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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."
I will not pay that price as long as books are cheap and PDFs can be read on my computer.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
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
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
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
they are cheap enough that people won't worry about ruining them at the beach or by dropping them onto the floor.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
1. Searchable (wooohoo!)
2. Carry one thin device, not 20lbs of books
Those alone might have caused me to buy it as an undergrad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
Checked out the price of college textbooks lately?
Best Slashdot Co
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...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
... 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
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
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.
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.
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?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
I don't want the reader to rotate into landscape mode when lying down in bed on the side to read.
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).
I'll buy one when they don't come with a useless space-occupying damn physical keyboard.
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.)
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive