?

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[Vadim Grinshpun]

you are wrong :)
See http://igorsk.blogspot.com/

Igorsk is one who's done some great work on both the Sony Reader and Kindle.
At the very least, his work allows Cyrillic books to be read, which is not supported natively. Not sure if there are other applications.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[IronChef]

Which kinds of files can you copy to the Kindle over USB without needing some kind of conversion process?

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[EvilToiletPaper]

I think the price is for the e-ink technology, I saw someone reading an older 6" kindle a few days ago and the picture quality looks just like paper, no strain on the eyes.

Give it like a month after release, I'm sure some hackers will break it open and port an open linux kernel to it :)

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[ubrgeek]

All of the above is true. I picked one up (the Kindle 2) last Saturday. I love the thing and grabbed the handful of Amazon books that are $0.00 (some OK sci-fi ones.) But of more use were the freebies - ManyBooks, FeedBooks, and MobiPocket. A lot of the "classics" are there - the ones you always say you're going to read but never do. I've got a ton of them that I now have in a convenient storage medium (for me to still never actually read ;))

All of that said, I'm pissed that I just got the 2 and now the DX is announced so soon after. I'm a Mac fanboy so I'm used to that kind of thing happening, but ... The only reason I would consider returning the 2 and holding on the DX would be the native PDF support. I'm guessing that's a purely software-based feature (as well as the horizontal/vertical flipping) and hopefully it'll be an optional software upgrade down the line. Or if those things are important to me, should I send the 2 back, fork out the additional $100 and wait for the summer release?

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[melikamp]

Can we turn off updates?

Yes. just turn off the wireless service.

This is silly. By your logic, one can easily "disable" Vista's copy protection by smashing the computer into pieces.

As far as I can tell, the correct answer is "no". A Kindle owner can either disable net access completely, or trust in Amazon's benevolence.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[santiagoanders]

Definately a slashdot poster.

Definitely a slashdot poster.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[Zerth]

If a screen the size of the entire current kindle, less bezel, switching to landscape view, and the ability to read PDFs is worth $130 to you, then return it if you are still in the 30 day grace period.

I preordered before Bezos stopped talking. My wife is going back for her MBA and at least 3/4 of her reading material is either only in PDF or is also available in PDF, so this'd help her a bunch. Hopefully, I got in soon enough that it'll get here before her next class starts.

Plus, I won't feel so guilty about stealing her current kindle:) I didn't think I'd like it, but other than the way the screen looks like newsprint, I've found little fault with it. I wish they hadn't gotten rid of the SD slot, but it can read all the ebooks I already had from Baen or most other non-DRM places, it's DRM is crackable, and it is easier to read wikipedia with it than my phone, so I can only complain about the lack of storage and the giant bezel.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[ErikZ]

The DX looks great if you need the extra screen space.

But I prefer the smaller and more portable version.

Re:Before the FUD creeps in again:

[nurb432]

7. its still damned expensive.

All such book reads will fail until...

[Nutria]

they are cheap enough that people won't worry about ruining them at the beach or by dropping them onto the floor.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Sponge Bath]

The operating temp range in the user's manual says max of 95F, so the beach may be out of the question anyways.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[CastrTroy]

Really. It doesn't stop people from buying $500 smartphones and $300 MP3 players. Just be careful with your stuff. Sure it's not suited for all environments, like at the beach, there are quite a few good things about such a device. So it doesn't work at the beach. I only go to the beach once a year, and spend 48 weeks out of the year (minimum) in the city.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[langelgjm]

Not necessarily. The DX is not geared towards the beach-reading crowd, the size alone should tell you that. It's more business/academic oriented - i.e., people who are already carrying around an expensive laptop all the time. I think it could be a real hit with students - it's pricey, so maybe not right away, but the next closest competitor in size is the iRex, which is closer to $1000.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[nine-times]

Well, cheap enough that people don't have to worry when they need to be replaced, or else durable enough that people don't have to worry about them needing to be replaced. Really either one will do.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Nutria]

It doesn't stop people from buying $500 smartphones and $300 MP3 players

But that just demonstrates the stupidity and lemming-like nature of hip, cool, trendy people.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[abigor]

The smaller Kindles have been a roaring success, and this new one doesn't look to be any different. I agree though, it would be great if you could pour a glass of milk on it, drop it in the sand, and then rinse it off under the tap so it's good as new.

I really like the newspaper subscription feature...if they worked out something with The Economist, then I might have to shoot the lock off the wallet.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Nutria]

It's more business/academic oriented

But that just narrows the market size by 90%, which doesn't seem very bright.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Anonymous Coward]

OLPC?

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[grumbel]

iPhones, PDAs, Laptops and all that other stuff costs just as much if not more so and yet people carry them around all the time. As long as the devices are not super fragile, there really isn't that much to worry about, after all a book doesn't react all that good either when dipped into water.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[langelgjm]

I think you underestimate the potential size of the business market.

Also, another thing to remember is that while college students are "poor", the little money they do have is typically disposable income.

But yes, obviously e-readers would take off if they were more like the PADD technology from Star Trek - cheap enough to leave lying around, give to someone else, etc.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[elventear]

The device is almost $500. It's the margins they are after, not the bulk sale. It's Apple style marketing ... And I would completely understand if this becomes a success.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Anonymous Coward]

and yet you can also read books and so much more on iPhones, PDAs and Laptops

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[flogger]

Personal anecdote:
I have loaned my Kindle 2 to students (High school) I know it has been dropped and probably abused and smashed in backpacks. I have dropped it twice from about 1 meter each time. It still works like a champ. The Kindle 2 is sturdy.

I take it to the beach and even out and read when I get stuck on the golf course while it rains. In wet/windy/sandy environments, I just put the kindle in a clear, ziplock-type baggie, and it is easy to read and protected from the elements.

I don't think too many people worry about dropping it or taking it to the beach.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[hurfy]

So the whole retire to AZ and read a book is not going to include a Kindle eh?

Do i store it for the summer in the fridge? Even up here it can go triple digits for a week.

oh well, i have no interest in buying a book reader that costs as much as my next 100 books and comes with none of them :(

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[EvilToiletPaper]

I'm buying one as long as it works in the toilet... reading LOTR on the loo was a pain in the butt.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[sulfur]

It's more business/academic oriented - i.e., people who are already carrying around an expensive laptop all the time.

If I am already carrying around a laptop, why would I want to carry another piece of equipment that performs a subset of functions that a laptop can do?

I think it could be a real hit with students

I don't see much value from this device to students. Most textbooks are not available in electronic form, so it's not like students can carry one device instead of several heavy books. Also, from my experience I can tell that students generally don't have any time for casual reading, as going to classes, studying, doing homework/projects, and working/doing research takes way more time than regular 40 hours per week.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

It's more business/academic oriented

But that just narrows the market size by 90%, which doesn't seem very bright.

Targeting smart people with money doesn't seem a bad business model.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[langelgjm]

If I am already carrying around a laptop, why would I want to carry another piece of equipment that performs a subset of functions that a laptop can do?

That's what everyone is missing. An e-book reader does not perform a subset of the features of a laptop - it performs a different task, one that a laptop is not as well-suited for, namely, reading long documents. I would MUCH rather read a 50 page journal article on the large Kindle than on my laptop.

I don't see much value from this device to students. Most textbooks are not available in electronic form, so it's not like students can carry one device instead of several heavy books. Also, from my experience I can tell that students generally don't have any time for casual reading,

I don't care about the textbooks so much as the ability to read PDFs. Both my undergraduate and master's degrees involved reading LOTS of PDFs - journal articles, scanned chapters of books, working papers, etc. That's why it could be useful for students, not for the casual reading part.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[X0563511]

Hmm... interesting idea. An inductance charger, and a clear skin sealing the whole thing. Why does it NEED to be open to the environment? (aside from the ports).

I think we need to work on an inductance USB port :D

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[shutdown -p now]

If I am already carrying around a laptop, why would I want to carry another piece of equipment that performs a subset of functions that a laptop can do?

Mostly because it performs that subset better. Of course this is quite subjective, and there are both advantages and disadvantages to reading books on an eInk reader, so you have to decide for yourself whether it's worth it or not. It definitely is for me.

students generally don't have any time for casual reading, as going to classes, studying, doing homework/projects, and working/doing research takes way more time than regular 40 hours per week.

You must be Japanese. ~

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Icaarus]

I agree with langelgjm, consider this, if it shows textbooks well, and if the total price for a kindle and 2 semester's books are less than the price of hardcopies of those books you will see this thing fly. Why, because then students like me would have a half-pound thing to worry about vs 20-30 pounds of texts. 0.5% of interest of 100% of the market, or >50% interest of 10% of the market, ask an economist which is more desirable.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[1729]

I think we need to work on an inductance USB port :D

What about Wireless USB?

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[rednip]

But that just demonstrates the stupidity and lemming-like nature of hip, cool, trendy people.

It's true that some people use items to improve social status, others attempt it by making snarky comments.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[swillden]

people won't worry about ruining them at the beach

e-Books are much better for reading at the beach than paper books, at least in terms of resistance to salt, sand, water, etc. Just put your e-book in a big ziploc baggy. It doesn't interfere with reading, and protects it so well you can throw the book in the waves if you like. Don't do that with a paper book (unless it's in a baggy, but you have to take it out to read it).

The only downside to an e-book reader on a public beach is that someone might steal it while you're swimming.

As for dropping them... I've been reading primarily on e-Book readers for almost 10 years now (starting with a Rocketbook) and it's really never been a problem. I don't drop them much, and in the rare case it happens, they've survived fine. They're built to take a little abuse, like a cellphone.

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Nutria]

Targeting people who think they are smart with money doesn't seem a bad business model.

There, fixed that for you...

Re:All such book reads will fail until...

[Nutria]

as long as it works in the toilet

In the toilet???

Aren't you supposed to sit on the toilet?

$500 to read books you have to buy

[Anonymous Coward]

The library has them for free. And you have no "I like a dead tree copy" argument.

Re:$500 to read books you have to buy

[EvilToiletPaper]

The library can have a copy soiled, pages torn out, genitalia doodles drawn on useful information, dog eared pages, books splitting at the seams, smelly pages, disease infested pages, someone's love letter/suicide confession between pages and worst of all no copies available.

I agree this device is not for 'exploring authors and genres' (The library is the best for that) but for texts that you need or know you want to own.

Textbooks

[wjousts]

I bet textbook publishers are all over this. No more reselling your books at the end of the semester and no more picking up cheap second-hand books (for the Kindle) next year.

The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[wiredog]

It's the partnerships with Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and the University of Virginia. Textbooks on the Kindle. If the prices are substantially lower than the printed books, and if resale is allowed (or the prices are lower than new - used) then it's a win for students.

The newspapers only being available outside the dead tree delivery area is stupid. Christ, the WaPo, NYT, and others would save money if they delivered electronically rather than on dead tree. I wonder if the Teamsters had something to do with the decision?

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[CRCulver]

Resale is never going to be allowed. The only reason textbook publishers would sign on to digital technologies is if it would kill the resale market.

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[DragonWriter]

The newspapers only being available outside the dead tree delivery area is stupid. Christ, the WaPo, NYT, and others would save money if they delivered electronically rather than on dead tree.

