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

mkrishnan said:
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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I'm not worried about weight. I don't look at it as a comparison to the Kindle but to carrying around 20-25 lbs. of books on your back during the course of a day.
As for the battery life, it will be an issue no question. But if a EEE PC 1000HD manages to get 9.5 hours (running XP no less) I'm sure that Apple can manage to push 11-12 hrs. with the far more lightweight iPhone OS. It will never approach the Kindle it terms of battery life, but it can potentially be the only item that you need to carry unlike the Kindle. Besides, on a college campus, you are never too far away from a battery outlet.
 
To me, the value of the Kindle (or any eBook reader) is the digital ink. An Apple tablet could certainly offer a lot more capability, but for a guy like me - it's all completely irrelevant due to the screen.

I've been waiting for more resolution out of any eBook reader, and I've been waiting for native PDF support from the Kindle. The DX seems to fit the bill. Now if only Amazon would allow custom application development, I'd be all set!
 
Agreed with both points.

I want to just leave the device on and know that I'm not using up any power. I read a LOT of PDFs, and while colour would be nice, I'd be interested in a PDF reader because it has a battery life of several weeks. I could go to a conference and have all my PDFs with me to read when I can. The last thing I want is another device that runs out of juice in 3-4 hours. Even 8-10 hours of battery life, which is around a full day's worth, isn't enough.


As a non-American, my only issue with the Kindle is the price, which bundles a lot of things I can't use. If the Plastic Logic reader, which is A4 sized and looks prettier, was around the same price or less, I'd rather go for that. It's a bit larger, and looks nicer.
 
dmr727 said:
To me, the value of the Kindle (or any eBook reader) is the digital ink.
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Agree. Being able to markup a document with notes and highlights is a very powerful feature for the user. This is especially true if you can go both ways from computer to reader and vice versa.

dmr727 said:
Now if only Amazon would allow custom application development, I'd be all set!
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Wonder if they will do that down the road?

Abstract said:
The last thing I want is another device that runs out of juice in 3-4 hours. Even 8-10 hours of battery life, which is around a full day's worth, isn't enough.
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True. Long battery life is very important to me as well.

Abstract said:
If the Plastic Logic reader, which is A4 sized and looks prettier, was around the same price or less, I'd rather go for that. It's a bit larger, and looks nicer.
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Yes it does. It also seems more conducive to loading what you want on it from your PC/Mac.

Looking forward to seeing it in the wild.

Any idea on how much it will cost?
 
I'm seriously considering getting a DX after hearing about the pdf support. even if I can't find my books in the kindle format. I'd be willing to scan them in and use the OCR in acrobat. It's still much less cumbersome than carrying 50lbs of books with you everywhere. I'll agree that the lack of color could be a bit of a pain, but it seems like the pros outweigh the cons here. the battery life is phenomenal, the screen won't get to your eyes after hours of reading like a standard lcd does.
everyone I know with a kindle or kindle 2 love them. I never liked them because of the tiny screen, I didn't want to have to pan around to see everything. That's why I have my iPhone. The wireless connectivity couldn't mean two sh**s less to me. I really don't intend on using the amazon book store. The PDF support is all I need.
 
Washington Post offered some additional analysis on possible financials for the Kindle family today. I thought a few pieces were juicy:

How Big Can The Kindle Get?

Meanwhile, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney for now is sticking with his 2010 projection of $1.2 billion in Kindle sales, which would account for over 4 percent of the total?that is next year. Mahaney isn't going out further than that yet, but he may soon "up that estimate a bit," he wrote in a note this morning. Why? One reason is because Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos threw out a tantalizing detail yesterday about the Kindle's growing traction: For the books available on the Kindle, unit sales are tracking at 35 percent the level of the same titles in print, up from 13 percent in February.
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In particular, I had not heard that the 35% of print sales rate amounted to a substantial increase from only a few months ago. Also they provide a quantification of this number against all books sold in NA:

Mahaney estimates that the Kindle already accounts for "about 10% of total North American book units," or or 4 million books sold during the first quarter out of a total of 38 million books, he tells me. Those 4 million Kindle books equated to an estimated $34 million in revenues during the quarter (which doesn't include sales of the Kindle device itself) and added 2 to 3 percent to Amazon's growth in media revenues for North America. Mahaney also thinks that the 35 percent sales figure suggests that Kindle owners are buying two books per month on the Kindle.
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More impressive than I had thought...
 
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