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Amazon Kindle Fails First College Test
theodp writes "If Amazon hoped for honest feedback when it started testing the Kindle DX on college campuses last fall, writes Amy Martinez, it certainly got its wish. Students pulled no punches telling Amazon what they thought of its $489 e-reader. But if Amazon also hoped the Kindle DX would become the next iPhone or iPod on campuses, it failed its first test. At the University of Virginia, as many as 80% of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid (though more than 90% liked it for pleasure reading). At Princeton and Reed, students complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages, or fully appreciate color charts and graphics. 'The pilot programs are doing their job — getting us valuable feedback,' said Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener. Martinez notes that Reed, Seton Hall, and other colleges plan to test the iPad in the fall to see if it can do better."
So you mean they chose MBA students to test the applicability of a device for students' use? They should have considered using real graduate students instead. As a grad student myself, I can say that the only way I would consider a kindle or ipad for my own use is if someone gave it to me for free...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
A fast flipping display and cheaper unit would be a better fit.Any $150 Chinese android tablet would do. The books would have to be pirated, but college kids have been doing that for ages.
The tried and true method of doing things that is known to work outdid the new shiny?
Amazing......
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
This use scenario seems much more apt for an iPad, due to it's much heavier flexibility. But, only if proper applications are written to fit the student's needs better.
Coming from a generation that has seen the birth of the internet and school instruction online. I have to say, print is dead, or close to it, if the kindle or iPad have anything to do with it. It's promising that students gave honest reviews of the kindle as a tool for instruction, the kindle offers a lot of promise as a teaching tool, with it being a test and LOTS of room for improvement, maybe with all the honest and constructive criticism amazon will make many new improvements that will help individuals become better students. However, I can speculate that by shear performance alone, the kindle has 'a-ways' to go when competing with the iPad. Although I am not a fan of the iPad it can be a great tool for students. It will be interesting to see what direction amazon takes with this device.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
for scribbling margin notes, highlighting, syncing notes with PC/mac - and more, the Sony Daily Edition perfectly fits the bill. That device is the right size, feature list and perhaps the correct price point. Sony should be peddling that to the universities to finally gain some respectable foothold in the e-book industry.
My sig has been answered.
The kindle would be successful in a world where piracy only happens at sea and where computers only serve one or two functions.
Sounds like Amazon was really trying to get some exposure/press. Of all of the feedback I've seen in TFA I would say it was "obvious". I'm sure now they have a nice good demographic targeted, complete with contact info etc, to spearhead their pre-planned campaign when they launch a device that does most of what was requested of the DX.
Disclaimer: I own a DX
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Using the Kindle, iPad, or any other electronic device is not going be wildly accepted by the college crowd. I find it hard to imagine studying without being able to mark in the book, fold pages, constantly flip through entire sections, or any of the features that make physical books great. Not to mention resale of DRM is non-existent.
The fact that Amazon wants to be able to reach inside your kindle and remove things, even things you put notes in sort of destroys the value of the Kindle as an academic tool.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"This is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need in these trying times of crisis and universal broo-ha-ha."
Seriously, Amazon is touting these basic features as 'upgrades'. Like Apples 'wait...you want copy AND paste???'
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
That's Seton Hill, not Seton Hall.
So, at the very worst case, twenty percent of the students didn't think the Amazon Kindle was crap? Not everyone needs to highlight text or write in margins. The color graphs and charts is a kick to the jimmies, sure - but if you need to read something, and you don't do any of the aforementioned? Sounds like a nice shoe-in.
The greatest "advantage" to e-readers, or whatever the hell they are being called this week, is that publishers will be able speed up the scam of planned obsolescence in the college textbook scam/game.
Now my kid buys a $300 "required" book only to be told it has NO resale value come next semester because it is the "old edition". With Kindle, et al, that planned obsolescence can take place FASTER.
Now get off my lawn.
That's like asking whether a sloth can outrun a tortoise. It probably can, but what does it take to convince people that there are a lot of other, probably better, options?
include $sig;
1;
I am surprised anybody buys it. You can buy an iPad for about the same price, and the iPad does far more.
Arguably the kindle is better for just reading - still.
Sears has the "Aluratek LIBRE eBook Reader PRO" for $99, and buy.com has the "Ectaco jetBOOK LITE e-Book Reader" also for $99.
