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Kindle DX Unveiled -- Amazon's New Large Format Kindle

mkrishnan

mkrishnan

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Jan 9, 2004
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Grand Rapids, MI, USA
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The media has been reporting that Amazon will introduce a new Kindle tomorrow at Pace University... as the information builds up, the consensus seems to be that the new device will not be a replacement for the Kindle 2 but rather a large format reader aimed at fueling transition of magazines and newspapers to the Kindle. Just rumored today is that the device will be called the Kindle DX.

Amazon is slated to debut the latest version of its Kindle, said to be a large-size version of the popular e-reading device, on Wednesday at a press conference at Pace University in New York. That much we heard yesterday, according to various reports. But Tuesday morning we learned what seem to be a few more details about Amazon's new Kindle, including its name: the Kindle DX.

The tech blog Engadget was first to post not only more details collected from a number of different news sources, but also four pictures of the new Kindle, taken surreptitiously by cell phone camera, of what appears to be a dry run of Amazon's Pace University presentation. The Engadget pictures, viewable here, show a few different angles of what definitely looks to be a larger-size Kindle, including a size comparison, side by side with the current Kindle 2, with each Kindle displaying a digital copy of The New York Times.
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One noteworthy feature appears to be that it will have a PDF reader, a feature that would have been a nice extra on the Kindle 1/2.

I do have to say on the other hand that, having just gotten a Kindle as an early birthday present, at least the rumors, if true, are not something that makes me regret my purchase. A no-keyboard model that had a larger screen with minimal edge real estate might have been drool worthy to me personally, but the "DX" looks like it would be too big and cumbersome for things like reading on the train and have little advantage for books over the Kindle 2.

On the other hand, I didn't make any attempt to measure it, but at the claim of a change from a 6" screen to a 9.2" screen, the photos make the new Kindle seem much larger.
 
I'd love PDF support. It's rather hard to consider buying one when I work for the library though. Plenty of dead trees to read and it's easier on the eyes compared to pixels.
 
Eidorian said:
Plenty of dead trees to read and it's easier on the eyes compared to pixels.
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I hear you! My impression after nearly a month of using mine is that it makes me read more and read more regularly, which was really the biggest goal. I'll have to see if that sustains. Of course, that's not an issue for everyone -- that's unique to me. I hope it'll have the same impact that the iPod had on my music listening, and lead me to more regularly enjoy books like I've more regularly enjoyed music these past several years.

The PDF feature would be pretty great... the claimed size is big enough for things like reading journal articles. I don't know how much I'd actually do it, but I might. But it wouldn't be worth the trade away from a one-handed use weight and size....

Separately, I hope that Amazon might have some software update announcements up their sleeve, too? If they emulated Apple in that regard, it would be quite nice if they're working on some good new features for this thing... I understand that the improvements between the software that bowed with the first Kindle and the current software are already fairly significant.
 
For me it steps into the grey are of a mobile internet device. You start looking at the price of "just a book reader" and start comparing it to a netbook or other cheap devices.

I'll wait for it to show up first before I go further though.
 
Eidorian said:
For me it steps into the grey are of a mobile internet device.
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One thing that surprises me about the Kindle is how slow it is, generally, at things like page rendering. Very usable for reading books, but I wonder about other kinds of uses. Even if it displayed graphics, I'm not sure the web browser on the Kindle would be particularly useful.

We'll see what tomorrow holds, though!
 
I must admit.. I love the Kindle app for the iPhone.
I need another piece of hand tech like I need a hole in the head, but I do somewhat pine for a kindle (original flavor).
 
mkrishnan said:
The PDF feature would be pretty great... I hope that Amazon might have some software update announcements up their sleeve, too?
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If this new device has native PDF display capability and Amazon doesn't provide a software update for the Kindle 2 that provides this capability as well, I will be quite sad. Let's hope they do the right thing.
 
twoodcc said:
i haven't gotten into ebook readers yet, but maybe i will one day, especially if it makes me read more often.
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I'd love an ebook reader. I have Wattpad on my iPhone and I love it to bits. (I know it's probably the least legal of them all, but quite apart from anything else I find it the easiest to read with)

The thing that's holding me back (I know my reading would shoot up) is that I wish I could say buy a physical book and have it come with a cd or something which had the ebook on it. I want the book in ebook and in its tangible, physical 'cant be lost in a hard drive crash or rendered useless by a broken reader' form, but I don't want to pay for it twice.
 