Probably would, but why compete with yourself. If Kindle DX delivery seems to work well, expect the "home delivery area" for participating newspapers to shrink and eventually disappear entirely, but subsidizing DX sales in their existing home delivery area would further weaken the viability of home delivery (which relies on having lots of readers in an area for viability), and might make it impossible to maintain. So the newspapers choose to let the medium prove itself before subsidizing it where it would compete with their existing home delivery system.

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[Maximum Prophet]

Professor and student generated content is more valuable than textbooks anyway. I received A's in classes where I didn't open or didn't even buy the textbook.

Advantages to publishers:

• No need to preprint, so you never over or under print.
• Sell directly to the student w/o giving the middle man a cut.

Disadvantages:

• Too easy for students to cut you out, by creating and sharing their own information. (Has Calculus 101 changed in the last 100 years?)
• It's new, and therefore scary.

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[digitalgiblet]

The newspaper restriction is only to get them to subsidize the purchase price. You can subscribe to the papers now via Kindle.

Not sure if you caught that part.

I totally agree with you that it is dumb on the part of the newspapers to restrict themselves. The cost to print and deliver a paper is astronomical compared to electronic delivery.

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[maxume]

It stinks a little that they are manipulating things, but they have a pretty short time window left before they get steam rolled by open content (I would still describe 20 years as short, I don't think the precise time frame is a particularly interesting discussion).

For open content, eliminating printing costs is huge. The current availability and quality of open content isn't always great, and the attractiveness of this thing at $500 is a bit dubious, but both of those things are pretty much only going to get better, and they reinforce each other.

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[TooMuchToDo]

Note that the Kindle DX has free, unlimited access to Wikipedia. How hard is it to get all that info from textbooks into Wikipedia, eh?

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[EvilToiletPaper]

Resale would never be allowed, with regular paper books there is a lot of wear and tear until a point in the poor textbook's life where it's nothing but clumps of pages hanging off the seams and scribbles and doodles all over them.

e-books on the other hand have a virtually infinite life.
Maybe resale could be allowed Amazon removed a few pages added some random scribbles when it passes ownership :)

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be scary to textbook publishers. If there's one group that has consistently shown they'll ignore copyright to get the content they want for free, it's college students. Amazon's DRM has already been broken. If given the chance, college students will use the DRM-stripping tools to sell/share with other students. The only way that this has any chance of working would be for the cost of textbooks to be added to tuition fees and the books automatically delivered to students' Kindles based on the classes they sign up for.

Re:The point isn't newspapers or magazines.

[Brandee07]

I subscribe to WaPo on my Kindle, and I live inside the beltway, so I have no idea what you are referencing.

Significant advantages to students:

[aussersterne]

1. Searchable (wooohoo!)
2. Carry one thin device, not 20lbs of books

Those alone might have caused me to buy it as an undergrad.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[wjousts]

Most textbooks are searchable, it's called the index. You'll find it at the back of the book. Also a disadvantage of the Kindle is that's it currently black and white. That's a major restriction for textbooks in some fields where multicolored diagrams and graphs are important. Not to mention the $400 price tag.

I'm not saying there aren't some advantages for some students (with money) in some fields, but if you think publishers did this for the students, I think you are naive.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I like to mark important stuff with a highlighter, and stick Post-it bookmarks on important pages and sections. Does the Kindle support that?

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[aussersterne]

No, I don't think "publishers did it for the students."

That is not the same, however, as saying "students might want it."

If you think "the index" is the same as "the search button," you haven't used either recently. The index names a few headwords chosen by editors and an indexer. 95% of the other words in a book don't turn up in it. It references the most critical pages, not necessarily all pages that refer to the headword in question. It typically omits statistics, names and organizations, and sources, which you often don't get in a textbook in easily reference form since most undergrad textbooks include no footnotes or endnotes.

Search is HUGE for a studying undergrad, especially during junior and sophomore years when the exams are getting harder and knowing the books inside and out more critical.

Perhaps this is not the case in computer science or mathematics, but anywhere across the arts, humanities, social sciences, history, area studies, management and policy, etc., it will be more than a boon.

I used my little Kindle 1.0 to study for a comprehensive Ph.D. written examination for just that reason; I accumulated 20-30 reference works and then could search for names and critical phrases across the entire contents of my kindle and save those search results for easy recall.

And the way that Kindle saves the search results, it aggregates the surrounding sentences into lists:

Result 1: From Book Title: Surrounding context and keywords here.

Result 2: From Book Title: Surrounding context and keywords here.

etc.

And you can click on each one if you want more. The end result was that I could study using just my "saved searches" referencing dozens of books at once, without having to flip through them endlessly and stick paperclips and post-it notes in each volume on "important pages."

The massive juxtaposition of directly relevant paragraphs as "you created 'em" pages that were directly on point for me was amazing.

I was the only person in some years to pass with honors, after several faculty and other students had made fun of me for studying on my Kindle.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[aussersterne]

See my comment immediately above.

And yes, it actually does.

You can quickly highlight text, and you can "fold down the corners" on important pages.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[aussersterne]

And, I should also add, there is an INDEX of the things that YOU have highlighted, browseable as a list and clickable so that you can go to that page and see your highlight in context.

Try to do THAT with a traditional book.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[tphb]

I like to mark important stuff with a highlighter, and stick Post-it bookmarks on important pages and sections. Does the Kindle support that?

Yes, it does. Not actual highlighting and notes, of course, but you can highlight and add notes using the keyboard. And unlike your Post-It's, they are saved permanently.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[Overzeetop]

You must not be in a professional field. We keep our books as references, often for out entire careers. I still use two or three of my texts - from 20 years ago - on a weekly basis (okay, maybe monthly). It's hard to loan your kindle to someone to look something up, but very easy to do so with a single textbook.

Kindle is an entertainment device, not a business one (not yet, at least). And I'm okay saying that a lot of non-technical (and some technical) classes in College are merely entertainment.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[j_166]

Not to mention, the best index in the world still won't make your highlights and annotations searchable like they are in the Kindle.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[SteeldrivingJon]

Furthermore, your notes and marked text are stored in a plain text file which you can access when you connect the kindle to a computer via USB. The kindle is mounted as a flash drive and one of the files is your notes.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[CrimsonScythe]

Carry one thin device, not 20lbs of books

Great... Remove one of the last sources of exercise we engineering students had. Now all we have is lifting coke cans and moving the mouse around the desk. That, and typing on this damn Model M.

Re:Significant advantages to students:

[autophile]

Searchable (wooohoo!)

No, not searchable. At least, not like what someone used to Google, or heck, even grep, thinks of as searchable. Here's what I sent to Kindle 2 customer support a few months ago when I was having trouble searching through a text for a word that I knew the beginning, but not the end of:

In the Kindle 2 User's Guide, under Performing a Search, it states "You can use whole words or partial words..." However, when searching for a partial word, such as "occurr", no results are found, even though the word "occurrences" appears in the User's Guide ("The list is ordered by the number of occurrences of the search term in each item."

And here is their reply:

I have verified that the functionality of the partial search you are trying to complete doesn't exist on the Kindle. The device only supports basic partial search functionality, for example "dog" instead of "dogs".

I apologize about any inconvenience this may have caused to you.

Now, the description of the search function on the Kindle DX is the same as the description of the search function on the Kindle 2. So you will not be able to say, "Hey, I wonder which text had phlogi... phlogi... phlogi-something in it. I know! I'll search for phlogi!" It's not going to work.

as long as books are cheap

[wiredog]

Checked out the price of college textbooks lately?

Re:as long as books are cheap

[InsaneProcessor]

yes, buying them for both of my sons. Buy used, the resell when done. Net result is low cost.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[milimetric]

Textbooks are expensive only in small part due to the hardcover / high quality paper they're printed on. The IP of the authors is what costs the most money.

Most likely the Kindle + e-versions of textbooks will be only slightly cheaper than paper textbooks. To really see the savings of the kindle you have to look deeper. Pens, paper, notebooks used to write notes on will be in some large part replaced by the annotation capabilities of the Kindle. Mobile internet for life is also something that people seem to underestimate. Furthermore, reducing paper waste seems to me by far the biggest cost reduction. It's just not one that we typically factor in when we're sliding our credit card.

Here's to a better world and better Kindles to come.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[alen]

not like the e versions of textbooks will be any cheaper?

some schools already have drm's pdf's instead of physical books. same price and the drm is annoying to use

Re:as long as books are cheap

[0100010001010011]

Selling my engineering books is my biggest regret. I swore up and down I'd never need Thermodynamics. I'm a controls engineer...

Low and behold I'm controlling a thermodynamic system.

Wiki and other such sites are wonderful, but they're not presented in the medium that I learned them in with the coefficients and with the equations as I learned them.

Engineers, hold on to your text books. I know that $20 for beer looks good now but you'll want that book later much more than you want the beer now.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you can resell textbooks (unless the author is cynical and updates every year, and also somehow controls the course and thus makes that course require the new book).

Surely at some point there will be open source textbooks which you can use at your choice of online university that doesn't make you give money to your course lecturer.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Reece400]

Your lucky, most every text book I needed yearly editions, where there essentially mix up the contents so you are forced to buy the newest one to keep in line with the rest of the class...

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Dare nMc]

The IP of the authors is what costs the most money.

close, but wrong, between $.20 to $1.06 goes to the author, $3-$6 is the printing cost: To calculate the royalty you earn per book sold you multiply five percent, or .05, times $20. The result equals $1. So that's the royalty you earn for every book the publisher sells.
the Publisher eats the majority of the remaining profit. Straight to ebook should remove that overhead and I think reduce the cost by at least 60%.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Rolgar]

I recall reading that college books are made intentionally inferior to grade/high school texts for several reasons. The public schools are selling the books to institutions that make large orders, and expect to use the books for several years.

College texts are sold to college bookstores, which you might have 1 to 3 in most college towns, and the student has no choice in which book to get, because the teacher or department decides for them. Then the publisher makes minor alterations to the text from one year, giving the school and the (school owned?) bookstore the opportunity to phase out last year's book with a nearly identical one. This is planned obsolescence at it's finest.

The only way to really break the text book cartel is a commitment to open commons texts that students can put directly on their reader, computer, or have printed at the publisher of their choice. Have a foundation that produces half a dozen texts on each subject at various grade levels, and the educators would still have the option to choose texts that they like, or even mix and match different sections of the texts they like. And you'd probably have printers pop up that would compete to distribute the open texts solely on price and quality, and I'm pretty sure they could get the price of a single copy with a hefty profit for under $20.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[exploder]

Publishers have all sorts of schemes to prevent this from working in practice. Was either of your sons required to buy "Freshman Intro Text, 19th Edition"? Or do any of those texts have an online component?

God I hate textbook publishers. Graduate texts are much more sane, thankfully.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[exploder]

Pens, paper, notebooks used to write notes on will be in some large part replaced by the annotation capabilities of the Kindle.

I'm skeptical. Until I can write (and draw!) small and legibly, wherever in the text I like, it's not good enough.

Resolution of the digitizer, and resolution and response time of the display are limiting factors here, I think.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[exploder]

Yeah, but you can resell textbooks (unless the author is cynical and updates every year, and also somehow controls the course and thus makes that course require the new book).

Surely at some point there will be open source textbooks which you can use at your choice of online university that doesn't make you give money to your course lecturer.

Oh, the publisher and university conspire to achieve that. Think the bookstore can place an order for old editions? Think the university will allow the prof to require a book the bookstore cannot order?

There are exceptions, but all too often this is how they team up to soak the students.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Colonel Korn]

Textbooks are expensive only in small part due to the hardcover / high quality paper they're printed on. The IP of the authors is what costs the most money.