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00309013000P?vName=Computers%20&%20Electronics&cName=PortableElectronics&sName=MP3%20Players&psid=FROOGLE01&sid=IDx20070921x00003a
http://www.buy.com/prod/ectaco-jetbook-lite-e-book-reader/q/listingid/84607877/loc/111/213401968.html
So you mean they chose MBA students to test the applicability of a device for students' use?
They would have tried special ed kids, but they didn't want all the user reports written in crayon.
Blank until
The Kindle doesn't do Facebook or IM so it is not going to work well for what people are doing in class with computeresque devices. The iPad types too slow, netbooks have too small of a screen to really read on, and most laptops are too bulky and don't have a great battery life. Fix those issues and you should be set classroom use.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
1st trial: kindle (fail)
2nd trial: ipad (will fail)
3rd trial: pen & paper WIN
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Even the younger generation of college kids still appreciate the tactile usability of that old tool we call a book. Somehow I find it refreshing or heartening to know that the younger generations aren't completely abandoning hardcopy. With society constantly being assaulted by technology I guess there is still hope when kids rather have a book in their hand instead of the new gadget...I'm sure it's just a matter of time though before that is no longer true.
Amazon ate my homework!
Students aren't the only ones who find textbook prices monumentally absurd. Most of my professors no longer require a textbook. However, they are required by the University to specify a textbook, so every student who buys it before the first day of classes gets royally screwed.
There also exist moronic profs who require you to buy the textbook, purchase a code for the online help, AND buy the study guide/homework guide, and then NEVER USE IT. I've found this in the English department more than once. These people need to be burned at the stake.
My other sig is clever.
I bought a nook in the middle of last semester with the intention of lightening the burden of my bookbag. I found that (1) too few text/reference books are published in e-formats (PDF is not a viable substitute for a proper .epub or equivalent), (2) getting directly to a page or location was tedious, (3) flipping between pages was just plain impossible, and (4) the nook's screen (same as the original Kindle) is too small for the format of most text and reference books, which employ sidebars, illustrations, etc.
The Kindle DX would, I imagine, alleviate exactly one of these concerns. The remaining three are deal-breakers.
An iPad, on the other hand, costs more, is more fragile, weighs more, is heavier, and, though pretty, is shamed by the readability and versatility of e-ink.
Meanwhile, school is over and the nook has reawakened my taste for recreational reading to the point that I'm devouring several books a week and every new book I hear of makes me think: I hope it's available as an eBook!
I have the ideal solution for students, or for anyone who might want to enjoy reading a book and then sharing it with others when you're done, or if someone wanted to study a book and quickly switch back and forth between pages, highlight to your heart's content, and scribble notes between the lines or in the margins.
There is this newfangled substance called "paper." If only books could possibly be "printed" on uniformly-cut "sheets" of this paper, and then "bound" together with glue and yarn, and perhaps be encased in a protective cardboard or lightweight wood or even plastic "covers." Then, you could turn the pages without having to fiddle with gestures or buttons, you don't need to worry about batteries, and since you OWN the book and cannot connect it online, no one can decide the book needs to be recalled and remotely delete it. Not only that, you can lend the book out to others, or even sell it when you no longer find any use or enjoyment from it. DRM would not stand in the way of exercising either Fair Use or your first sale rights.
I know my idea seems somewhat quaint, but who knows - - it might just catch on!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"It seems we need to make the next Kindle large, with at least 20-50 flexible sheets of e-ink "paper", and a highlighter/pen wand that allows for easy e-ink marking. Soon we'll have the perfect format. Ten years after that, we'll lock it into a one-ebook to one-kindle setup so that we sell more kindles. Who wouldn't spend $400 per novel?"
Correction: That's Seton Hill that will try the iPad, not Seton Hall, which is a different school.
print is dead
I know it is fashionable to try to be the first to pronounce something 'dead', especially if you are on the internet and can somehow credit the internet with killing it. But other than that, why do you think it is dead or even dying?
Has consumption of writing paper decreased as computer use has increased? This says it hasn't. It also looks like printing and writing paper consumption is up, again.
Paper has enormous advantages over digital for displaying information, particularly information that a person might need to annotate. The Kindle might have a ways to go to supplant the ipad for that application, but both have light years to go to pass pen and paper.
Everyone is trying to create their own iPod/iTunes like market for eBooks. It's a silly strategy that has little future because books and multimedia are very different technologies.
* The killer application is actually publishing your book as a computer file instead of inked on dead trees, not creating a device that is only remarkable in that it is compatible with your DRM scheme.
* Finding ways to sell your books to the largest market possible should be the goal.
* The only thing that differentiates and the sizes of the walled garden markets is the number of devices that are compatible with their DRM schemes.
* DRM is defective by design for most eBooks as it can be defeated a touch typist with some time on their hands. Music and movies actually require a much higher level of skill to crack.
It's like everyone missed Apple's secret weapon with iPod: $1 songs and $2 TV Shows - and tons of free podcasts. Pricing on eBooks, aside the occasional sale at O'Reiley is nuts.
In short, book publishers need to rethink the need for walled gardens. They add little value, given that portable devices that can read open formats have existed since the 1980s, and the current crop of slates and ePaper devices are not much different than a regular computer anyway.
-- $G
It's kind of a shame that Microsoft scrapped the Courier. Based on the demo videos I saw, it seems like it would have been a natural fit for something like this.
Essentially their criticism seem to boil down to:
iPad/tabletPCs don't have the first issue, but they have a similar or related issue. They're simply difficult to read for long periods of time, and often very difficult to see in natural light situations (ie, studying outside on a sunny day). Otherwise they simply use software to emulate the functions of e-book readers. So they probably share most of the other faults of the readers.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Never even considered it one. To me its nice way to read e-books with out the usual eyestrain from a traditional LCD. Most of all that i have read have been stories, or 'tutorial' style tech books. Flipping around would be murder.
Oh, i never wrote in my books in school, i had a notebook for taking notes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know you young'uns probably don't remember this, but back in my day we had institutions called libraries. Libraries had these things called books. You could get any book without paying anything. If the book wasn't available at your local library, you could use inter-library loan. That was free, also.
You could touch a book without smearing finger oil on a screen. There was no DRM; no one implied you were a criminal if you read someone else's book. If you wanted to have a copy of a page, you could photocopy it and write on the photocopy, actually write, with real ink.
I know this will sound amazing, but you didn't have to have a device to read a book! You could just read it. Books didn't have batteries; there was nothing to charge; there was no battery to go bad and carry back to Apple for an expensive replacement. You could read a book outdoors; you didn't need to worry about the weak display of an Apple LCD screen.
If you dropped a book, it would almost certainly not be damaged. There was no quirky, limited operating system that had to be updated. There was no file management. You just opened the book and started reading it.
There was no early adopter status, with people going around implying they were socially superior to you because they had a device. You didn't need to worry about new versions of a device that did a little more, but just a little, because there would be an even newer version a few months after that. Books never became obsolete because someone stopped supporting an old file format.
You didn't need electric power to read a book. You didn't need to worry about exploding batteries with their poisonous metals. There were no charge cords, or waiting for re-charging.
There were so many books that thieves usually didn't steal them.
You didn't have to pay the huge Jeff Bezos tax or the huge Steve Jobs tax; you didn't need to contribute to a billionaire only interested in having more billions.
I've said this before, and I'm saying it again, eReaders really need to support PDF's and Word files a lot better than they currently do, especially if they want to get their devices into a college or have anything other than a black and white book novel read...
It doesn't matter if it's a college text book, a role playing game manual, or any type of publication that uses complex images/tables/graphs/charts/etc you need a PDF or Office type of file (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) file and you need to view it well. The current ePub files don't display these types of content well and the Kindle just doesn't work well with PDFs right now and doesn't support other file types. Sony and Apple have some support but not complete by any means.
Ave Molech Setting
Biggest issue I foresee with ebooks is that, currently, none of them handle math symbols correctly. Imagine trying to read an economics text or calculus text without proper mathematical formatting. If you can't, check out the Nook for an example of how it looks. Fractions, even at the biggest text size, are smaller than 1/8" and almost entirely unreadable. Sigma notation looks like gobbledygook.
Until that is fixed, I don't see any school adopting ebooks, much less a technical one.
http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-if.html Very applicable.
They call them "casebooks," and they're a combination of (1) commentary discussing the field a bit, and (2) cases which have been exerpted to make them say whatever the the casebook authors are trying to say. Their quality and honesty vary.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Ok, I'll say that I am over-zealous in saying "print is dead", however, I do think that this is a paradigm in the evolution of print. Although, the current trend of print is in hardback or paperback books, and e-books are an emerging market, I do think that at some point, print as we know it today, will not reflect how we come to know it in the future. I respect your opinion and thank you for the facts; I was merely making an observation on how these will supplement current methods of study; how they will be tools for students; and that this may very will be the beginning of the end for print. Consider this: How many periodicals have left traditional print for e-Print?
http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-if.html What the video near bottom or download the Power Point located here... (made by one of the "Shift Happens" guys.)
