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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."
Not really - the screen is only a bit bigger than the regular Kindle, doesn't handle PDF's very well (i.e. keeps all of the white space around the edge of docs) and offers no ability to annotate. I am waiting for ePaper products to get considerably cheaper and get something with specs similar to the iRex Digital Reader 1000S. I also find that for just fiction reading, I tend to do better with a smaller, narrower screen rather than a large screen with small font.
Have you seen the videos on oplc.tv of the new screen technology coming? Much cheaper and better... no special materials or new manufacturing facilities needed.
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org
Is it just me, or are random nonsensical first-posts getting more randomly nonsensical?
I got a kindle DX as a gift, and i absolutely love it. PDFs can be transferred to/from it extremely easy, just plug it in via usb and drag and drop. My biggest gripe about the PDF support is that you have no control over the font size, as you do with the books you purchase through Amazon, nor can you use the search function or the inline dictionary. But PDFs are still easy to read on the device, and I much prefer it to reading them on my computer screen.
I am a poor college student though, so if it weren't a gift I probably would have bought a netbook and saved myself some money.
Seriously, a wifi-equipped laptop can be had for less than $400, and with a 15" screen and decent storage, why would someone want a limited, single-purpose crippled laptop such as a Kindle?
The Kindle would make sense if it were under $100; it would fall into the nice Christmas gift or Father's Day gadget category for someone who has everything. But for $500? That's a lot of books.
You could buy a laptop and download thousands of free books from Gutenberg.org or wherever, and spend the rest on used books and have more than you can ever hope to read.
Alternatively, you can spend $350-$500 on one of these Amazon gadgets and then have to pay to read books on it.
I think Amazon should move to the inkjet approach of giving away the initial hardware and then making money on the refills. I wouldn't mind paying $5-$10 for a new bestseller (as long as it didn't crash/timeout and disappear on me) but the initial investment is rather daunting.
Plus, physical books are kinda cool; they don't need to be recharged, you can drop them from amazing heights and they still work, they're infinitely reusable and lendable, and they effortlessly multitask--leave one in the bathroom, one on the nightstand, one in the car, etc.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
It worked beautifully for the 2-3 higher mathematics PDFs I tried it with. All ot the little set theory symbols were displayed crystal clear. I don't think the screen is as readable as the PRS505's, however it's still good.
I trust David Pogue, and he reviewed it this week
This question sounds like it deserves the LMGTFY treatment though.
Here:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10257
If the textbooks you require are available at Amazon, you can save money (ebooks cost less than paper)... if you need to buy lots of them then you might even save enough to offset the Kindle purchase price.
If not, there are other readers that handle PDF better (*ony makes one)
What is the Kindle like? It's like a book with ink that can vanish permanently at any moment.
...by any means here, but I'd never buy a Kindle unless I can borrow or lend a Kindle book like a dead tree book. Serialize it to the purchaser, and have the mothership ensure it's only on one device at any one time. To me, that's a reasonable compromise. The way it is now SUCKS and should be avoided at all costs (pun intended....)
I seriously considered getting a Kindle DX, but after a little digging I found that it's not quite there yet for my use. So while I don't have personal experience with one, I did spend some time looking into it.
I'd love to eliminate the need to print PDF documents (like journal articles) for comfortable reading away from my computer. Once I heard that the Kindle DX supports PDF natively and has a large screen, I thought it might be perfect. Before prices were announced, I actually expected it to launch for $600 (comparable to the iRex Iliad). To my surprise, the price was cheaper.
As an added bonus, the free Whispernet (Sprint network) Wikipedia access has been expanded to include a rudimentary web browser. It would be unwise to buy a Kindle expecting this feature to remain free, though.
What's not made clear is that the PDF support has drawbacks. It cannot zoom, except to turn the device into landscape mode, which provides a small magnification. Fortunately, the software does automatically eliminate margins, making the screen about the right size for most documents. What's worse is that all of the annotation features available for ebooks and other documents do not work with PDFs; no highlighting, no note-taking, etc. I think it supports bookmarking, but that's it. For me, this is a deal breaker (at least until the price drops much further). I'm hoping that since this is a software limitation, it might be fixed with an update. I've learned not to count on feature additions in firmware until I see them, though, so I'm holding off on the purchase. Hopefully the price will drop before the end of the year anyway.
More strange is the method of firmware update. Apparently the Kindle 2 gets an update automatically if you leave Whispernet on long enough (usually overnight). I realize Amazon is doing this because they don't want users to need a computer and want to make things as simple as possible, but I would still strongly prefer user pull to Amazon push of content like software updates. Perhaps this behavior is configurable, I'm not sure.
I found it interesting that (at least some) newspaper subscriptions were made cheaper with the DX. If you save $4/mo on two subscriptions each, in about 18 months that will pay for the price difference between the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Since neither unit is sold retail, I don't have a very good sense of how comfortable they are to read from, or how annoying I would find the screen wipes (as the eink screens refresh the content). The good news is that the return policy from Amazon seems pretty reasonable, and you can return an opened unit within a few weeks for a full refund. If it supported annotations (and zooming might be important on some documents), that's how I would try it out. Until that's supported, or the price drops substantially, I'll just wait.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I'm not sure if it's worth the money for most, but I've been really enjoying mine so far.
