Just as
with the Kindle 2, Amazon posted the Kindle DX product page while the
launch event was underway. Specs-wise, there's not much here
we didn't know: the big changes are a larger 9.7-inch screen that rotates to landscape display, a PDF reader, and more storage space at 3.3GB. The big news is actually the flat $489 price tag, which seems on the high-side of realistic to us -- although the subsidy-pricing rumors weren't totally inaccurate, as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe will offer subsidized on-contract Kindles to customers who can't get at-home delivery when the DX ships this summer. (Yes, that's a pretty lame restriction.) Amazon's also announcing a wide range of textbook publishing partnerships, with tomes from Addison-Wesley, Wiley Higher Education, Longman & Prentice Hall and many others available -- and what's more, Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia have all signed on to distribute "hundreds" of Kindle DXs to students this fall. We're hunting for more info, stay tuned.
Read - Kindle DX product page
Read - Kindle DX PR
[Thanks, Jason G]
Other Kindle DX reading:Read - Editorial: Engadget on the Kindle DX
Read - Live from Amazon's Kindle event in NYC!
Read - Amazon Kindle DX first hands-on (with video!)
Read - Kindle DX college plans revealed: only 300 students total
Read - Poll: Will you buy a Kindle DX?
posted May 6th 2009 10:35AM
Wow, at that price, everyone can afford it.
who on earth would spend that kind of money on this kind of device? I don't think i'll spend $489 on books in my lifetime
Love the sarcasm. I totally agree though, I've never seen the appeal of the Kindle. It does one thing (albeit quite well), and it isn't a MAJOR function of most peoples' lives. I would pay $50 for it...MAYBE $100. But $300+? Give me a break. I hate dealing with books and newspapers as much as the next guy...but $300 buys many more cool and useful things than a Kindle.
Ya, for this price you are much better off buy a cheap laptop that can, well, do everything a PC can do, including read newspapers and e-books. In color too!
@Andy Homo - have you ever purchased a Science textbook? Did you go to college?
it does seem like a lot of money, but for that price you get the device and a lifetime of wireless data service to the device. If you had to pay even just $5 a month for the data service it would be more than the device costs at year end.
THizzle: Except that laptop is going to be heavy, huge, suck battery power like mad, and you can't curl up with it under a tree on a sunny day to read. Even if you could the screen would be unreadable.
There are a lot of things a laptop is good for - reading e-books for hours on end is not one of them. I've tried :S
Yeah, I think it's way too pricey. Sure, there are people who'll love the convenience of being able to carry all books and newspapers in 1 device, but that's gotta be a niche market. If they had made it cheaper they would have bought over a *lot* of people who're even just casually interested- surely a bigger marketshare.
When will they get this right?
My Dell Mini 9 lasts 4 hours on a charge. My Kindle lasts 2-3 weeks on a charge. Hmm...
Plus, go to school much? I currently have one of my school texts on the Kindle. Paid $10 for it. print version was $38.00 with a buy back of $15.00. So I avoided the hassle of having to go down and stand in line to buy the book, stand in line to sell the book, and still came out $8.00 ahead.
I currently have 2 text books, both of which weigh in at around 20 pounds each. I would GLADLY give up color to be able to have these books on the Kindle as I carry the Kindle with me every time I am on campus, but rarely carry the books due to their size and weight. In addition, I would end up saving around $20-$30 each overall after taking into account the buy/sell difference on the physical media. Oh yea, and I will have these books for reference for the rest of my education career, and once I get out of school.
I look forward to being able to purchase all my remaining textbooks for my Kindle. The savings for this purpose alone will more than pay for the device, plus allow me to retain the books for future reference.
the Kindle is a great device for those who read any great amount, those who receive magazine or newspaper subscriptions, and those who are in school. If you don't fall into those categories, it may not be the device for you, but don't think that because it is not a fit "for you" it is not a fit for everyone.
@Anonymous Coward
I personally figured out that at my university they had every current print edition of all my textbooks at the library. I checked out my text books every year--I'm glad no one else figured out that they could do it.
Obviously, I bought the books I thought I would keep and use professionally, but most I checked out.