On large books, it takes several seconds just to turn a page.
It can take even longer to add a highlight, plus the additional annoyance of using the little joystick for navigating. A stylus would be great if it were possible to use it with this type of display. I notice the same slowness on the Kindle for PC software (even on a fast machine), but at least I can use the mouse there.
The Kindle is terribly unresponsive for typing notes. It can't keep up with two slow thumbs on those awful little keys and you nave to pop open the symbol screen just to get a comma because there is no key for it (among many other common symbols).
Worst of all is the DRM. The Kindle saves each highlight to a plain text clippings file which might have been useful for study notes. About one third of the way through a very large (and expensive) ebook, I found that my clippings file was full of messages stating that I had exceeded my limit for clippings for that book. I guess they put some limit in there in order to prevent people from using highlights to extract the whole book into the clippings text file, thereby defeating DRM. What it really prevents is legitimate study. Due to this stupid technical deficiency, I should have been noting these passages by hand in a notebook. But the Kindle didn't warn me that this limitation existed, nor did it stop me when I reached it.
The Kindle hardware is an interesting novelty and I see potential in the technology, but it is not good for serious reading or for study. It's too slow and the DRM puts me back in the age of pencil and paper anyway, so why bother? Picking up the actual book is more efficient and convenient than using the Kindle.
But if Amazon also hoped the Kindle DX would become the next iPhone or iPod on campuses, it failed its first test. At the University of Virginia, as many as 80% of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid (though more than 90 percent liked it for pleasure reading).
Because the iPhone was recommended as a study aid? Being the "next iPhone" does not mean it has to be recommended for study. Duh.
Slow refresh is a trait of e-ink. It will take many more years for it to be fast enough. A search feature would make this less of an issue.
It isn't that the Kindle has no ability to mark-up pages, but the ability is somewhat limited compared to "scribbling in the margins". Basically, you can put in what amounts to an in-line footnote at any point in the text and you can highlight (actually, underline) passages. Also, as far as I know these features aren't restricted in DRM-enabled books from the Amazon store.
Most likely because of the slow refresh times of e-ink screens, so mostly a hardware issue.
If you hoped that I'd give my opinion about the article, you'll be pleased. If you hoped that I was annoyed by the writing style, you'll be pleased again.
Yep, the students are right to complain about kindle's primitive navigational aids -- as a kindle-using reader of non-fiction I'm not at all surprised.
But it's also inevitable that student use-case feedback will make its way into future e-reader UIs. Particularly with large touch-screen models, it should be easy to have multiple bookmarks and chapter tabs visible on screen for instant access.
E-readers won't have *all* the advantages of paper books, but with a few fixes plus their own advantages (hyperlinks, dictionary, search, weight, cost, backup, sharing of notes, etc.) e-books will win, no doubt.
Ed Lazowska (UWCSE professor quoted in the article) says this is "a crappy hatchet-job article where the reporter had an agenda and ignored counterbalancing input", and Franzi Roesner (also from the article) agrees.
It is disappointing to see Amazon finding out only now that engineers will want to scribble on pages, highlight items, need color, etc.
Amazon employs hundreds if not thousands of engineers, most if not all of which could have told senior executives this.
Unfortunately, many companies in Silicon Valley are being run by executives who have forgotten their companies were built by engineers, and consulting with them once in a while might be useful.
This is not meant to be flame-bait. It is from personal experience and the experiences of other engineers, e.g., Bob Colwell and the inability of Intel to acknowledge the failure of the Itanium processor line before it wasted billions of dollars and several years of engineering time (read Bob's book The Pentium Chronicles for more detail.)
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Netbooks are way cheaper and more versatile. Ipads might make the versatile category, still too expensive. Remember these are college kids. Their money priorities are elsewhere. Give them cheap college text and a versatile machine (plays tunes and movies) and you will have a seller. They need an atom or similar processor with touch color screen and sound with 16 gb storage maybe via sd card. Something really cheap ...250 max. Netbook works great for my daughter. Has a cam and she records the lectures. All using Linux. Uses that to review before exams. Wife has a Kindle. She loves her novels, and its great for her. Daughter, not so much.
