We knew the
Kindle DX pilot programs at Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Pace, Reed, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia would be limited in number, but it sounds like students at those schools will have be extremely lucky or well-connected to get their hands on Amazon's latest -- according to Pace reps at today's launch event, each school will only receive around 50 Kindle DXs for the trial. That's just about 300 total Kindles, and it makes Amazon's
crowing about revolutionizing education seem a little hasty. Not only that, but it's not like the program is particularly ready to go, either: the schools still haven't figured out which classes they'll try and switch over to the Kindle, instructors have yet to be brought on board, and it's still not clear whether Amazon or the schools themselves will pay for the Kindles, although students will definitely have to shell out for the books. That's a lot of dealmaking to get done -- looks like Amazon just gave itself some summer homework.
posted May 6th 2009 4:44PM
And I'm guessing the typical 150 page book that sells for $125 or better for academic classes will be a bargain at $120 for the digital, kindle copy as well.
Of course, you can always get the identical thing in the "international version" for $30 or so.
It seems to cost an awful lot to print academic books in the USA for some reason....
... a real let down of the free market vs socialism ideals there.
- mike
Don't forget the fact that you can't sell the book back at the end of the semester.
"... a real let down of the free market vs socialism ideals there."
haha, funny i only know what you are talking about it because i learned it from a $125 book, publishing companies are the ISPs of the analog world, screw them all
i guess the one benefit of digitizing books is that thepiratebook.net may pop up and really reduce the expense of the tech savvy and morally questionable students
Ahem...you can get a book that costs $180 here in the US for about $5 or less in other countries. And then, there's always the scanner/copier. :)
How do students read when studying? They skim, they scan, they speed read. This cannot be done on a big Kindle because the display updates so slowly. I suspect this version will die if *yet another* purpose is not found for it.
Exactly. Quickly flicking back and forth between pages is a simple convenience that many are not ready to give up. Textbooks are not read the same way as a novel that is ready from A to Z in a linear manner. Multi touch tablet functionality and the ability to high light and make notes using a stylus is the only way of making the Kindle appeal to the masses - No to mention colours of the rainbow.
The idea of the Kindle is great but the device is trying to run before it can walk. How about mastering books before taking a jab at magazines and newspapers? Today the Kindle is a prime example of a dysfunctional early adopters product. Every 6 months or so the edition stocked on the shelves will turn into a dinosaur thanks to a successor featuring giant leaps in functionality and technology. For newspaper reading the Kindle won't be worth my hard earned pounds until 1-2 years when the E-book reader market have left the foetus stage and matured. But by that time LCD based multi touch tables will be in every students rucksack.
Not to mention flipping among different books!
I wasn't too happy with the whole announcement to begin with and this just sums up my disappointment. I don't understand releasing this 3 months after the Kindle 2, especially since its being marketed at universities yet doesn't seem to be much different than the Kindle beside screen space.
As a college student, I will always take a physical text book over this unless some major improvements are made specifically for us.
Amazon should offer an educational discount like Apple does.
I feel that Amazon will be disappointed by lackluster sales of these on college campuses. $500 is what I pay for textbooks already, and it isn't like the ebooks are going to save me any money at all.
Buyback is HUGE for textbook economics. Sure, I spend $150 on a textbook, but if I can sell it used (on Amazon nonetheless...) for $125, that's a giant advantage over spending $75 on digital content.
Back in my day, we had to haul a 9.7" Kindle to school everyday! 30 miles I tell ya!
Won't do much good if they don't have all the necessary textbooks available for the reader.
This really puts a damper on my hopes of using one of these as a freshman at Michigan State next fall. Bummer.
I think this would be really good for technical documentation (manuals, spec sheets, electrical codes).
Right now I have an old fashion binder which is a bear when I travel.
I just wish it didn't feel like I've been punched in the face by the $500 price tag.
I hate this idea, I still have all my engineering books from college with tons of notes on all the pages. I enjoy highlighting as a read and taking notes. I see the kindle fine for average day to day reading of books, newspaper but not for college textbooks. Don't like, boo!
Umm you do know that you can highlight as you read. You can take notes, and you can even search though notes right?
And you can also draw diagrams on the Kindle? No? OK then.
>> "And you can also draw diagrams on the Kindle? No? OK then."