Most likely the Kindle + e-versions of textbooks will be only slightly cheaper than paper textbooks. To really see the savings of the kindle you have to look deeper. Pens, paper, notebooks used to write notes on will be in some large part replaced by the annotation capabilities of the Kindle. Mobile internet for life is also something that people seem to underestimate. Furthermore, reducing paper waste seems to me by far the biggest cost reduction. It's just not one that we typically factor in when we're sliding our credit card.

Here's to a better world and better Kindles to come.

You mean the IP collected by the authors but owned by the publishing company. The author seems very little money. Writing a textbook is almost entirely about prestige, unless you happen to write something that becomes unbelievably popular and then you write another popular textbook and can leverage your previous success into a better contract.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[khellendros1984]

You're lucky. Most every textbook I needed had yearly editions, where they essentially mixed up the contents so you are forced to buy the newest one to keep in line with the rest of the class

ftfy.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Just Some Guy]

yes, buying them for both of my sons. Buy used, the resell when done. Net result is low cost.

Yeah. When I bought that used sociology text (to fulfill the gen-ed requirements for my Comp Sci major), angels parted the clouds and played trumpets as a flock of serving virgins carried it out in a velvet-lined platinum ark.

When selling it 4 months later (in mint condition because I never actually opened it), the bookstore did me the favor of accepting it without charging me disposal fees.

But keep the books from your major. You'll like having them down the road.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[khellendros1984]

I've had textbooks with an optional electronic version. That version was always heavily DRM'd, and generally "expired" 3-6 months after activation. Why the hell I would ever want an *expiring* textbook is quite beyond me.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll have to disagree. Printing costs are high and constantly going up. I work for a publishing company in the oil & gas industry. We do books, magazines and more, and paper is a big cost, as well as shipping costs.

By doing digital delivery, publishers will save a fair chunk of change by not having to print at a press (or smaller runs even), and it won't have to ship copies to colleges.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Whiternoise]

The IP of the authors?

Urm, well not necessarily. The IP of most authors is restating things that other people have discovered. Take a physics textbook, Gauss' law is not owned by Pearson Publishing, neither are Newton's laws or Einstein's "Postulates of Special Relativity".

A major factor when considering the cost is the limited runs and copies of each book. Not to mention the way some publishers continually update their texts to incorporate new developments/syllabi. My 1st year physics textbook is probably less than 15 years old and it's already onto it's 12th edition. The reason most "best sellers" can be sold at under $8-10 is because once they go viral, the publishers do print runs of hundreds of thousands and they can guarantee profit.

Compare that to a science or computing textbook, say on Gravitation or some other very specific topic that perhaps only 25,000 are sold a year globally. Thus, they tend to cost more.

It's the same with newspapers. The Times can sell for under £1 where a copy of New Scientist retails for over £3. Do NS go to more trouble to make their magazine? Arguably not, they just cover the major topics in science and have a few thoughtful articles about how we're all doomed. Compare that to a major newspaper who are pushed to make 100 pages (including supplements) of news and articles daily - surely that effort should cost more? The fact is that New Scientist sell a lot less than the Times or any major newspaper (ie. their circulation is a hell of a lot lower) and for the publishers and editors to get paid, they have to mark up to account for it.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Whiternoise]

Just to stay on the topic of the Kindle, whilst the paper saving is certainly significant, the portability is what would swing me. It would be rather nice to be able to carry around all my physics and maths textbooks (at university level this equates to a lot of kilograms of book)in something that i can read with one hand. Whilst i do have pdf copies of some of my textbooks, and some books are even good enough to provide a CD with an e copy, it would be nice not to have to get out the laptop when i'm on a train and want to get some work done.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[pwfffff]

Not really. I'd have gone with a semicolon and removed the extra comma after 'editions'.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[masmullin]

youve got a job now... go re-buy them cheapo!

Re:as long as books are cheap

[forand]

You are wrong. Flat wrong. I know for a fact that Physics text books are not dominated by IP costs. One author I know was paid 5000 USD for his work and would see nothing more unless the book sold many more copies than expected. So, unless only 100 people were expected to buy the book, the dominate cost of the book (around 50) was NOT his IP. This could be different in different fields but it is certainly not the case that you put forward in all fields either.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[beboyle]

Why should straight to e-book eliminate the overhead? The publisher is the one making the texts available on Kindle, and they're not doing it because they want to give up that huge profit margin. We know that the cost of printing and handling isn't the bulk of the price, or any hardcover book would be just as expensive. The only other benefit to the publishers is a reduction in second-hand sales. I'll be very surprised to see Kindle textbooks sell for much less than the hardcopy - and some may even get the bright idea of charging more for the convenience.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Chaos Incarnate]

Someone forgot the stores' take.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[joebok]

Let me preface by saying I'm a huge Kindle fan - I love mine!

BUT as wonderful as ebook novels are, I don't think any ebook reader I've ever seen would be very useful as text books - at least with current tech. No electronic bookmarking system can compare to a sticky stuck in a book - or even fingers when you need to flip back and forth between a couple different sections to work out a problem. Even the DX screen is small compared to most texts. And pictures/diagrams/drawings? No way - completely inadequate on a Kindle.

For lit & philosophy classes, sure, I'll take the kindle any day. For calculus, engineering, biology - no way!

Re:as long as books are cheap

[T-Bone-T]

I have a 2nd edition book in my hand that is a POS. They obviously changed the chapters around from the 1st edition because the very first chapter is now "Chapter 5".

Re:as long as books are cheap

[DrgnDancer]

Then the publisher makes minor alterations to the text from one year, giving the school and the (school owned?) bookstore the opportunity to phase out last year's book with a nearly identical one. This is planned obsolescence at it's finest.

This is nearly entirely the publishers. Bookstore prefer used book programs believe it or not. I used to do temp work in the college bookstore at the beginning and end of the semester every year, and while that hardly makes me an expert in the field I know this much. We made higher margins on the used books than we did on the new ones. I don't remember the exact formula, but I believe we bought used books back for 40% and sold them for 75% of their new book value. By contrast we sold new books for a 20% markup or something along those lines. Our manager was always just depressed as anyone else when books went into new editions.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Dare nMc]

A book that is already published, then it is the publisher pushing it to amazon. If you haven't yet signed your work away to a publisher then in a few minutes and a amazon account, your work now sells for $4.99, and you get $1.75 for every book. so the royalties to the author more than double, and the cost compared to a book is now 1/2 or less.
3.1. WHO CAN USE THE DTP?
As of this writing, anyone with an Amazon account can use the DTP to create
and sell Kindle(TM) editions of anything from short fiction to doorstop-sized tomes"
3.7. WHAT IS MY AUTHOR ROYALTY ON MY DTP BOOK?
As of this writing, your author royalty is 35% of the list price you set when you
enter the details for your DTP book. For example, if you price your book at 4.99,
your royalty on each copy sold is $1.75. Even if Amazon discounts your book
and sells it for say, 20% off the list price, you still get $1.75 for each copy sold

Re:as long as books are cheap

[nurb432]

But at least if you drop a book, you can still pick it up and read it. Worst you do is bend a corner.

Drop your kindle, its time to cry.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[milimetric]

I had a good feeling, when I wrote that, that I was full of hot air. Thanks for providing the proof. I hope that the people below you are wrong and that Amazon will make it easier for authors to interface directly with the kindle. Furthermore, I hope that authors will then not just settle for their rightful $.20 (as much as my wallet would love that). But wouldn't that be amazing... $2 books and content at the touch of a button. And the e-ink technology will just keep getting better. Great times :)

Re:as long as books are cheap

[beboyle]

Yes, but the topic was textbooks. While no doubt a few profs will self-publish their books, most are going to stick with the publisher's they're familiar with (and getting kickbacks from, in some cases).

Re:as long as books are cheap

[DragonWriter]

Textbooks are expensive only in small part due to the hardcover / high quality paper they're printed on. The IP of the authors is what costs the most money.

You are focused too much on the supply side; the reason textbooks are expensive has little to do with the cost (either of materials or the IP making up the content) and much to do with the fact that price is not a significant factor in purchase decisions -- they aren't assigned, for the most part, based on a cost:value analysis, and once they are assigned, there generally is no acceptable substitute. Books that are sometimes incidentally used as textbooks whose material quality and IP is no less expensive than other textbooks, but which are also marketed to a wider audience and thus have to be priced to sell to people who have a choice about whether or not to buy them, are often substantially less expensive than textbooks that are marketed only as textbooks.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[markass530]

rather have 20 bucks for beer now, then buy books as needed when have real job

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

For non-major books, you should check the library. They usually keep a copy or a few of the required texts for all the courses. You generally can't remove them from the library, but if it's a gen-ed class and the workload is light, that should be more than enough time. They're usually available, too, because most students are too proud to use the library.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[dunng808]

Tired of whining about the hight cost of textbooks? Invest that time and energy in a project intended to provide a solution.

The goal of the Open Slate Project is to develope an open-source Kindle-like, Newton-like slate computer, and, to go with it, Chalk Dust educational software and courseware. Chalk Dust is intended to replace textbooks beginning at the high school level (9th - 12th grade), then expand to include college and primary school.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Zerth]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think any system of sticky notes can compare to hyperlinking a problem directly to the portion of text it covers. And margin notes in my books aren't as trivially exported as my electronic ones.

My biology text wouldn't translate well to grayscale, but my calc & physics books had most of the diagrams in black & white already and the text was in 2 inch columns already.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Hadlock]

30% of $120.00 (that's about average these days right? I paid about 85 for most basic books in 2004) is still $36.00. Actually my local bookstore said they were bound by their rent (being on school property) to not sell at more than a 25%profit margin. That's still $30, leaving 5% for the author is $6, transportation costs let's say is $4 (hey this stuff is cheap to move when you're doing it by the truckload), giving the publisher about $80 to print the book. Everything else (probably $65) is profit. Let's break this down another way. Saw we give the retailer $30, the author $6, transportation costs are still $4, and printing costs are $15, and the publisher keeps $15 just for being the publisher. That comes out to about $70, or almost 50% less than what students are paying right now.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers, hold on to your text books...you'll want that book later much more than you want the beer now.

If only there was a way to buy text books on Thermodynamics after graduation from university, then you could sell your books for beer now, and buy new textbooks if and when you need them later.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers, hold on to your text books. I know that $20 for beer looks good now but you'll want that book later much more than you want the beer now.

The difference being that $20 is much more valuable to a poor student than $160 is to a working engineer getting payed a standard wage in the United States. It's much easier for me to purchase a textbook now than it was when I was an undergrad.

Re:as long as books are cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

your loss. should have been smarter

I'll buy 10 of them

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll buy 10 of them if, and only if, Jeff Bezos is banned from laughing in public.

I would love it as

[Shivetya]

a text book replacement.

Of course colleges would be loathe to give up the money they make selling new books to students each year...

but...

it would make the lives of students easier... done right a kiosk could let you download all the stuff you need for each class.

give me an oil and shock resistant one this size and it means the mechanic has a reference at his fingertips...

there are so many possibilities and so many with their existing revenue streams endangered...

Re:I would love it as

[MarcoAtWork]

why would they give up the money? they'd still charge you for the textbooks AND you won't be able to lend them (you can't lend just one of your books, you'd have to lend them all, and that usually doesn't work) AND you won't be able to resell them at the end of the semester.