I'm interested in an e-reader for textbooks because I have collected many from Undergrad and now Grad (Masters) that I am holding onto and they take up space. I don't highlight/fold my books because it drives me crazy when the book is damaged. Right now I like the Kindle e-ink technology for reading, it seems easier on my eyes than an LCD (I have used my dad's Kindle). I don't like the iPad that much, I have used it in the apple store but I don't like the iBook reading experience. Also I understand publishers are planning to make their own apps for some titles to help formatting.
What I want is a kindle with color (it doesn't need to be magazine quality) because text books have color diagrams/charts where the color is required for the understanding. At the very lease I need newspaper/textbook style color. Also I do need mathematical formulas as well because I do have Calculus Books (which I never use but want to hold onto anyway) and Discrete Math Books (once in a while...). For a text book the kindle screen (not the DX) is too small. I want to at least be able to see a full text book page with the images/text.
I haven't tried annotations/searching. But it's not a killer. Usually with computer science I know what I'm looking for and I can tell based on the chapter headings. So going to the table of contents to find the chapter and turning a few pages is no problem. I am anal about my books. If I buy a book and there is a mark/line/folded/ripped page/dent on the cover when I buy it, I will return it and get another one. It drives me crazy when I tear pages (which sometimes happen when flipping them). The Kindle would be great because I wouldn't have to worry about a damaged book. and the annotations might let me annotate whereas I would never do that to a physical book.
But it would hurt to not have the the physical book because sometimes I do remember content by its position in the book. But phrase search might be okay since I may be able to remember a phrase to find a page. Also if you could search on a topic and have it return references to multiple books in your collection so you could cross reference the material that would be cool.
The other thing I want the kindle for besides text books is programming books. It would be great to be able to select/copy/paste/e-mail the source code examples instead of typing them or fumbling with a website/cd. I would definitely buy all the reference books for the Programming Languages I use (ie Bjarne's C++, K+R C, The Camel Book) and definitely buy Code Complete. Many books are excellent references and it would be great to have them all searchable in one place.
As a Grad student, some of my classes are based on ACM papers. And if I was to pursue a PhD, I would be reading hundreds of papers. Whatever device a PhD students has would need to be able to read the scientific journal for that field. Ie ACM seems to publish many of the interesting Computer Science papers (I know not technically a journal), but I would need an e-reader to link with their digital library if it was going to be super useful to me were I going for a PhD. I had one class this semester where it was about 25 papers and no textbook (all from the ACM).
As a professional programmer, I need the various how to guides/tutorials for specific technologies/languages, programming language references, and the occasional textbook (especially algorithms).
students complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages
Good. It's a book. Stop defacing it.
Bloody vandals.
Nothing worse than buying a second-hand textbook and finding out the fuckwit that owned it before you has destroyed it through inept, irrelevant and inaccurate highlighting and notes.
And no, buying new isn't an option when you're a student with all your income going on accommodation, food and condoms.
Wow, I came to this conclusion within minutes of owning a Kindle DX and I strongly suspected it before it even arrived. Yes, textbook models are largely becoming obsolete. Only crazy ppl in California think that every student just needs pdfs of the textbooks for e-learning. sigh...
On a related note, check out the Entourage Edge concept. I don't know that they've got everything right yet, but this is on a better track than the Kindle DX.
Here is an excellent blog post by Qualcomm's VP of Education Technology on the 21st century textbook.
Come play Moral Decay!
complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages
but... but.. I read stuff on "iKindle" on my iPhone, and I can easily highlight passages, and put notes in it... how is it that a "real" kindle makes it more difficult to do these things?!?!?
The parent makes an interesting point -- that searching is done on electronic devices by text, but not all of our memory cues which aid in searching are textual. I am absolutely sure that arrangement of information on a page, the presence or absense of a particular graphic, or the color of text (or, my highlighting of it :-) were all factors in how I remembered information when I was in academia and had to study for exams. And I made a bit of pocket money selling my color-highlighted and carefully indented/organized study sheets to other students studying for the same exams, too, so I wasn't the only one who found visual presentation useful.
In the case of color, that entire aspect of visual presentation is missing on some electronic readers including the Kindle, thereby giving me one less memory aid.
So you mean they chose MBA students to test the applicability of a device for students' use? They should have considered using real graduate students instead. As a grad student myself, I can say that the only way I would consider a kindle or ipad for my own use is if someone gave it to me for free...