The Kindle doesn't replace ALL paper... just carry a notepad with you.
When I was in college and took notes in class... I took notes on a sheet of paper... not in a textbook.
It does not have a touch screen so how can you draw notes. I assume you can type out notes but that does not help for engineering text books or most of the technical classes I took in college, my books have tons of equations and problems worked out in the books. If it was touch screen I could see this worth while but in the current state I would never use this device for text books.
"but it sounds like students at those schools will have be extremely lucky or well-connected to get their hands on Amazon's latest"
Define lucky. Books are tools. If for some reason this pilot program has some glitches this could affect a student's grade in a class. Gadgets and toys are all well and fine, but if it impacts your grade for some reason.....that said. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they got a book as a backup...just in case.
I don't get it. When I commented in an earlier Kindle post about how this thing won't replace textbooks well, I got blasted and called a troll. I look in here, NO ONE likes it (so far) and there are no "well obviously you don't know what you're talking about" comments.
wtf? engadget commentors are dumb.
ha, i got the same response
"wtf? (*) commentors are dumb." (*) = just name a blog,forum,or social-site.
Welcome to the Internet.
:-D
IMHO, the real problem with current paper-textboxes are about the ecology.
The problem is that printing a text book obviously cost more than a regular book (its bigger, its in color, etc), though still it can't be more than $5 or 10. Then there is an extra cost to ship it since it is so much heavier. Though still that is just a fraction of the cost of a $150+ text book. The rest is going to the publisher and the professor who wrote the book. Its how the system works. I don't see them wanting to cut the price anytime soon.
I would hope that the textbook publishers would try to lower prices enough to make sure everyone buys their own e-book version.
Example... if a standard textbook cost $150 new... the publisher gets the money from that sale. But, when a student sells that book to their roommate for $75 at the end of the semester... the publisher gets nothing on the resale of that book.
But, if textbook e-books were a reasonable $30, and each person *had* to buy it... no piracy... the publisher gets a guaranteed $30 each time a person buys that book. They would make it up in volume.
It would all balance out in the end. Instead of selling one book for $150 that can be passed around for years without the publisher ever getting another dime for it... they would sell cheaper e-books to *every* student.
Will it happen? Probably not in this decade. But the music industry was very hesitant to sell downloadable songs for $1 instead of a CD for $15... but those times are upon us again...
Now if you could write in e-ink for note taking, I'd buy one in a skinny
I'm a college student and I'd like to know why would this be more attractive than me just buying the book; aside from the weight of carrying the book. What makes this better than books to a typical student from elementary school on up to collage
1 Is it sturdy; students throw the bags around can it survive a good fall?
2 Can you resell the DRM TextBook files after you take the class; or can they be transferred to other kindles?
3 What happens if you lose it; do you have to buy all the textbook files over again ?
4 Will the price of the kindle, plus the book files be competitive to just buying the books ?
5 Will it be spill proof?
6 Can I loan out a book file from it to someone else with a kindle like you can normal textbooks ?
7 Can we be sure this wont open up a new monopoly to Amazon with Textbooks if this takes off ?
8 Will there be a color version in the near future sometimes things in some text books have to be in color for them to be understood ?
9 Can you write on the screen and it appear in the books like a way to highlight important notes and info in books.
10 What happens if i have to send it in for repair im about my books for atleast a few weeks and I might need them at that moment.
Oh yeah how does it do with note taking on real books you can write all over pages with notes how does the kindle solve that bookmarking does not count.
People tend to flip through pages and get to the write page because they know where in the book the page is how does kindle solve that.
It would be better if Amazon just made a kindle book where you could flip pages and its a kindle in a book form factor.
yeah I really don't see them replacing textbooks anytime soon, e-books have been around for a while anyway and this doesn't offer nearly as much.
What? $500? You could get a $500 laptop at Best Buy with more functionality than this piece of junk...
Bob why are u such a bob and why are you riding the failasaurus again?
Oh, I'm sorry, didn't realize I wasn't allowed to share my opinion on Engadget. My bad.
The Kindle is not a laptop nor ever will be a laptop. That is why you fail.
I never said it was a laptop, I was saying you could buy a laptop for $500. That's why you guys "fail."
Needs Livescibe Pulse pen integration.