I think the schoolbook publishing industry will jump in with both feet here, basically completely cutting out the used market and any sort of sharing of books, 1 student = 1 book every semester, it will make them a ton of money; roll it in in the college tuition and it will work even better for them in terms of guaranteed income.

Re:I would love it as

[moderatorrater]

give me an oil and shock resistant one this size and it means the mechanic has a reference at his fingertips...

No it doesn't. Just from playing Warhammer I know that electronic versions of books aren't as useful when you need a quick reference as a hard copy is. The mechanic will know where in the manual he needs to flip and be able to find the page within 2 seconds. The kindle would require him to go back to the index, find the entry, then flip to the entry and scan down the page using the kindle's controls until he finds what he's looking for. Skimming through the kindle isn't really easy either compared to skimming through a book.

For textbooks (I'm out of college, so it's been a while), I'm on the fence. I could see it being useful and a hell of a lot lighter, but on the other hand you don't have the ability to flip through. I think in this case the positives would outweigh the negatives.

Overall, I think the Kindle's a fantastic device, but not as useful as people seem to think when needing to jump to different sections quickly and easily.

Re:I would love it as

[moderatorrater]

they'd still charge you for the textbooks AND you won't be able to lend them (you can't lend just one of your books, you'd have to lend them all, and that usually doesn't work) AND you won't be able to resell them at the end of the semester.

Set the price point just above the difference in cost and resale value. The students were going to lose almost that much anyway, but now they get to keep the textbook and they don't have to carry them around with them everywhere. It would be convincing enough to get a small market at the very least. Pushing it forward, Amazon could easily make a program where you can "sell back" the book, making it so that the kindle deletes the book and you can't download it anymore.

Re:I would love it as

[__aahmnf219]

Given the existence of a usb port, what is stopping students from sharing single textbooks?

Re:I would love it as

[ranos]

The fact that the textbooks won't be available in a non-DRM format ?

Re:I would love it as

[Rasit]

Given the existence of a usb port, what is stopping students from sharing single textbooks?

DRM of course! There is no way that hardware copyprotection can be broken.

DRM is the herald of a multitude of new business innovations! All hail the mighty Consumer Restriction Application Protection.

Re:I would love it as

[deraj123]

Why would you need to go to an index when you can search? I'm all for letting the device do the scanning for subject matter for me.

Re:I would love it as

[Pollardito]

DRM tying the copy of the PDF that you bought to the machine that you own

Re:I would love it as

[exploder]

What if I'm searching for a mathematical equation or a diagram?

Re:I would love it as

[Anonymous Coward]

why would they give up the money? they'd still charge you for the textbooks AND you won't be able to lend them (you can't lend just one of your books, you'd have to lend them all, and that usually doesn't work) AND you won't be able to resell them at the end of the semester.

I think the schoolbook publishing industry will jump in with both feet here, basically completely cutting out the used market and any sort of sharing of books, 1 student = 1 book every semester, it will make them a ton of money; roll it in in the college tuition and it will work even better for them in terms of guaranteed income.

Students can still trade files..

Re:I would love it as

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing native PDF viewing without any DRM restrictions also allows students to download pirate copies of text books. This will be a major consideration for publishing houses before they 'jump in with both feet'.

Either way, we are headed in the right direction.

Re:I would love it as

[Piranhaa]

They kind of already do this.

One of the courses I had last year in Macroeconomics brought in a new system. When you buy the textbook, it comes with an online access code (yada yada, most do). However, the instructor FORCED you to do your assignments via this website. This website uses ActiveX controls, thus Windows was the OS to do assignments on - which is sad since quite a few people in the class (including myself) have Macs. Their 'brilliant' suggestion was to load BOOTCAMP or Parallels on there, paying for a Windows license unnecessarily, and running the website via Windows. They simply told me to use the lab at school to do all your assignments if you didn't have access to a Windows machine at home.

The access code itself cost something like $50-60 to purchase from the library - a mere $10-20 difference between the 'pack' with the textbook and code. Reselling the book was therefore useless, since the next person could buy it new for next to nothing. I spoke to the Dean regarding this concept, but he merely brushed me off saying it was a part of 'paying tuition.'

The name of the publisher is Pearson Publishing up here in Canada. I will continue to badmouth them and their tactics. I bet more and more publishers will get into doing this, since the colleges and universities will also get extra monies out of it.

Re:I would love it as

[pwfffff]

Then you should get a book which labels things.

Re:I would love it as

[DeadDecoy]

Ya but consider that an ebook is an electronic copy. I'm sure an enterprising engineering student would just figure out a way to hack the system and distribute the books for free. If they do extract the files too, they could even setup a torrent.

Re:I would love it as

[tknd]

why would they give up the money? they'd still charge you for the textbooks AND you won't be able to lend them

They'd eventually give up their profits because some professors would be willing to do away with the textbook and distribute the PDF. No publisher middle man necessary.

Re:I would love it as

[steelfood]

Until people figure out how to break the DRM and post PDF's of it online.

It takes a lot of work to digitize textbooks. The effort usually isn't worth the $20 a used textbook costs. It takes comparatively little effort to break DRM, and once the DRM is broken, it's broken for all e-books protected using the same scheme.

Now, if textbooks were sold at a reasonable price, then perhaps the incentive to download it off a torrent will be far less. It's like music. If the price of music was appropriate, people would rather buy the music than download it.

When will organizations realize that people don't like getting shafted, and will actively try to stop themselves from being shafted?

Re:I would love it as

[exploder]

Obviously they are labeled. Whether I remember the label is another issue. Was it Cauchy's Integral Theorem, Cauchy's Integral Formula (First Version), second and third versions of the same, Cauchy's Estimate, or some other similar name?

On the other hand, just a glance at the shape of the formula itself will tell me if it's the one I need.

I'd have no problem reading books on a Kindle, but for reference it won't cut it.

Re:I would love it as

[Coopjust]

Same thing here in the states. I have noticed that this is very popular with the business textbook publishers, especially with Pearson.

Not a fan of kindle

[jollyreaper]

Too expensive, too restrictive. But I'm still a booster. The more these things sell, the cheaper the tech will get and eventually we'll have cheap, open architecture tablet PC's like this. Previous tablets were ridiculous, basically laptops with spinning drives and fans that you certainly weren't going to carry like a clipboard. The format represented by the Kindle is great. I just want to see it stripped of all the cruft that makes it suck. The more popular it gets, the more likely that will be. The mp3 player I'm quite happy with likely wouldn't have come about if not for the ridiculous success of the ipods, expensive restrictive devices I never wanted but which paved the way for better things.

Re:Not a fan of kindle

[mattack2]

"Expensive restrictive devices"?

You do realize you never had to buy any DRMed music for an iPod, right? Virtually all of my music on my iPod is from my CDs I've ripped. (The rest is a few free songs of the week, plus a few downloaded albums from Amazon (MP3) I got free from Pepsi Points.)

If you can't get delivery of those major papers

[Anonymous Coward]

are you really going to get 3G coverage to download them to your Kindle?

Re:If you can't get delivery of those major papers

[X0563511]

I was under the impression that Amazon provided the 3G coverage

Re:If you can't get delivery of those major papers

[Brandee07]

Sprint provides it, Amazon pays for it. You'll want to make sure you're in Sprint's service area.

$500, seriously?

[Jestrzcap]

a) I've used Kindle for the iPhone and gotten through 2 books so far (normally I do audiobooks) and I was fairly happy with the experience.
b) The idea of having newspapers and magazines delivered wirelessly to me podcast style is very appealing. Something along the lines of RSS would be really attractive (currently you can subscribe to slashdot "kindle edition" among others for $2 a month).
c) $500 is about 3-4x as much as I would be willing to spend on a device that as specialized as this. Especially given the content costs.

Re:$500, seriously?

[tirerim]

Keep in mind that you can also use it to browse the web, from anywhere. It's a limited browser, but that still gets you Wikipedia, for example, and a lot of other useful stuff, all of which is free.

Re:$500, seriously?

[Jestrzcap]

With a $500 price point I have trouble applying the word "free" to anything associated with the device, but that does certainly increase the value (especially if the feature is good enough to get used). If (lets pretend) the thing ran an opera quality web browser then I would see a hell of a lot more reason to justify the price. I suspect (correct me if I'm wrong) that web experience is somewhat lacking even at the best of times.

Having looked at some comparable models (iRex, etc) it seems like the DX is competitively priced, but I still don't feel like the value is there. It may just be a personal preference. I know that if this thing was $150 I'd have bought at least one for myself and possibly a second for my fiancee.

The newspapers need to look at some serious subsidizing of this (ala cell phone plans).

Re:$500, seriously?

[Brandee07]

Rather than "free," think "included in the purchase price."

And then compare this to cellphones, where each text message and kb of data is an extra charge on top of the price of the device and the price of the subscription plan.

I've heard tell some newspapers are planning a subsidy with long-term subscription, but I can't recall where I heard it.

Collateral Beer Damage?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Being that these are aimed at college students, I think that the ability to survive beer exposure would be a more important concern.

Whether spilled from your own beer bottle, or if your roommate hurls on it after drinking too much.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

And now for the real question everyone is asking:

Can you get porn on it?

If you are that paranoid,

[aussersterne]

there is a switch that you can use to turn wireless off. And it's clear that it actually does so, as turning the switch of extends battery life by a massive margin.

No wireless, no connection to Amazon.

You can still get your books, even the DRM ones, just buy them on Amazon, download them, and copy them over with USB.

We pay almost $500 for the ability to read ebooks using this device's user interface. If another make duplicates it or someone comes up with an open platform that does exactly the same things in the same way with a similar industrial design, I'll be happy to buy it.

If you don't need ebooks read on e-ink using the Kindle's interface, I don't know why you'd pay $500 for such a Linux platform.

Re:If you are that paranoid,

[Hurricane78]

So either their DRM is even more of a joke as it is in itself, because if you crack it, it will stay cracked forever... ...or, there is just a delay until the think asks you, to re-sync with Amazon, or it will stop working.
A month? 3 months? more? Have you tested it that long? Is there something in the terms that does state that it will never require something like this?
Because in my experience, if it's not explicitly stated, it will happen. ^^

Anyone with the expertise here, to know the facts?

Re:If you are that paranoid,

[Progoth]

The DRM is already cracked. It's easy to convert Amazon books to an open format.

/ or so my friend told me

Re:If you are that paranoid,

[Brandee07]

There is at least one person I know of who lives in Montana, with no cellphone reception of any kind. Her Kindle has not seen a direct connection to Amazon since the day it rolled out of the factory, sometime in early 2008. It has not shut down or shown ill effects from inability to phone home.

Software updates are available as downloads from Amazon support pages, should she choose to install them.

Um, no.

[aussersterne]

See what I mean? FUD. You obviously read the Slashdot story that was completely false in its accusations, as many posters to the story said, and were modded up for it.

What Amazon CAN do is prevent you from re-downloading any of the books once your account is closed, from their website or from the whispernet service. The Kindle continues to work fine, and your books ON the Kindle continue to work fine.

FUD. And people talking out their A$$ with no idea what they're talking about.

Re:Um, no.

[Hurricane78]

And what happens if your Kindle's storage dies? Can you back them up?

The most important thing: What will happen, when Amazon *and* the Kindles died? All books lost, and some people quickly transcribing everything by hand?
With DRM I guess so. Defective by design. Indeed. ^^

I want just a generic PDF, HTML (basic formatting is enough) and TXT reader.

