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Is the Kindle DX Worth the Money?
An anonymous reader writes "Now that some little time has passed, and the hype has died down a bit, I'm wondering if anyone has taken the $500 plunge and gotten a Kindle DX. From the academic-paper-reading-geek perspective, is it worth the money? How well does it work with PDFs, and is it easy to get them on and off? I haven't been able to find any good reviews on the interweb that address its usability as I would like to use it."
It's cheaper, smaller, and it's pretty much a full Linux based computer... oh and it has a colour screen too!
I'm sorry, but at $500 you can buy any of a number of laptops, netbooks or PDAs that all do much more than the Kindle does. Their price point is definitely in the wrong place for such a limited device.
And it fails on the second property you mentioned. For PDF, a netbook is about the smallest practical display. Not to mention the fairly short battery life of the N series web tablets. I have an N800, and I agree. they are great for the proper tasks. But reading PDFs is not one of them. I know. I tried with my N800, and the screen size was only one of the drawbacks. Loading time was the worst.
I'm a keen e-book reader. Got myself an e-ink based reader last year, and I love it. For it's intended task, it's fantastic. That task being reading fiction. NOTHING ELSE
But I have a grand total of zero PDF files on it. Because when it comes to using PDF files, the current range of readers are all basically crap. Including the Kindle DX. The screen updates far too slowly. so paging back and forth is irritating. Search if it works, is slow. looking up the index is also slow, and usually set over several pages if it even has links..
If you want to read fiction, great. You will get onto the habit of pressing the next page button mid way in the last sentence of the current page, so you don't even notice the page refresh blink after a few chapters. And as fiction is read one page after the other, it is perfectly suited to this. Graphic novels may be ok. A bit small on a 6 inch screen, but the bigger Kindle screen might work out ok. These too are page by page, not random access.
But if you need to read a few paragraphs here, look in the index, and read a few pages somewhere else.. All common tasks with manuals.. Forget it. Get a netbook for portability or a tablet for functionality. Both great choices for manuals and text books. Do yourself a favour. Avoid e-ink displays unless the primary function is fiction reading. No matter how big the screen. You will either be disappointed, or worse.. end up justifying the extra cost of a 9 inch book reader that only works for manuals in the same way an iPhone works as a camera.
There are supposed to be a few new displays coming out that are better suited to fast access, but you are realistically looking at several years before they are on sale anywhere. The current generation are a dead loss for PDF files.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
If the Kindle were actually like that, it would be wonderful, but I'm pretty sure you can't email your books around. E-ink is great, but the Kindle is too expensive, its books are too expensive, and I'm not going to deal with a company that puts limits on what I purchase.
I am waiting to see what Google does. I think that they are the only possible company that has the inclination and sheer might to give us an e-book reader and content that is reader friendly.
From one academic-paper-reading-geek to another: Don't waste your time with the Kindle DX. I am a professor and did order one- with very high hopes of going beyond paper! To warn others, I also posted a review of my experience with the Kindle DX on my blog: http://ecotope.org/blogs/post/Kindle-DX-Not-ready-for-Academic-users.aspx But there was no way to really use the thing the way you need to if you are an academic-paper-reading-geek! I returned it after about a week. Maybe next year there will be a machine with the right stuff! I hope so!
"Even less fathomable is why publishers are letting the ebook market degenerate into competing formats, proprietary readers and possible market dominance by Amazon."
Even less fathomable is why you need "publishers" once you fully reach the ebook era. The only necessary roll they play in the system is to publish books on dead trees. Good authors could easily start going direct to ebooks and completely cut publishers out of the system as long as they are willing to go without a dead tree version of their books.
Publishers play a roll in filtering out the crap but they also filter out stuff none of them like but at least a niche audience might find interesting. They play a roll in promotion which may still be necessary but in the Internet era probably isn't as importance as it once was.
Publishers are about as useful in the digital age as record companies.
@de_machina
Depends on where. For example, online e-book stores are a booming market in Russia - virtually all titles on the market are available in dozens of formats, from open TXT, RTF, PDF and FB2, to reader-specific formats such as LIT and LRF. No DRM at all. And even a new release generally costs no more than 50% than a paper book, and older books are 3x-4x cheaper - overall it's $1.5-$2 for a typical fiction book. A lot of ways to pay, from CC and direct debit to pay terminals and pay-by-SMS.
This isn't like AllOfMP3, either - no legal loopholes used, they work directly with authors and publishers (who set the prices). Quite a few authors have direct contracts, bypassing the publishers entirely. Thankfully, those people understand that setting the prices too high will only result in more piracy.
Coupled with any eInk-based reader (mine is Sony, but it's more a matter of taste), it's really great - a convenient pocket library at very affordable prices.
You could have that in U.S., too (with prices adjusted for your standard of living). What, you don't? Well, maybe your free market ain't so free...