@Todd:
"...and still came out $8.00 ahead." - check your math, it should be $13.
@ potato
My netbook cost $340, battery last over 8 hours (reading longer than that just isn't healthy), has a 10 inch screen, is bright enough in sunlight to read, and it weighs 3 pounds. If that is too heavy, then you need to hit the gym really badly.
I never understood the laptop "heaviness" complaints. Most laptops are less than 7 pounds. Seriously people, lift some weights or something. Really, just give the 5 pounders a try.
Wow, it looks really big. But cool non the less
No color, smaller than a Nomad. Lame.
Seriously Amazon! $500.00 buys a hell of a lot of real books from garage sales.
@Look
If only there was a way to carry those 500 books around with me at once that didn't involve a donkey...
You know what's big and NOT cool? That price tag. Pass.
A lama?
What is the need to carry around 500 books? How often will you read those 500 books or more than once?
I rather have full color, and the ability to rent books like a library, or get digital magazine subscriptions for $500.
@look - this one isn't so much for reading books as it is pdf's and newspapers. If you want one for books get the smaller version.And if you buy a lot of new releases the smaller kindle is still a pretty good deal.
$500 for a whooping 16-level of gray scale. You've got to be fool living in the 90s to buy one. What were they thinking?
You guys are too quick to argue with Look on this one. The price is way too high for it and you damn well know it. It doesn't offer color and while its nice to have, I for one could not justify that price to read newspapers and books on the go. Whether this model is for books or newspapers is just a bootstrap argument - the price is inflated based on demand and should be at a more reasonable level. Yet you argue with someone that doesn't think a grayscale overblown pdf reader should be $500 - how odd that you would defend such a price.
what about the ability to carry those 500 books (fiction, history, reference(!!!)) with you all the time and SEARCH THEM rather than pop each reference book open, look at the index, then try to find out which one of the database or network or programming books actualy has what you're looking for...
@jack - if there was ever a situation where you would need to carry around and read those 500 books at one time then i guess this is ok, but in real life, people don't do that
@carlwf That would be pretty cool. Maybe someday someone will come up with a way of keeping all that information in a system that anyone can access using some sort of device perhaps via radio signals. Then you could have nearly unlimited information available to anyone.
That's what she said
Sony prs-505... 269$ and everything you want. Even in black!
I prefer read on black than white... its easier on the eyes...
that sucker is big
$500. Wow.
Still no color huh? So why is this such a big deal again?
You do know that this is primarily for reading books right? Unless you are reading childrens books, what does it matter if its not color?
There isn't a back-light to save battery life and also so it's designed to mimic real paper (no screen glare during the day, and you can read with a book light at night), so colors wouldn't exactly jump off the screen, and are kind of useless.
It's getting more expensive without going to the next logical step. Even limited color for just diagrams and maps would be nice.
@ Paul
You do know that newspapers are in on this too, right? And newspapers have photos. Those photos are in color nowadays.
How about that anatomy book for class? It would be nice for those illustrations to be in color.
Unless you are ONLY planning on reading novels and short stories, it matters if its in color.
Because most books aren't printed in color in the first place.
Still, you need to understand that there is a utility for this device, and technological limitations in place and trade-offs taken to maximize some forms of utility. It's unfortunate that it's not in color, but if it were color, right now, that would mean that it has to be a power-sucking LCD screen that would keep you attached to a wall socket.
500 bucks? Man, I rather get a netbook with that. You can surf the net and download digital books.
However even the best netbook doesn't have a battery life that could come close to the one on this. Nor would it have a screen that is remotely as easy to read in daylight. Plus netbooks aren't really "handheld" devices.
500 bucks? You can get asus nettop around 400. Plus you can do more things on a nettop besides reading digital books and buy stuff from amazon. Or better yet, get a ps3 or a 360 with less the cost.
Right, because you can read books on a PS3 or 360 while on the go.
Look, you all can list all the things that you can get for less money, but NONE of them will produce as good a reading experience as this will. Reading books on a computer, even a netbook, is not convenient or comfortable, especially in an academic environment. And battery life is a serious issue.