Re:Um, no.

[Pollardito]

I think that most people regard the high upfront hardware cost as only "worth it" if you're going to be buying a lot of Kindle books down the road. Therefore the threat of being blocked from buying more books for it is a very big deal, even if the stuff you have now continues to be accessible. If there were multiple stores selling Kindle content then you wouldn't be at as much of a risk of accidentally alienating one of them, but it seems like that is only possible now by using workarounds (and who knows if those will be intentionally broken at some point).

Re:Um, no.

[ErikZ]

"And what happens if your Kindle's storage dies? Can you back them up?"

Yes.

For pete's sake... they're just FILES. Copy them over to your PC or Mac to back them up.

Re:Um, no.

[ErikZ]

"If there were multiple stores selling Kindle content then you wouldn't be at as much of a risk of accidentally alienating one of them, but it seems like that is only possible now by using workarounds (and who knows if those will be intentionally broken at some point)."

I used to have a link to a wiki page that had over a dozen stores that would gladly sell you e-books that work on the Kindle. I can't seem to find it now though.

My point is, Amazon could be hit by a Meteor strike tomorrow and your kindle would be fine. I've gotten books from several other sources. And I've used the Mobipocket creator to make my own.

As a mathematician ...

[IntelliTubbie]

... I *really* hope that this is finally the device I've been holding out for. I have hundreds of papers in PDF format, most produced using LaTeX, downloaded from the arXiv or elsewhere -- but because it's too much of a pain to read on-screen, I end up printing out several papers a week (dozens or hundreds of pages) just to read and then throw away. Stacks of printouts are gathering chalk dust on my desk, because I need to refer to them frequently, and don't want to print out a fresh copy every time I want to do that. People who complain that this device doesn't have a full-color touchscreen with video capabilities are missing the point: this is meant to replace your printer, not your computer.

Also, while I'm not a fan of DRM, it still beats the heck out of the "edition wars" in textbook publishing. Because used book sales hurt the market for new books, publishers charge an extortionate amount of money for new textbooks and constantly release new editions (sometimes with trivial changes, like rearranged exercises) to depreciate the value of used books. All else being equal, I'd rather see $40 electronic textbooks that can't be sold back, rather than $200 hardcover monstrosities that get "revised" every other year. (Of course, while this may be the lesser evil, it's still an evil -- I'd much rather assign a book that's freely available, or available in a cheap Dover paperback edition, than do either of these -- so don't flame me, please!)

Cheers,
IT

Re:As a mathematician ...

[maynard]

It's not. The iRex DR1000SW is the only device that would meet your needs right now. And it's significantly more expensive, manufactured by an almost fly-by-night outfit to rather poor tolerances, and the software sucks. But, it does real pen input for annotations, allowing you to save and merge math and non alphanumeric characters in your PDFs.

I'd wait for a device from Sony or Apple and pray for good pen input.

Annotating math with that keyboard strikes me as ... less fun than banging my head against a brick wall. But that's just me.

Re:As a mathematician ...

[Sechr Nibw]

I can certainly sympathize with this, but I must point out one thing. Someone who is used to publishing papers in LaTeX wouldn't have that bad of a time with this. For a couple of semesters (as a com sci undergrad), I was taking notes in class in LaTeX, on the fly, and they'd publish with only a few minor corrections, that didn't require any knowledge of the content, just syntax. So for someone who has been doing it for more than a year and a half, I would imagine that just typing in the LaTeX format would be sufficient notes, provided you could easily transfer to a computer and process it into intelligible (for math, anyway) script.

Re:As a mathematician ...

[maynard]

If the Kindle viewer could display LaTeX, you'd have a point. But entering in plain text Tex as annotation, without any rendering back in real math symbols, is not what I call user friendly.

Re:As a mathematician ...

[RobBebop]

All else being equal, I'd rather see $40 electronic textbooks that can't be sold back

This is the most insightful reason to buy a Kindle I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I doubt publishers are going to see it this way and they'll continue to charge $200 for an electronic version that can't be re-sold to your younger friends.

Re:As a mathematician ...

[Calithulu]

The new BeBook (yes, I put an affiliate id in there. You can skip my affiliate link, but I would appreciate it if you didn't) that is coming out soon is also rumored to support pen input. I'm an owner of the original BeBook and the current price ($280 US) has been worth it for me. Between it and Baen's free library I have a ton of sci-fi. Files from work are easy enough to convert over for reference during travel, and it handles pdf images pretty well.

Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[goombah99]

I suspect that text books are expensive in part because of the hierarchical purchasing structure that amplifies success and failure. It's like the movie industry where in any given year there's only enough theater space, interest and mind share so you have a few collosal winners and a lot of losers that still cost you money.

As for kindle, I think it is going to get bracketed by apple and die. Let me first say the big hope here is the subscription model. It's perfect for the NYtimes which is best read old school on large paper. (if you don't beleive me, try buying a copy at starbucks and see if you don't find it more satisfying and leisurely to read that way even though in theory the content is the same as the web.)

Anyhow, the point is given a choice of carrying a kindle plus some a netbook or just a net book and I suspect the netbook wins if it's added features make it compelling enough to outweigh the e-ink legibility advantage.

Subsidize this netbook with a verizon data-only contract and you have ubiquitous on-the go computing at an affordable price. The key thing here is that both the kindle and the netbook want a cell phone connection. But the Kindle is going to seek subsidy from the content providers whereas the netbook is going to seek subsidy from the deeper pockets of the cell phone providers.

Right now no one has a netbook that is sufficiently compelling, and kindle's price range puts in mainly in the hands of people who are not price sensitive or need to worry about choosing between two devices.

But what is going to kill the kindle I think is bracketing by apple. When apple comes out with a high performance netbook it will be something about the same size but with a lot more capability. I expect it will even have game capability. what really set the iPhone apart from all the previous pda-smartphones was it's performance. it has an integrated conformal mattery that I think gives them enough extra juice in a small space to power a much more capable device and they gave it a familiar OS and stack underneath that can run real applications. I suspect apples purchase of freescale and embrace of Nivida chips is aimed squarely at small devices with higher performance.

kindle won't be able to compete against a device like that.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[infosinger]

Except for one thing--- E-ink. This display technology sets these devices apart from any computer or netbook. The problem is that E-ink is a very poor choice for a general purpose computer--its refresh rate is way too slow. So, unless Apple wants to license E-ink and come up with a book reading device, I kind of doubt they are going to bracket Amazon. I have a very high quality display at home and I will take the Kindle any time for book reading.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[MartinSchou]

You seem to be under the impression that ebook-readers are all a subset of netbooks. They're not.

The thing that attracts people to ebook-readers is that you can read them just about anywhere. Find me a reasonably priced lcd/oled screen that you can read outside with the sun beating down on it.

Second is portability. An ebook-reader the size of a paper back is fine. A portable computer that size isn't really unless we're talking cellphone or pda. Netbooks indicates a keyboard, and I'm yet to find a keyboard in the netbook range that I am able to touch type on - my fingers are quite simply too big (comes with being 194 cm/6'4"). And if I'm getting something with a useless keyboard, why even bother with the keyboard?

Now, if my netbook is stolen somewhere, I now have to worry about my banking information, budget, private information etc being in someone elses hands. If my ebook-reader is stolen, I now have to download the books to a different reader.

Also, if you add in a touch screen interface like in the iRex DR 1000S you get an easy way to annotate the books/documents you're reading. While it's entirely possible to get that into a netbook, I'm yet to see anyone market a netbook tablet.

Will the two converge at one point? Perhaps. But for now I would rather have a good ebook-reader than a great netbook.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, I didn't find that to be the case. The post he replied to most definitely didn't say exactly that.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[tirerim]

Have you tried the screen on an XO laptop (OLPC project)? In monochrome mode it's great in sunlight, as well as being quite high resolution (1200x900, 7.5") and pretty low power. It has some weird quirks in color mode having to do with existing software's interpretation of the resolution, but it's definitely a good, cheap LCD display. Of course, no one has put that type of display on anything other than an XO, which has other problems that make it less useful than it could be, but they could. A company called Always Innovating claims to be coming out with a touchscreen netbook (with a detachable keyboard) later this year, so it will be interesting to see how that stacks up, too.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[adah]

While it's entirely possible to get that into a netbook, I'm yet to see anyone market a netbook tablet.

Check out Intel-powered convertible classmate PC. E.g. http://www.2gopc.com/ in the US.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[MartinSchou]

Cool. I stand corrected.

But while the Classmate is more powerfull and thus more flexible, it does weigh more than 3 times as much as a Kindle 2. Kindle 2 is 0.64 lbs, Classmate is listed at $352 at Amazon ($499 list price)
Kindle: $359 at Amazon
iRex DRS: $933 at iRex's shop

That iRex is insanely expensive ... heh

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[lethargic8]

has anyone here actually tried reading for prolonged periods of time on a kindle? It is vastly superior to any other display for that purpose. Sure the refresh rate is slow, but the whole time you're reading ITS NOT REFRESHING. It literally feels just like a book to your eyes.

I can't speak for anyone else, but reading for prolonged periods of time on a standard display tires my eyes out.

Apple might corner the market for cute toys that people believe to be handed down by god, but for serious readers e-ink is the only choice (besides dead trees)

I suspect a ways down the road there will be a convergence of e-ink and lcd/oled technology that selectively refreshes changed portions of the screen, with e-inks static image technology.

Re:Hierarchical purchasing and the netbook threat

[Philip_the_physicist]

Four years ago, I saw a miniature tablet running WinXP, which, although it was well above the netbook price range, had a pretty decent battery life and was not too slow. It was about as wide as an EeePC, but narrow screen, so slightly larger and thicker because of the pivot. Nonetheless, I believe that there would be a market for something of that type but with netbook specs.

Same here,

[aussersterne]

I have file cabinets full of journal papers printed out and paperclipped and driving me nuts when I need to find something.

This would make my life exactly 241.3 times easier.

One wish/hope: that it's got a faster implementation/hardware than the Kindle 1.0 that I have. I'd really love to be able to search/browse/flip through paper PDFs as fast as I can click, rather than just at "reading speed."

True and interesting.

[aussersterne]

That is indeed a good question. I know that my wife doesn't get mileage out of the Kindle like I do because she has a vast library in Polish, which Kindle doesn't support.

I'd love to see them do something more international-friendly in a standards-compliant way.

I'm a sociologist

[aussersterne]

and college professor. For what it's worth.

I'm just waiting for the day when the classic works (say, Economy and Society by Weber) are on Kindle, in addition to "current" publications and "reference" volumes.

Re:I'm a sociologist

[Brandee07]

If the books you're looking for are in the public domain, then you're set. Project Gutenburg and the rest of the internet already have them for you.

Otherwise, hound publishers. Older works have to be OCR'd, which means they have to be proofread before publishing (and often aren't), but if you suggest that you have three classes of students that would by X book if it were available as a PDF...

I need color, dammit

[Jay Maynard]

If the Kindle DX had a color display, I'd have ordered one already as a paperless cockpit solution for my airplane. I need to see charts in color. Yes, I know that a big part of the charm of the Kindle is the e-ink display, which enables long battery life...but I'll give some part of that up to get color. I really don't want to spend a couple of kilobucks on a tablet PC.

