Has the Kindle jumped the shark?
It looks like all the rumors were true, Amazon has unveiled the KIndle DX. A book reader very similar to the Kindle 2, but with a 9.7” diagonal e-ink display capable of displaying PDF’s a full page at a time.
The Specs
- 1/3” thick
- Holds up to 3,500 books, periodicals, and documents
- 9.7” diagonal e-ink screen with 16 shades of gray
- Display auto-rotates from portrait to landscape as you turn the device
- Native PDF support
- 3G wireless “whispernet” by Sprint.
- Long Battery Life
- Text-to-speech reading of books, magazines, & newspapers (when enabled by the author)
Assuming that the original Kindle gets the PDF software upgrade, this is basically just a really big Kindle. A Kindle that is now far less portable due to it’s increased size.
To me this was always a luxury device. Very cool and yes I want one, but with the original Kindle priced at $359 and books still running the same price as most paperbacks I was and still am hard pressed to justify the addition of this single purpose gadget to my arsenal.
But this new one is available for pre-order for a whopping $489. After tax & shipping that’s well over five bills for the new DX. I can do a lot of reading for that kind of cash. heck I can even buy a netbook and some ebook reading software for it and still have a $100 left over to buy 10 e-books for it, and I am not stuck with a one trick poney.
Where does this device make sense? Schools, yes. I can see students buying one of these to put their text books on, especially if the e versions of the textbooks are offered at a reasonable discount to the hard cover ones.
Where else? As a replacement for newspapers and magazines? Maybe, if the publishers subsidize the price. I may pay $200 a year for a few years of the New York Times if, my subscription comes with a free or heavily discounted Kindle or Kindle DX. But for Mags I still say it needs a color screen, and that is something it is seriously lacking, still.
What do you think? Would you spend this kind of cash on a device just for reading books, newspapers and Docs? Would you if it were subsidized?
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