Amazon Kindle DX Details Revealed 312
theodp writes with news that details for the Kindle DX are now available. "Specs-wise, the big changes are a larger 9.7-inch screen that rotates to landscape display, a PDF reader, and more storage space. The Kindle DX carries a $489 price tag (compared to the $359 Kindle 2)." Engadget has a series of pictures from Jeff Bezos' presentation, and the Amazon product information page has further details and a video. According to the press release, Amazon has worked out a deal with The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post to "offer the Kindle DX at a reduced price to readers who live in areas where home-delivery is not available."
Before the FUD creeps in again: (Score:5, Informative)
1. Yes, you can read non-DRM eBooks on Kindle in several formats, includint text and PDF
2. No, your Kindle does not die if you close your Amazon account
3. No, Amazon does not remotely kill your Kindle if this happens
4. And all of your books (including DRM) remain readable if this happens
5. And Kindle DOES have a USB port so you CAN copy files to and from it
6. And this USB port DOES work just like a flash drive so it's not Windows-only
Re:as long as books are cheap (Score:2, Informative)
Re:All such book reads will fail until... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Significant advantages to students: (Score:3, Informative)
And, I should also add, there is an INDEX of the things that YOU have highlighted, browseable as a list and clickable so that you can go to that page and see your highlight in context.
Try to do THAT with a traditional book.
Re:as long as books are cheap (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, but you can resell textbooks (unless the author is cynical and updates every year, and also somehow controls the course and thus makes that course require the new book).
Surely at some point there will be open source textbooks which you can use at your choice of online university that doesn't make you give money to your course lecturer.
If you are that paranoid, (Score:4, Informative)
there is a switch that you can use to turn wireless off. And it's clear that it actually does so, as turning the switch of extends battery life by a massive margin.
No wireless, no connection to Amazon.
You can still get your books, even the DRM ones, just buy them on Amazon, download them, and copy them over with USB.
We pay almost $500 for the ability to read ebooks using this device's user interface. If another make duplicates it or someone comes up with an open platform that does exactly the same things in the same way with a similar industrial design, I'll be happy to buy it.
If you don't need ebooks read on e-ink using the Kindle's interface, I don't know why you'd pay $500 for such a Linux platform.
Re:Good Next Step (Score:3, Informative)
Kind of hard to support when there's no mouse or touch screen.
According to the user's manual, the Kindle DX has a table of contents navigation feature that is usable with their proprietary format. Some PDFs have a table of contents information, displayed as you said in the bookmark pane of a PC based reader. The manual states that the TOC menu item is grayed out (disabled) for PDFs.
So the TOC navigation tools are there, they just don't allow them to be used with PDFs. For a large PDF, such as the USB spec, the TOC is very useful for navigation.
Well mine is well over a year old, (Score:3, Informative)
And still no sudden screens saying:
"TURN ON WIRELESS NOW SO THAT WE CAN DISABLE YOUR DEVICE OR YOUR DEVICE WILL DISABLE ITSELF."
I guess that's always possible, though.
Anything's possible.
Even if it did happen, I've had enough use out of mine that I'd feel as though I got my money's worth.
By the way: what's stopping your Laptop from doing the same? Or your GSM phone?
Re:as long as books are cheap (Score:2, Informative)
Re:as long as books are cheap (Score:3, Informative)
Let me preface by saying I'm a huge Kindle fan - I love mine!
BUT as wonderful as ebook novels are, I don't think any ebook reader I've ever seen would be very useful as text books - at least with current tech. No electronic bookmarking system can compare to a sticky stuck in a book - or even fingers when you need to flip back and forth between a couple different sections to work out a problem. Even the DX screen is small compared to most texts. And pictures/diagrams/drawings? No way - completely inadequate on a Kindle.
For lit & philosophy classes, sure, I'll take the kindle any day. For calculus, engineering, biology - no way!
Re:as long as books are cheap (Score:3, Informative)
Then the publisher makes minor alterations to the text from one year, giving the school and the (school owned?) bookstore the opportunity to phase out last year's book with a nearly identical one. This is planned obsolescence at it's finest.
This is nearly entirely the publishers. Bookstore prefer used book programs believe it or not. I used to do temp work in the college bookstore at the beginning and end of the semester every year, and while that hardly makes me an expert in the field I know this much. We made higher margins on the used books than we did on the new ones. I don't remember the exact formula, but I believe we bought used books back for 40% and sold them for 75% of their new book value. By contrast we sold new books for a 20% markup or something along those lines. Our manager was always just depressed as anyone else when books went into new editions.
Not quite right, I'm afraid, and I wish it was... (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite right, I'm afraid, and for reasons that are downright embarrassing, speaking as a publisher of a textbook...
It's not the IP of the author that's the expensive bit. In fact, it would be lovely and wonderful if it was. Unfortunately, that's not what is happening.
Most of the time, when a textbook is put into print, all the copyrights are bought by the textbook company. The author(s) get a royalty, but they've lost the rights. The textbook is then marketed to universities, where a captive market is put together. So, once you have the students forced to buy the book because it's the course textbook, the publisher can price it however it pleases. And it does. The students get ass-raped, and the authors may very well be exploited alongside them.
And that's how a book that shouldn't cost the end reader more than $50 on a bad day becomes a $120 book. No prima donna authors about it. And don't think for one minute the book being offered as an e-book will change that.
(And no, I won't touch those practices with a 10-foot pole. That sort of thing is absolutely disgraceful. The textbook I published, a book on ancient humour, prices out at $32.95 USD to the reader, and the only reason it is at that price is that at the time it was put to the printer the Canadian dollar looked like it was going to stabilize at around $1.10 USD. And, I might add, the copyrights on all of the books I publish belong to the authors.)
Re:as long as books are cheap (Score:3, Informative)
But at least if you drop a book, you can still pick it up and read it. Worst you do is bend a corner.
Drop your kindle, its time to cry.
Re:All such book reads will fail until... (Score:3, Informative)
people won't worry about ruining them at the beach
e-Books are much better for reading at the beach than paper books, at least in terms of resistance to salt, sand, water, etc. Just put your e-book in a big ziploc baggy. It doesn't interfere with reading, and protects it so well you can throw the book in the waves if you like. Don't do that with a paper book (unless it's in a baggy, but you have to take it out to read it).
The only downside to an e-book reader on a public beach is that someone might steal it while you're swimming.
As for dropping them... I've been reading primarily on e-Book readers for almost 10 years now (starting with a Rocketbook) and it's really never been a problem. I don't drop them much, and in the rare case it happens, they've survived fine. They're built to take a little abuse, like a cellphone.