It doesn't matter if it were MBA students or MS/Ph.d EE students since they were testing for usability in the classroom. Probably the study originally focused on MBAs hoping that a positive mark would lead to adoption as a (future) corporate tool.
I sadly reached the same conclusion after buying my Kindle 2 last year. It is excellent for pleasure reading, but horrible for studying. When studying you need to fast-flip through the book, and when doing research, you need to scan dozens of pages at a time to get a sense of structure before zooming in into key areas. None of that is possible with the Kindle.
Let's just say that, given I do very little pleasure reading, but a lot of technical reading, studying and researching (combined with its sub-par support for PDF documents), my Kindle 2 has been the worst investment I've ever made in electronics. I don't think I've ever bought anything that proved to be so useless for the task I intended to use (partly my fault for not doing enough research on this thing.)
In fact, based on my experience with the Kindle ergonomics, it cannot be done with a keypad. You need to go full touch screen with the ability to flip pages as fast as possible... AND (unlike the kindle) with the ability to see really large chunks of text (as close as possible with the original printed versions.)
The iPad (or something similar to it) would pave the way to electronic readers with the ergonomics necessary for studying and researching. The Kindle is really good for pleasure reading, it is really nice. But that's it. And I cannot imagine anyone wanting to pay $489 for it considering that for a few more bucks you can get an iPad (which with its touch screen could prove more suitable for the type of text reading and scanning required for studying and researching.)
I mean, really, I could understand in 2009, but now, who would in his/her right mind pay that much for a Kindle? Amazon is pretty much stuck with spoiled goods on this one.
MBA students know how to read?
Who never highlighted or made margin notes in any of my books in college? I never saw the point, really, if I was going to study pieces of a chapter I'd go download the professor's lecture notes... I don't even really remember having the book open during class - I just brought it in case someone started referencing a problem or a diagram. In any case, it's always felt weird to me to mark up a book...
Still sounds like the kindle would suck as a textbook for many things just because of the lack of color and the slowness of page changes, but personally the other "issues" wouldn't affect me at all.
It's no use to try to promote the Kindle when its main problem lies with the publishers.
First e-books more expensive than their dead-tree version: stupid, unecological and greedy. Then the @#$%& "region" problem: depending on where you live, especially outside the Empire, lots of books may not be available to buy so the only option is, as usual, "piracy".
It seems that the books publisher want to make all the mistakes that the music and film publishers made before them.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
Both the Kindle and the iPad are a joke when it comes to academic work. At the very least, they need to duplicate the kind of functionality you can get from bluebeam and onenote running on a convertible tablet PC:
- freehand inking on pdfs
- the ability to TYPE pop-up notes
- audio recordings you can sync with notes a la onenote
- hotkeys for various highlighter colors (I use a 9-color system which would be impractical with physical highlighters)
- hierarchical bookmarks allowing you to make clickable outlines of an articlegreat for reviewing! (ideally they would improve this by making a more freely formatted 'notes' pane that can be hyperlinked to the bookideally with audio support like onenote's)
- insert lined paper into a book (i.e. for doing math problems in a math textbook)
- the ability to very quickly pull up paper for rough work (i.e. win+N for onenote)
- something like zotero for unified management of pdf and html references (i.e not mendely)
The iPad fails as a student device as well. Apple could have cornered the student market by adding handwriting recognition to the iPad and offering a one stop device for reading books and taking notes. Instead there are rumours about adding a camera to the next gen iPad. What the hell is with the current trend of sticking a crappy camera in every freaking device?
Kindle sucks!
Look, there is only one unique thing about Kindle. It is proprietary to Aamazon and is the only thing that recognizes Amazon's proprietary format. That only recommends it to Amazon; not Amazon's customers. Kindle is 1980's technology in a 2010 world. They fed it to college students who grew up with tech and asked for their opinion? Hahaha
At $489, Kindle costs as much as an iPad. And how does it compare technically with the iPad? Hahahaha
Now, add the kind of draconian control techniques that Amazon demonstrated with '1984'. Hahahahahahahaha
But if Amazon also hoped the Kindle DX would become the next iPhone or iPod on campuses... Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I understand and agree. Every day, literally every day, I'm thankful for the efforts of Andrew Carnegie, who funded about 3,000 libraries. Having a library began to be considered necessary for any self-respecting town.