The PDF reader works great for things like academic papers as long as moderately small fonts aren't a problem. Large PDF books don't work quite as well because links don't work on PDF in the current version. Some PDF slide decks work well, depending on the formatting - colored text on black background doesn't render well.
The built-in browser is OK. It's a nice novelty to be able to read wikipedia on this form factor of device.
Given he is asking about the larger Kindle, the DX, I hardly think a smaller screen would be considered a plus. The point of the DX is that you can view an entire page, just like having a textbook in front of you. For that the N810 - while an awesome tool is hardly a substitute.
The N810 also misses the mark, because it has a standard screen, not an e-ink one. That's great for reading a web page, but really strains your eyes if you want to read extensively.
My own thoughts are that the DX still lacks decent annotating and that's a big flaw. There are several schools trialing them at the moment as a substitute for 1st year text books, and I'm sure this will be pointed out. Either Amazon will release a new model with decent annotating (either make a decent keyboard or get very good at handwriting recognition) or Sony will beat them to it in an attempt to recapture the market.
...after a little digging I found that it's not quite there yet for my use. Yeah, greyscale sucks for porn, doesn't it...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I own a DX - my mom and wife went in together on a Kindle 2 for my birthday, several days later Amazon announced the DX. Returned the K2 and got the DX a couple of weeks back. I have used it every day since receiving it, and have thoroughly enjoyed using it. Excellent reading device and experience. The DX simply allows me to read, without getting in the way.
Loading PDFs using USB is trivially easy; once, too rushed to plug the DX into my work laptop, I emailed a work-related PDF document to my kindle email address; $0.15 saved me a few minutes. Amazon will convert some documents to Kindle format via email if you cannot convert to PDF on your own. One downside on PDFs: have not figured out how to magnify other than rotating the DX. I cannot testify to complicated graphics, as I have not loaded any technical PDFs on my DX.
A few technical reviews I've found that you may find helpful:
http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/2009/06/12/technical-document-pdfs-on-the-kindle-dx/
CNET Review
Gizmodo Review
Hope this helps. There are other reviews out there.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
I just don't understand who is stupid enough to buy a Kindle at full price considering how crippled it is. The device should be subsidized to reflect its proprietary nature or the software should be opened up to make it more useful. FFS even Sony (a company not exactly known for embracing standards) has a more open reader that costs less.
Even less fathomable is why publishers are letting the ebook market degenerate into competing formats, proprietary readers and possible market dominance by Amazon. One would think it is in their interest to come up with and dictate a single book format, one which all readers can implement, one which all stores can sell books with. It sounds obvious but a single format would level the playing field and catapult ebooks into the mainstream.
What are your thoughts on the term "irony"?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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.
As pointed out in this review:
You can't organize PDFs into directories on the Kindle, which makes accessing a large number of PDFs a serious problem. It's like 1984.
(The lack of PDF annotation capability is also a headache.)
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
I picked up the Kindle DX on release day (much to my amazement, as I figured the initial stock would go entirely to preorders) and then took it on a 2 week trip. I'm quite pleased with it, although I definitely believe that it will only appeal to a narrow market.
Pros:
Cons:
I have several thousand technical documents ranging from hundreds of pages to a dozen pages. I have been carrying them around with me on a 500GB portable USB hard drive, connecting that to my laptop or a public computer. I got 801 of them on my DX before it filled up, so now I am in the process of triaging all my PDFs to get the most important ones on the DX. I have no problems at all reading them, even the mathematics-intensive ones. Something I thought of after I bought the DX: hey, now I can easily have with me the PDFs of all (a couple hundred) of the journal and conference papers I have published. One obvious use is for employment interviews (I'm just saying) without having to tote my laptop -- the show-and-tell experience is totally different and cool. Well worth the price for my purposes.
Doug Jensen
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!
With the exception of point 1 and 4, most of what you are writing is patently false. 2. You can load a book on up to six Kindle devices. You can send an issue of a newspaper or magazine to any of the devices and they will be readable on each of them, ï 3. Your book purchases do not depend on having an active Amazon account. 5. You can return any ebook purchase to Amazon within 7 days for a full refund. 6. That is a problem with your library system and with the publishers, not the Kindle. The Kindle can read many, many book formats. You can also purchase download free books from many sources. There is nothing to stop library systems from creating subscription or time-limited access to books, other than the book publishers and author associations. I would say that you are the one who should get cracking and write some letters!
#2: http://www.teleread.org/2009/06/22/device-limits-fuzzy-on-downloads-for-kindle-books-if-so-should-the-ftc-investigate/
And a Kindle wielding friend of mine was complaining that newspaper subscription he uses is limited to one device, too. Which is insane.
#3: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44350&highlight=amazon+banning
This dude now has a $350 door stop.
#5: Yes, my bad.
#6: That still doesn't change the fact that until this problem is addressed (and Amazon has enormous leverage here, while I personally don't), Kindle will not be able to replace books for me.