I read that Amazon isn't letting newspapers or magazines run their own ads in Kindle versions, which is a big negative for them. Never mind the fact that print media is going down the tubes anyway.

For magazines, at least, a good deal of them will lose a lot of their appeal from the grayscale screen. National Geographic on the Kindle? Pathetic.
 
I blogged about this when Kindle 2.0 was released.

In summary I can't see it taking off until you can get full colour screens that exactly replicate the printed newspapers and magazines that they will replace.
 
Looks promising... but just FYI, already being discussed here

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
jonharris200 said:
Now formally unveiled at http://www.amazon.com/.
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So it seems that, so far, they are sticking with the PDF feature (and the screen rotation) as special to the DX?

Ahhh, well, I'll be curious to see if the larger unit takes off. The long-term pipeline for Kindle developments looks good. As an aside, I noticed that the text in Bezos's letter is "every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds." I thought this was new, but I guess this had always been the tagline. It's not possible now, though, is it? Is there a plan for making foreign language titles available? It occurred to me that I still really want to read Master & Margarita in Russian....

str1f3 said:
$500!!!...for students? What a joke!
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I wonder whether this will fly or not. If you think about book costs at elite Universities, over the four years I was at Michigan, my books easily cost on average $300-400 per term. If the Kindle is going to cost $500 and the textbooks for it are still going to cost $100 each, forget it. But if this can be used to drive the price of publishing textbooks down, it might have some real potential.
 
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I don't see this taking off. Price point is quite high for basically a single purpose device, wtf, where's the color screen? If Apple or someone else comes out with a tablet type device that will do what Kindle does plus more, why would you want this?
 
rdowns said:
I don't see this taking off. Price point is quite high for basically a single purpose device, wtf, where's the color screen? If Apple or someone else comes out with a tablet type device that will do what Kindle does plus more, why would you want this?
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For now, Apple and everyone else is limited by the fact that any competing color tablet device will have vastly inferior battery life... mostly serious consensus is that color devices won't be realistic until color digital ink displays arrive in about a year.
 
Cool.

This Kindle has a 9.7 inch screen.

Is it just me, or does that size seem to be cool for an iPod touch device? The missing table touch.

Maybe we are seeing a preview of the new iPod touch with 10.4 inch screens.
 
mkrishnan said:
For now, Apple and everyone else is limited by the fact that any competing color tablet device will have vastly inferior battery life... mostly serious consensus is that color devices won't be realistic until color digital ink displays arrive in about a year.
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The question for an Apple tablet is can it get you through a full day of classes. There are already netbooks out there that can do this. It's not that far of a jump for Apple to use these kinds of processors (such as Intel's Atom or an Arm Processor). Combine this with the battery technology of the 17" Macbook Pro and it potentially alleviate those problems. It will use the iPhone OS so it will not as demanding of power as OS X.


With a b&w display for the Kindle DX, it really does not solve student's problems. There are books with bar graphs, pie charts, & anatomy diagrams that need color just for the sake of helping a student understanding it better.
 
str1f3 said:
The question for an Apple tablet is can it get you through a full day of classes. There are already netbooks out there that can do this. It's not that far of a jump for Apple to use these kinds of processors (such as Intel's Atom or an Arm Processor). Combine this with the battery technology of the 17" Macbook Pro and it potentially alleviate those problems. It will use the iPhone OS so it will not as demanding of power as OS X.


With a b&w display for the Kindle DX, it really does not solve student's problems. There are books with bar graphs, pie charts, & anatomy diagrams that need color just for the sake of helping a student understanding it better.
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Interesting points... if a device like the Apple tablet you describe comes out, it won't look anything like the mock-ups... It's going to weigh 2-4 times as much as a Kindle DX to get that kind of battery life, and it's going to be a lot bulkier -- none of those netbooks are less than 0.4" thick. And the iPhone OS may reduce power consumption demands somewhat, but the iPhone itself is nowhere near being able to be used for something like book reading for many hours a day -- the iPhone Kindle app burns a fair amount of battery life.

Color does seem to be an issue for textbooks... also apparently they don't have a deal with McGraw-Hill.
 
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