Re:I need color, dammit

[Nyeerrmm]

I'd guess that the supposedly upcoming Apple Tablet (Mega-iPhone?) is probably more in line with what you need. I think Amazon is pretty devoted to the e-Ink side, and it'll still be a few years until color is ready there, from everything I've read.

Re:I need color, dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

One does not **need** to see charts in color. One desires to see charts in color because it is to what one has become accustomed.

If Amazon...

[$1uck]

Would give me free e-book versions of the dead tree books I already purchased through amazon, it would be a done deal. I'd buy one today. Hell, I'd be willing to tear the covers off each book I bought and send it in to them to prove I haven't/won't resell them.

Re:If Amazon...

[Sechr Nibw]

That would be absolutely amazing. I don't think you should have to destroy the book though - you've already paid your fees for the intellectual property, plus the printing, Amazon should just charge for the digital distribution. So, basically, any book that you've bought through Amazon in print you can get on Kindle for 99 cents (much more than actual distribution costs, I know, but this is more likely).

Swing and a miss...

[rAiNsT0rm]

I was totally ready to pre-order one, until that price showed up on Amazon. Seriously, $489?? Wallet was put firmly back in the pocket.

I was willing to forgive the greyscale only issue, but I know the natural evolution will require color. Many textbooks and even newspapers fail without color to distinguish things. I was willing to sign up for a $10-15/month subscription to something like the Times to get one for say $200... I am not about to spend almost $500 up front to then have to pay $10-15 for every subscription and $10 per book.

The pricing model is just screwed up right now, I have a feeling it will get sorted out in short order or it will get killed swiftly by the first solid tablet... even if it is from Apple. My money would go to a multipurpose tablet for around $500 easily, not for a black & white ebook reader.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[Knara]

Wut?

The Kindle 2 is ~$350 and the Kindle DX is larger and about $100 more. Not sure exactly what you were expecting in terms of price.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[rAiNsT0rm]

Umm, I was pretty clear there. Partially subsidized pricing with subscription. $200 for the unit and a $10-15/mo. 2yr. contract required. That breaks Amazon even in 2yrs. not including all of the other purchases users would make in 2 years on top of that, which would easily pay the Times, Amazon, and content providers and bolster the adoption rate.

It will happen. But thanks for playing.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[goatpunch]

So take out a loan for the other $300. How does paying a bank $15 every month differ from paying Amazon $15 every month?

The price seems pretty good to me, for the largest commercial e-ink screen produced so far. I wouldn't buy one myself because I'd rather have my laptop if I'm going to lug anything around at all. My laptop was four times the price of the Kindle however (the world of high performance light weight laptops does not intersect with the crappy $500 shiny screen ones you see at Best Buy). If I didn't need the features of my laptop, or was often away from power sockets, or didn't like the weight of the laptop, the Kindle DX would look like a pretty awesome purchase to me.

You are clearly not Amazon's target market, they are trying to sell Kindles to people who want to buy e-books and subscribe to newspapers. You can't afford either the reader or the media, so why should Amazon adjust their pricing model to make sure that they can get one into your hands for you to play around with?

Re:Swing and a miss...

[rAiNsT0rm]

Wow, you sure have your "jump-to-conclusion" mat out don't you?

I have no financial difficulties, especially not for a difference of ~$300. That's not the issue here.

You see for $200 for the device (subsidized) and the 15/mo. which I am *GETTING* a subscription to something for (say the NYTimes), is much different than $500 up front *AND* 15/mo.

Your logic fails terribly. It's not just me I'm thinking about either but the average customer. That's like saying, "fuck it, charge me full retail for my cell phone ~$250-500 *AND* charge me the standard monthly rate!" Who in the hell would want that? What incentive is there?

I'll never get why people somehow think it is their duty to give the maximum amount of money for a product/service as if it is some badge of honor. It's not about what you or I *can* afford it's about being realistic and getting some value for money. The whole device is a lock-in with the only option to pour money in for any utility, to offer a small amount of utility in the initial price would ease customers in. That's why Jeebus invented astroglide.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[goatpunch]

I love that mat, wish I could buy one. I did misunderstand, I thought you meant that the $15/month subscription was a locked-in contract for the wireless access or something.

Your $200 + $15/month newspaper subscription idea for the Kindle doesn't quite make sense, however. Amazon isn't taking $15 clear profit from a newspaper subscription, they are giving a significant chunk of that $15 (probably at least $10) to the newspaper.

So if Amazon is making $5/month subscription profit, then they would need you to subscribe for 5 years to make that $500 total. Longer if you take into account the reduced value of the future cash flows.

Amazon would have also significantly reduced their cash flows from customers who were willing to pay $500 up front + $15/month.

Amazon isn't going for the average customer yet, I doubt that they can produce the device cheaply enough yet- give them a few years and they probably will try for these customers.

I shouldn't have said that you couldn't afford the media, what I meant was that Amazon is trying to get the Kindle into the hands of people who are willing to pay for the media. People who currently subscribe to newspapers and buy a ton of books think that this new device is superb, being able to buy a new paperback every week instantly without wasting time going to the store to find that it has sold. Friend tells you about a cool book they read... and 60 seconds later you're reading it. If you (or I) don't care about these features then we are not in the target market.

The best business plan isn't always "get the product into the hands of as many customers as possible". I won't be buying a Kindle, but I think that they're a cool device for the purpose that they serve and I can see why other people would want them.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[rAiNsT0rm]

At least we are on the same page now. (oof bad pun). The issue is that yes, at $15/mo. they would not be making the entire amount for themselves... but what they do is use a small portion of the profits from all of the other sales generated in that 2 years to both cover their costs, content providers contract costs, and still make a profit at the same time getting more out there.

This is how cell phone companies work, I used to work for one and know them well. The subsidize $200-250 on every phone and most are 2yr. contracts. They do not make all of that back even in those two years. They do make it back from overages, extra features, downloads, etc. and the assumption that most people will keep the phone past 2 years on the nose which is almost pure profit then.

I'm not proposing some radical new paradigm, it is widely used in many markets. I guarantee the Kindle goes this way in the near future. We shall see.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[Knara]

If that wasn't the model for the Kindle 2, I have no idea why you'd expect it to be the model for the DX.

You seem to have developed an odd preconceived notion that these would be marketed like cell phones in the US. I do not know where you got that impression, since they haven't in the past.

Perhaps they will in the future, as you say, but there was no reason to believe that they would at this time.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[rAiNsT0rm]

We'll see. The device is marketed to college kids and some other strange market that apparently they believe exists but for some reason weren't a Kindle 2 customer.

They NEED to do this type of pricing structure because they have no ready market.

A subsidized model makes sense for college kids because they know that that segment will be buying textbooks (over a couple years), most likely use it recreationaly for reading periodicals/magazines/newspaper, AND they would be generating immediate revenue for the NYTimes who referred to it as an "experiment" in the press conference today.

You'd pick up older folks who are traditional newspaper subscribers who would otherwise ignore this device, and they could potentially turn into easy customers because they don't need to be tech wizards to get content or involve a PC.

The rest would just be odd small segments. They can still offer them at $489 all day long as an unsubsidized purchase for businesses or those who want to buy it outright *and* offer a partially subsidized model for the others.

To pigeonhole a device like this is silly, you need mass adoption for this to take off quickly before competitors step in and knock it out of relevance. Which is what I believe will happen and force this move to then get back some market share. Again, we'll see... I don't have a crystal ball, just a lot of experience in this area.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[ErikZ]

All e-ink readers only have once source. Apple won't be able to put out a "Tablet" unless it's also available from Amazon.

500$ is too much for you? For being the only e-ink reader of that size on the market? Really? Have you even *looked* at e-ink readers?

Amazon has been putting out the most affordable readers. Period. If you can't afford it from Amazon, you just can't afford it.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[Calithulu]

You can get a Bebook for a lot less. They just dropped the price in anticipation of their new model and they're $70 US cheaper than a Kindle2.

Re:Swing and a miss...

[rAiNsT0rm]

I think I've already been pretty clear here, you're a little late to the party.

Who the fuck said anything about a competitor e-ink product? I'm talking about a product from someone like Asus, Acer, or Apple that is a small tablet that can do many things including eBooks in a similar form-factor. Color, touch, backlit, etc.

Stick with your "value" priced e-Ink with all the greyscale goodness and flicker refresh you want... $500 to the end consumer in one chunk is silly no matter what you *could* afford.

PDFs Are A Problem, Not A Solution

[meehawl]

A PDF Reader is a benefit?

Well, I suppose. In the same way that an amputation is a benefit against gangrene.

PDFs bork almost all of the advantages of ereaders. You can't choose your own typeface, size, kerning, or leading. You can't reflow as desired. You are locked into whatever "page size" the original author decided for you. For anything other than printing onto standard paper sizes, PDFs are a loss.

Re:PDFs Are A Problem, Not A Solution

[Cochonou]

But being printed on standard paper is the actual fate of the immense majority of documents. Standard size PDF documents are what people want to be able to read on their ereaders, in order to replace printouts. I believe most couldn't care less about the reflowing advantages or customizable typefaces brought by ereaders.

Re:PDFs Are A Problem, Not A Solution

[skine]

I'll agree that the vast majority of articles, literature and texts would benefit from using the Kindle's technology.

However, in Mathematics (where I'm a grad student), and many of the sciences, most publications require articles to be submitted in LaTeX, which only outputs PDF, DVI and PS documents. Even if they were able to be output into the proprietary Kindle format, the articles wouldn't greatly benefit, and some may need to be thoroughly restructured to account for variable page widths.

This also deals less with what should be the norm (reader friendly formats), while instead directly addressing what is the norm (PDF documents).

Still not for sale in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, Amazon.

Re:Still not for sale in Canada

[Calithulu]

You have non-US options.

Re:Still not for sale in Canada

[Calithulu]

I forgot to mention, that it is open source to boot. The unit comes with a copy of the GPL3 in ebook format.

Any. It works like a flash drive.

[aussersterne]

You can store what you want on it.

If you mean what kinds of files will it recognize as books and/or music, I'm only positive about MobiPocket, Amazon, and mp3 the rest need to be converted AFAIK.

But MobiPocket Creator is free and packages up Text, HTML, and PDF files easily for you.

And more to the point, I'm busy. I just use the email service. I email Amazon the text file or PDF file and a couple of seconds later it appears on my Kindle for a modest fee of $0.10.

Some people here would balk at that, clearly. For me, it's unclear why anyone would want to @#$&*% around with the USB cable at all.

Re:Any. It works like a flash drive.

[X0563511]

I've got a nice 40mb reference on the TCP/IP suite. I'm not even sure I can email a PDF that large.

1200x824

[EdZ]

An ebook reader with a reasonable resolution, at an almost affordable price? Sold! Or it would be, if Amazon would deign to offer it to the world that exists outside of the US.

Not bad.

[Steauengeglase]

Hrm, my Boss' wife just received the previous model for her birthday (just received as in about 20 minutes ago). I helped her through the registration, getting a few books that she was interested in and tinkered around the menus. I'll have to say, this is a product that I really didn't think anything of, but after a few minutes I actually managed to warm up to it. Kind of reminds me of Steam, a commercial (DRM'd) product that doesn't seem to have the express goal of screwing the consumer and conquering every possible market. Apple, MS and a host of others have a thing or two to learn from Amazon.

Thermodynamics textbooks?

[tomhudson]

Selling my engineering books is my biggest regret. I swore up and down I'd never need Thermodynamics. I'm a controls engineer...

Low and behold I'm controlling a thermodynamic system.