While I am NOT one who would even consider spending this much money on one of these, and one who doesn't have the free time to justify the lower-priced Kindle either, there are still no other devices (besides actual books or alternate e-readers) that can top the experience for less money. Certainly not all the things you suggested that aren't ebook readers.
Turbo is correct. The real market for this is students and probabbly businesses. The ability to take all my textbooks to class for referance, without having to bring a rolling suitcase, is awsome. I would actually bring them to class.
Similarly, the ability to take 500 pages worth or reports with me on a trip to read on the airplane without having to print and carry them all is also tremendous.
At the moment I can't see paying $500 for one of these, particuarly because I'm about to graduate. I'd love it if my office bought these things to replace all the paper reports we print, but I also don't see that happening at the moment, and I'm not going to buy one for myself.
I do think this thing would be better in color. Its not a deal breaker to me but being able to see charts and graphs in color would be good. It can be hard to diferantiate curves in an econ text without color, I'm sure anatomy will be even harder without color...
I still think that this ebook market is very niche. It is still cost prohibitive and I'm sure avid book readers really love the feel of a real book in their hands. Mainly I'm focusing on the cost. For me, $199 is a very attractive price point for a device like this. A point on college textbooks, the savings isn't really there if you factor in end of semester buyback, at least at my university, and the fact of navigation. Navigating a physical textbook seems to be far faster than the refresh rate of any ebook on the market today.
If I can get my text books for next semester on this thing I would definitely get get one.
Didn't they just release a new version not too long ago? Another one so soon? Pretty pricey for what it does. Not worth the cost IMO.
i just wanna know if anyone here actually uses one. and if it is worth it. i just don't get the price.
Well I agree that the price for the kindles in general is not worth it. That is why I got the sony version ($200-250 easy). It has everything the kindle has except the wireless. It also has expandable slots and much wider file support. I could see paying 300-400 for a sony version of this bigger screen sans the wireless. Not sure if it would be worth it to me, but for college students or people that read the paper ALL the time I could see it being better.
The big one maybe not, but i use my small one all the time. And if you buy a lot of books it is worth it, as almost every book is 10 bucks, compared to the $20+ of new releases. So you buy about 35 books and you are starting to save money by buying the Kindle (which I have definitely done). Plus you can get all the classics online for free.
My wife and I have one, I think it is worth it.
e-Ink is interesting in that people describe it as being "just like paper." Intelligent people realize that's not the case - those who describe it so just don't really understand what they're looking at. But then you actually see one in person, and all you can say is that it's just like paper. Glossy paper, but paper nonetheless.
I bought the Kindle 2 when it was released earlier this year. For many years I have been wanted an e-Ink display device, because reading on a computer screen hurts my eyes. I can, however, work in front of a computer all day. There's something different about reading. Anyway... I also wanted a way to carry reference material with me. Dictionaries, book collections, song lyrics and chord charts, etc.
However, every e-Ink device failed in some major way for me. When the original Kindle came out, I said "oooh, almost there!" When the Kindle 2 came out, the problems I had with the orginal had been addressed, so I bought it.
I agree that it's a little pricey. I would rather pay $299 for it. But I allow myself to make one big purchase a year, and the Kindle 2 is it for 2009, and I am very happy with it.
"Beautiful Large Display: 9.7" diagonal e-ink screen reads like real paper; boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images"
16 ! GRAY ! WahHOOO...no more monochrome!!!
Oh wait...I just checked...it's not 1985. Sorry. *blush*
Keep your one second page turns eInk. I read on a two pound netbook that costs half as much, has a bright color screen with no lag, reads a huge selection of native formats, can surf the web, and has a nine hour battery.
Of course, the eInk reader should be still going strong after 9 days, not just a few hours....
"Keep your one second page turns eInk. I read on a two pound netbook that costs half as much, has a bright color screen with no lag, reads a huge selection of native formats, can surf the web, has a nine hour battery, is awkward to read books on anyplace but at a table, and makes my eyes water and gives me a headache if I use it for any extended amount of time."
Fixed.