by Michelle Lentz
As someone who purchased a Kindle 2 in February, I’m feeling a tiny bit screwed by Amazon. Really, couldn’t you just have released these at the same time so we’d have had a choice? This was a very Apple thing to do. Alright, just had to get that off my chest and so – now the specs …
The new Kindle DX has
- 9.7 inch screen with a squashed QWERTY keyboard at the bottom
- 1/3 of an inch thick (10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″)
- 3.3GB Storage for 3,500 books (an increase from K2′s 1,500 books)
- “Long” battery life
- Native PDF support through built-in reader
- Automatic landscape/portrait text rotation
- Navigation buttons moved to right side of screen only
- Built-in/included EVDO for wireless book downloads
- Still black and white, if anyone is curious
The Kindle DX will be trialed by 5 universities this year (Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College and U of Virginia Business School) and they expect it to “revolutionize learning.” As a current instructional designer and former college instructor, I would agree. I bet the eLearning blogs will be all aflutter about this over the next few days. Imagine how portable learning is becoming on a daily basis! I’m literally pulling this from a few live blogs, but it sounds like Amazon has agreements with Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley to offer 60% of their textbooks on the Kindle. I’m not surprised about Cengage at all – I worked for them in another incarnation of the company and they were always a bit ahead of the curve when it came to forms of eLearning.
The New York Times and Boston Globe (now that they’re friends again), as well as the Washington Post, will be offering their own Kindle experiments this summer. They plan to offer lower prices on subscriptions for longer subscription packages. The NY Times also said that the Kindle DX will be offered to readers in areas where home delivery is not available. I don’t quite understand that yet, but there you go. I am curious if the newspapers will be formatted differently for the DX as opposed to the K2 and if those new subscription rates will apply to K2 owners as well.
So, my big gripe is that Amazon released the K2 in February and then this release a few months later. Really? While I don’t really crave the large screen format (demonstrated with newspapers, textbooks, and sheet music), I would LOVE the built-in PDF reader and auto-rotate to widescreen. *grumble grumble*
Retail price for the DX – are you ready? $489. I’m hoping scholarships or grants help those college kids pay for that Kindle. Ouch! I also don’t think that a $500 price tag is going to help “save” newspapers, as everyone has been chatting about. It might be a step in the right technological direction however.
The Kindle DX is available for pre-order and will be available in “Summer.”
Your thoughts on Amazon’s latest foray into eBooks?
__
Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net