Wiki and other such sites are wonderful, but they're not presented in the medium that I learned them in with the coefficients and with the equations as I learned them.

Engineers, hold on to your text books. I know that $20 for beer looks good now but you'll want that book later much more than you want the beer now.

We burn heretics around here. That's the 4th law of thermdynamics.

Re:Thermodynamics textbooks?

[swillden]

Engineers, hold on to your text books. I know that $20 for beer looks good now but you'll want that book later much more than you want the beer now.

We burn heretics around here. That's the 4th law of thermdynamics.

Indeed we do. Book-selling heretics shall all go up in flames!

Re:Thermodynamics textbooks?

[Kratisto]

How much energy does one obtain from burning a heretic?

Re:Thermodynamics textbooks?

[tomhudson]

How much energy does one obtain from burning a heretic?

A: Are you volunteering?
A2: 20 health points and the cloak of sinister darkness level 4.
A3: Like sex, it depends. Consensual sex, 300-600 calories. Non-consensual, a lot more.
A4: Burning a heretic is an endothermic reaction. It takes more energy for the crowd to burn the heretic than is released by the heretic combining with oxygen.
A5: None. He spontaneously combusts.
A6: None, officer. He spontaneously combusted. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!
A7: Are you saying people don't spontaneously combust, you heretic?
A8: First, you have to make sure he's really a heretic. Weigh him down with chains and cinder blocks, and throw him in the river. If he floats, burn him!
A9: Tell him you don't give a sh*t about what they have to say. This gets them to do a slow burn.
A10: Stick them in a locked room with RMS. He'll set himself on fire.

ePub, ePub, ePub...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks great but it really lacks the most important feature of all - ePub, the standard for non-DRM books.

No touchscreen interface?

[horatio]

I was waiting for the iteration after Kindle2 to see about buying one. I was really hoping for a touch screen (turn the page, pan/zoom) but it sounds like they've kept the "5-way" control stick, and buttons for turning the page. I had a nokia phone (6230?) a few years back which was primarily driven by a 5-way control. I liked nearly everything about the phone except that.

Between my Garmin GPS and my iPhone, I'm digging touch screen interfaces. I have the Kindle app for the iPhone, and I appreciate how (almost) natural it is to turn the page - pretty much the same motion as reading a physical book.

I'm scratching my head wondering why this Kindle DX doesn't have the touch screen? Do touch screens have a higher power requirement? Higher failure rate? How much more expensive in terms of hardware are they than the series of buttons? Is it something to do with the e-ink? Does Apple hold a patent on touch screen panning?

Re:No touchscreen interface?

[Zerth]

From looking at other e-ink readers that have touch screens, they essentially add a Wacom pad to the device.

That adds 150-300 USD to the cost, extra for wifi and I haven't seen any with a cell connection. It does use up more battery, but since the Wacom makes them thicker, I think they generally have larger batteries as well.

Re:No touchscreen interface?

[Brandee07]

The Wacom layer also adds a significant bit of glare when reading in sunlight or very bright conditions. They are also an additional possible point of failure.

If the touchscreen is a must for you, check out the Sony Reader or any of the iRex products.

I believe Apple's patent is for multi-touch gestures, like pinching to zoom. Not too sure though.

Yes. But.

[wiredog]

If the digital price is lower than (what they pay now minus what they get on the resale market) they (the students, that is) come out ahead. Well, less far behind.

Well mine is well over a year old,

[aussersterne]

And still no sudden screens saying:

"TURN ON WIRELESS NOW SO THAT WE CAN DISABLE YOUR DEVICE OR YOUR DEVICE WILL DISABLE ITSELF."

I guess that's always possible, though.

Anything's possible.

Even if it did happen, I've had enough use out of mine that I'd feel as though I got my money's worth.

By the way: what's stopping your Laptop from doing the same? Or your GSM phone?

90% of the content on my Kindle is

[aussersterne]

either unprotected MobiPocket or converted .TXT and .PDF files.

And they're archived on my hard drive (along with my Kindle DRM files).

Re:

[EvilToiletPaper]

And now for the real question everyone is asking:

Can you get porn on it?

Yes you can:

http://www.amazon.com/kamasutra/dp/B001C83O16/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241633173&sr=8-1

:P

Keyboard

[pavon]

The biggest thing that stands out to me is the fact that they made the keyboard smaller than the one on the Kindle 2 (less than half the height), when the device is much bigger. Which raises the question of why the keyboard needs to take up so much space on the Kindle 2 to begin with. Did they need the space for batteries / circuit boards, and just made the keyboard big since they had the room?

Anyway this looks interesting. I can't see myself buying an eBook reader just for paperbacks, but technical content is a whole different ball game. Just the ability to search is a big improvement over books. This is finally getting to that point. It is still more expensive than I'd pay and the refresh could be improved, but it is much closer than we were 5 years ago.

backporting pdf functions

[BradleyUffner]

Does anyone know if there are any plans to add full PDF support to the orriginal Kindle and Kindle 2?

Re:backporting pdf functions

[DangerTenor]

> Does anyone know if there are any plans to add full PDF support to the orriginal Kindle and Kindle 2?

I doubt it. The Kindle/Kindle2 screen is 6" diagonally, and you just can't see an 8.5x11 formatted PDF well enough on a 6" 167 ppi e-ink screen. There are a number of mechanisms for converting PDF to Kindle's format already, and they're mostly free. You can send the PDF to [username]@kindle.com and it will be converted and delivered directly to your Kindle for a fee... Or, send it to [username]@free.kindle.com and it will be converted and mailed back to you, where you can copy it on via the USB interface for FREE.

The best conversions for PDFs with images / detailed or complicated formatting is to do something which involved converting the PDF to 1/2 page images and displaying them in landscape on the Kindle. There are a few options for this here at Mobipocket.

Re:backporting pdf functions

[innocent_white_lamb]

You can send the PDF to [username]@kindle.com and it will be converted and delivered directly to your Kindle for a fee... Or, send it to [username]@free.kindle.com and it will be converted and mailed back to you, where you can copy it on via the USB interface for FREE.
 
Any way to do it all locally? I don't know how eager I would be to send some of my documents out to ghawd-knows-who to convert and send back.

Re:backporting pdf functions

[Brandee07]

Pick up MobiPocket Creator (free from Mobipocket.com) and muck with it there.

You're going to get poor results with PDFs that are just image containers of scanned pages, and with other PDFs you may have to muck with the XML to get the output you like.

When you're all done mucking with the file, export it to .prc and load that up the Kindle via USB.

txtr reader

[janwedekind]

The Kindle looks nice and it has a high resolution (1200x824). But I am looking forward to upcoming products such as the txtr reader: Linux-based, hackable, and proper support of DRM-free formats.

Please let the auto-rotate feature be configurable

[sekra]

I don't want the reader to rotate into landscape mode when lying down in bed on the side to read.

And still no international release

[Anonymous Coward]

:)

we euroloosers are left waiting

Can you just simply say ...

[porky_pig_jr]

4. And all your book are belong to you.

Remember, that's a slashdot.

PDF Reader is Killer App for me!

[sgrizzard]

I didn't buy an earlier version of the Kindle because it lacked a pdf viewer. I read a lot of books in pdf form from Google Books. The ability to read pdf's on the new Kindle moves it from "that's neat" to "WOW! Gotta Have It!" for me.

Thanks Amazon.....

[Anonymous Coward]

So I finally break down and buy a Kindle 2 when it came out, only to have Amazon give me the finger and release a nicer large screen version a few months later. Thanks a ton Amazon!

Re:Thanks Amazon.....

[Knara]

So I finally break down and buy a Kindle 2 when it came out, only to have Amazon give me the finger and release a nicer large screen version a few months later. Thanks a ton Amazon!

Ahh, the "early adopter bawwwwwwww". Music to my ears.

Solving PDFs

[meehawl]

What you say may be true but, hopefully, as people replace printed output with screen readers, PDFs will come to be seen again as an output option, not a final source document format. BP (Before PDFs), postscript was simply one of a number of output choices. Adobe has been effectively racing the beam ever since, adding endless cruft onto this creaky, inflexible format to promote its popularity.

The experience of reading a PDF on any small screen device, versus reading the same content through an ereader, is so qualitatively different that I don't PDFs can maintain their mindshare. All that zooming in and out, dragging, pinching, clicking. It's just tedious and needlessly complicated.

You say people don't care about being able to customise their reading experience to their own preferences but I think you're wrong. It's simply that most people haven't been given the opportunity to do so. Similar de facto regimes of non-choice have existed in the past, but they have usually faded away as markets have matured and delivered more competitors or regulation offering options.

Re:Solving PDFs

[Knara]

You say people don't care about being able to customise their reading experience to their own preferences but I think you're wrong. It's simply that most people haven't been given the opportunity to do so. Similar de facto regimes of non-choice have existed in the past, but they have usually faded away as markets have matured and delivered more competitors or regulation offering options.

At which point they *restandardize* to some other default, so that users know what to expect when downloading/purchasing/taking home a product.

Endless customization is for geeks, standardized defaults are for everyone else, and they like it that way.

I'd get it if search worked.

[autophile]

The large form-factor is great for reading technical document, textbooks, and references, and the native PDF display makes it compelling (as long as I can view my own PDFs), but if the search capability is the same as on the Kindle 2... then forget it! Here's what I sent to Kindle customer support a few months ago:

In the Kindle 2 User's Guide, under Performing a Search, it states "You can use whole words or partial words..." However, when searching for a partial word, such as "occurr", no results are found, even though the word "occurrences" appears in the User's Guide ("The list is ordered by the number of occurrences of the search term in each item."

And here is their reply:

I have verified that the functionality of the partial search you are trying to complete doesn't exist on the Kindle. The device only supports basic partial search functionality, for example "dog" instead of "dogs".

I apologize about any inconvenience this may have caused to you.

Wow, that sucks bigtime. Search is a critical function for me.

LaTex

[meehawl]

Most publications require articles to be submitted in LaTeX, which only outputs PDF, DVI and PS documents

This is generally true for technical publications, but less true in life and health sciences where many publications accept other submission formats. However, having had to originally write articles in plain old TeX before LaTex became common (and even, sadly, nroff), and having had to wrestle with defining output bounds, this is not an easy problem to solve. But I'm confident that new generations of developers and designers will solve it as paper becomes increasingly deprecated for technical documents.

Obviously a Kindle TeX parser or LaTex editor is required...

I'm waiting for Apple...

[joh]

Why? The Kindle is too expensive for just a dedicated reader and the thing is just too slow. Yes, people are pretending it doesn't matter, but it does. Especially with textbooks you just *need* to browse a few pages forth and back and a Kindle drives you up the wall in no time here.

I'm fully expecting a 10" tablet (think oversized iPod touch) from Apple, with a perfect touchscreen and the iPhone OS. While this thing won't have the nice screen and great battery life as the Kindle, it will be much more flexible, faster and will have an user interface that does not suck. For a similar price.

While I can see that some people will prefer a dedicated reader, most people won't be able to resist the temptation to also have a choice of apps, games, email, a browser, calendar, movies, music and so on with them. If Apple does it right, all the netbook and Kindle craze will just have paved the way for them to march in and conquer as they did with the iPod.

Re:I'm waiting for Apple...

[ErikZ]

"Nobody reads books anymore."
-Steve Jobs

I'm thinking you're going to have to wait a long, long time for an e-book reader from Apple.