500 US$ is 2 much when a Lenovo S-10 goes for $360.
I want on of these DX things, but I am going to wait until the Kindle 4.0 comes out, because then there will be a price drop in the DX.
ASU has a short article about it on their website, and looks like its going to be used for some honors college humanities class.
http://asunews.asu.edu/20090506_kindle
I don't understand how magazine and newspaper companies think these devices are going to save them. Why would I go to a newspaper when I can get the information straight from the source thanks to the Internet. It is their fault that they did not step up and take the lead to make the sources come to them.
The NYTimes and others should have focused on web-based content ages ago. They should have been the ones to start up Internet content like news related blogging. NYTimes.com is so amazingly barren. They know that their news paper sales are being eaten up by freely available web content (not theirs). They have to offer something more than a digital version of their own content that no one seems to want.
Screen size...
Screen size is important and all but I'm personally more interested in the resolution. With enough resolution displaying the average .pdf is an easy task and about 10 inches is a large enough screen(well, for younger people).
I have like 5 books or so open when studying or whatever. I can't see using a Kindle for it. I do read a lot of normal books on the Kindle. But this textbook stuff won't fly.
As a teacher, I am excited for the day when I have a Kindle-type device for every kid that I can push PDFs to and they can write on. Maybe a touchscreen/stylus? Also if it were LCD/e-ink so it could be easy to read e-ink but you could have color for photos/web searches.
Anyone want to build that, I'd buy a class set.
Look at the Tablet PC. see my comments further down the page.
I think one way the Kindle would appeal to students is if they made a digital copy of a book bundled with the actual textbook for like $1.
This way you'll be able to take the kindle to class if your class requires you to read in class, or if for some reason you want to read the textbook for the hell of it, and you'll have your actual textbook for heavy duty studying.
If the digital copy added $1 on top of the actual cost of the book.*
As soon as the DRM is cracked, it will no longer be an issue.
I am not against Amazon selling etextbooks but after thinking about what I do with textbooks through a little further, the entire idea needs to be brought back to the drawing board.
The fact is, I own a Tablet PC. This is a normal Windows laptop except for the fact that I can draw on the screen - I can take notes, scribble annotations in the margins of a PDF, and highlight that PDF too. What I REALLY need isn't another piece of hardware but another piece of software.
If Amazon and everyone else wants to take a chunk of change from Apple or the textbook manufacturers or anyone else who makes a pretty penny in the academic market, they need to market Tablet PC's. I would LOVE to be able to highlight my textbooks and then remove the highlighting so I can focus on something else (i.e. just display the highlighting I did for dates). I would LOVE to be able to email my notes to peers and get emailed notes in return. I would LOVE to be able to not just move annotations on the page, but search them as well. I would LOVE to be able to attach the tapes I make of lectures to the pages in the textbook that match up with it but you know what? I can't with paper. I CAN with a Tablet PC.
Electronic media offers so much for academia it's unbelievable. The hardware is HERE. TODAY. We just need the software. Amazon - a Kindle may make sense for novels, but for textbooks PLEASE sell us un-protected PDF files and you will make a SHITLOAD of money after partnering with Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, or others along with Microsoft to give Tablet PC's the marketing and shelf-space they deserve.
I have been using a iRex Digital Reader 1000s for a couple of weeks now, and even though it has some major drawbacks that people here have commented also on Kindle (slow page turning, slow loading, skyhigh price..) I still got stuck on it and with a couple of developments I would get one myself. Many criticized annotating on Kindle, and yes even though it's not as flexible with annotations fed in with keyboards, it has an advantage over the digital pen/stylus feeding of iRex: you can search your annotations. Being able to search through text (including my annotations) is actually one of my main arguments for having an electronic reader. Blooy and Homeboy pointed out that students read mostly by scanning and speed reading, well, yes that is the way you search through text with a traditional book, but, i you can search certain words and phrases, you might even be quicker. It has worked well for me, I prefer reading all documents, articles etc even books electronically from my laptop just for that reason. Why I like the reader, is that it's still more comfortable to hold than my macbook when reading and because it's better for my eyes.
I know there's a long way to go to make these devices "perfect" and really usable, but I don't think it takes that long. I would prefer e-reader in notebook-form, with sheets of electronic paper bound together, to increase the feeling of paper and enabling the affordances of paper in navigating through the pages. Anyone know anything about solution like that?