As to flipping back and forth between sections rapidly. That sounds like a limitation in traditional books. Unless you're saying that it's impossible for e-book readers to display two pages simultaneously?

Re:I'm waiting for Apple...

[joh]

"Nobody reads books anymore."
-Steve Jobs

I'm thinking you're going to have to wait a long, long time for an e-book reader from Apple.

There have been some different noises from Apple recently. May be connected with the fact that ebook readers and books sell like hot cakes in the App Store. And: I've read about 70 books meanwhile on a mobile Apple device (iPod touch), so...

As to flipping back and forth between sections rapidly. That sounds like a limitation in traditional books. Unless you're saying that it's impossible for e-book readers to display two pages simultaneously?

No, the trouble is just with the slowness of the displays right now. And with two pages the screen gets a bit tight.

Re:Please let the auto-rotate feature be configura

[swg101]

I thought of the same thing. Thankfully the users guide shows the menu option for setting the orientation. (It's in the same menu as setting the text size).

I think savvy students are in for a win

[Bootle]

Who needs to run around a university bookstore stockroom when you can torrent your texts? The more popular these e-readers get the "cheaper" textbooks will become.

More than worth losing the used books market....

If only....

[Pip]

It was as easy to buy Kindle stuff in europe as it was to get the dead trees shipped....

ILS 13L Approach plate for JFK in demo

[jlmcgraw]

Am I the only one out there who's psyched that they used an approach plate as one of the demo PDFs? That's exactly the kind of usage I'm anticipating these being perfect for

Comfort Level

[meehawl]

Endless customization is for geeks

When the expectation *is* convenience, your thesis dissolves.

It simply isn't "endless" if you only have to do it once. Around two years ago I specified my favourite font and type size in my ereader. I also selected my preferred autoscroll speed. I haven't had to change them since. Total time spent: around 5 minutes.

If "everyone else" can manage playlists, friend lists, GMail themes, cable boxes, and voicemail (among others), they can manage ereader customisation. I think you have an unusually pessimistic view of people's abilities, or their desire for control over their environment.

Strike 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Still only B&W, still has silly keyboard with buttons wasting valuable space, and still no friggin' LED backlight.

I'll wait for Apple on this one. My iphone is working just fine as an interstitial ebook reader. DRM, and format being nothing more than a minor inconvenience in the e-book world, I crack and convert my *paid* content to a form I can use.

Re:Strike 3

[CountBrass]

Google e-ink.

I have an iphone and a Kindle 2. The Kindle 2 is *much* better for reading. PITA it doesnt support pdfs. Conversion sucks.

ixnay on the eyboardkay

[Eil]

I'll buy one when they don't come with a useless space-occupying damn physical keyboard.

Re:ixnay on the eyboardkay

[Anonymous Coward]

iRex DR1000 doesn't have one (http://www.irextechnologies.com/irexdr1000).

Plastic Logic doesn't have one either (http://www.plasticlogic.com/product.html)

Not quite right, I'm afraid, and I wish it was...

[Garwulf]

Not quite right, I'm afraid, and for reasons that are downright embarrassing, speaking as a publisher of a textbook...

It's not the IP of the author that's the expensive bit. In fact, it would be lovely and wonderful if it was. Unfortunately, that's not what is happening.

Most of the time, when a textbook is put into print, all the copyrights are bought by the textbook company. The author(s) get a royalty, but they've lost the rights. The textbook is then marketed to universities, where a captive market is put together. So, once you have the students forced to buy the book because it's the course textbook, the publisher can price it however it pleases. And it does. The students get ass-raped, and the authors may very well be exploited alongside them.

And that's how a book that shouldn't cost the end reader more than $50 on a bad day becomes a $120 book. No prima donna authors about it. And don't think for one minute the book being offered as an e-book will change that.

(And no, I won't touch those practices with a 10-foot pole. That sort of thing is absolutely disgraceful. The textbook I published, a book on ancient humour, prices out at $32.95 USD to the reader, and the only reason it is at that price is that at the time it was put to the printer the Canadian dollar looked like it was going to stabilize at around $1.10 USD. And, I might add, the copyrights on all of the books I publish belong to the authors.)

Kindle LE?

[nurb432]

How about a version for the rest of us, something that is more like 200 ( or less ).

No fancy 3G, no keyboard ( who uses that anyway? ). Just the basics ( with PDF being a basic )

The US != The World

[CountBrass]

The third Kindle and still no sign of Amazon selling it outside the US. Getting fed up with being lied to.

Let's not forget other countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not export it to Europe as well? I'd love to get my hands on one of these, but since I don't live in the US - why bother?

(And no, I don't just mean Canada when I say other contries)

Kindle Shkindle

[fiannaFailMan]

A favourite pickup line of mine is "Oh, so you're reading _____." Kinda goes out the window with the Kindle since all books look the same, doesn't it? Bloody technology.

No SD reader... yeah, right... that's bright...

[cpotoso]

Exactly, whoever is the engineering "genius" who thought that 3 GB ought to be good enough deserves to rot in hell (together with whoever thought that 640 kB should be sufficient for anybody). Gosh, what did they save? $2 for a SD reader?

Lets welcome whats coming

[anonymousNR]

It is normal to be skeptical and cynical about a new technology, and it is even more normal to be mad at it because you cant afford it. Its how computers were in the beginning. Personally I think finally we are moving in a proper direction of reading medium which saves space, time and trees.

Mods

[Anonymous Coward]

100% overrated? But how???

Amazon destoyes the eBook market

[krischik]

You are not the only one.

But I have seen the bigger Picture (Mobipocket, Stanza) and I am as far as to say that I don't want Kindle any more. Actualy I don't want Amazon any more. Read here to see why:

http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15520

(Please don't disort the pool - vote only if you are a mobipocket user)

Amazon bought Mobipocket yet Kindle won't display encryptet Mobipocket files and vice vesa. What has that to say about Amazon as a corporation.

Martin

You don't need FUD to make Kindle look bad.

[krischik]

Facts are enough.

1) True - but you still can read encryptet Mobipocket files.
2) True - but if your Kindle bereaks and you closed your account then your books are gone.
3) Don't need to - Hardware does not last forever. Amazon is patience.
4) Kindle uses the same DRM as mobipocket - if hardware fails you have to re-entrypt for the new device.

Nothing to say about 5 and 6.

But still I have seen the bigger Picture (Mobipocket, Stanza) and I don't want Kindle. Actualy I don't want Amazon any more.

Most important reason: Amazon bought Mobipocket yet Kindle won't display encryptet Mobipocket files and vice vesa. What has that to say about Amazon as a corporation.

Want me to elaborate:

http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15520

(Please don't disort the pool - vote only if you are a mobipocket user)

Martin

MobiDeDRM

[krischik]

Kindle and Mobipocket use the almost same file format. The differences are so minor that the DRM-Crack program won't care which it is currenty De-DRM-ing.

Leave the question why Kindle is using a a slightly different file format in the first place.

Device of File Hacking?

[krischik]

I cannot find any info about hacking Kindle, so I am making assumptions. Correct me if I am wrong.

What do you want to hack - the Kindle file format or the Kindle hardware device?

For the file format you just have to know that it is almost the same file format as Mobipocket so you use the same hacking tools.

Re:Device of File Hacking?

[melikamp]

I was thinking jailbreaking.

You should not have bought Kindle

[krischik]

But why did you buy Kindle? It is well known that it is a USA-only product in all aspects.

Why not buy something more usefull? Is it the Amazon brand which draged you in.

Note that live outside the USA an I consider to boycot Amazon all to gether. And why not? - Fictionwise Mutiformat is a better eBook offer and Barn and Noble sell dead tree books all over the world as well.

Mobiocket

[krischik]

Funny that you mention Mobipocket as it is the main reason not to buy a Kindle for me. Apart from the fact that I could not as I do not live in the States.

Reason: Mobipocket is a subsidiary of Amazon yet Mobipcket DRM files can't be shown on Kindle. And I got 200 of those.

I just can not trust a Company which needleesy creates a new DRM formats only to be incompatible with them self.

Incompatible with the competition - that's normal - but incompatible with themself -no no no. That's jsut not right.

My estimate: 2 to 3 for modern mobile devices

[krischik]

The Kindle continues to work fine, and your books ON the Kindle continue to work fine.

And for how long? I don't think Kindle is anything like my CASIO calculatror which lasted 28 years.

Amazon is evil

[krischik]

You obviously read the Slashdot story that was completely false in its accusations

Actualy I have been observing and discussing Kindle and Amazon for quite a while now. If you had followed the provided link you would have seen that the posting is from Apr 21, 2009 6:25 pm. I had in fact a larger look at things. Not just the flaws of Kindle as a device. Also Amazons purchaise of Mobipocket and what happened afterwards. That Amazon bought Stanza just recently and what might happen.

This is not about reloading Books. That problem you have with all DRM protected eBooks. Recently paperback digital bookshop closed down [1] and there customers are now left in the cold.

It is all the other things Amazon did. Sell only in the USA. Chanced just one byte in the file format so that Kindle files are incompatibel with Mobipocket files. And Mobipocket is there own subsidiary.

These are clearly the actions of an "evil corporation".

Martin

[1] http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9766

New device - new PID

[krischik]

But if you buy a new device the you get a new PID and with the new PID you cant read the books any longer.

Yes I know about MobiDeDRM - but isn't that illegal in the USA - the only country where Kindle is sold?

GPL 2

[krischik]

Yes it is sad that Linux is still GPL 2 which allowes closed designs like Kindle. One more reason not to buy one.

Re:as a Enginner...

[Dare nMc]

I don't really care about the short term psychology aspect. The question I corrected the answer of was simply "is their a incentive to a author to protest a switch from printed books?" Since the highest "text book" royalty is 15%, text books are no different than any other book that I can find (or even suggested by anyone.) And thus with the Kindle rate for authors at 35%, I see no fact based incentive for authors (text book or otherwise) to resist the e-book, if that's what the customer desires (except the status quo, or they can't find a proof reader they like on there own.)
Of course books still have a draw such as a status symbol in the library, or as backup notepad in a pinch... But that's not a author issue, that's a consumer question.

Jinke/HanLin V9 xs Kindle DX: 1-0

[Anonymous Coward]

Jinke Hanlin V9 is a better e-reader at 9.7in at 1200px which will be cheaper, open-source, and more feature-rich: GSM 3G, touch, PDF, DOC, HTML, TXT, CHM, RAR, ZIP, BMP, JPG, MP3, MOBI, EPUB, LIT, DjVu... Jinke V3 is also good at 6in at 800px and is available now worldwide at 220-250 USD. Plus, you get the complete source code (it's Linux) and an SDK to create your own applications or even your own e-reading OS. There's even OpenInkpot, an opensource OS for it with a large dedicated community. A new 5in e-reader by Jinke, V5 also at 800px, will also be soon made available at 150-180 USD. These, V9, V6, V5, all run on a standard mobile phone battery and they don't need charging for a month. And Jinke already manufactures e-readers at 7.5in that run on two AAA batteries with an 880px screen.

pre-order a Kindle DX at a 50% discount....

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who love the Kindle DX but not the price can be one of the first to pre-order a Kindle DX at a 50% discount off of Amazon's retail price.

A new company called Promo Publishers, LLC is offering the new Kindle DX for only $244.50; see www.kindledxpromo.com to learn more about their offer.

What a great strategy to reduce the entry price of the new Kindle DX. I'm there!