Jason Cross Dot Net Drums, Guitar, Misc Rants and Magic the Gathering

Kindle DX

So here is what I think about the Kindle DX. Let me start by mentioning that I really love the idea of an e-book reader. That is not because I am a tech nut, or that I think everything is better with electricity but rather because I have shelves of dusty books that I am tired of looking at. In a perfect world all books are available on an e-book reader so I can get rid of all my book shelves and dedicate that space to something that doesn't collect as much dust. Lets face it, you probably buy a book, read it, and then put it on the shelf. Maybe 2 years later you read that book again. In the mean time it is collecting dust and creates an eye sore in your room. It would be one thing if all books were the same size and shape and looked awesome in a room. But now a days books are every different size and they have bright colors that are made to pop them off the shelf so that you purchase them. The idea of keeping 1500-3500 books in a single machine that is the size of a small stack of papers is super appealing to me. So right from the get go, I am gung ho for these Kindles.

This brings up the question about Kindle vs. all the other potential book readers. I have heard rumors of Apple working on an e-book and I have even seen Sony's version in the store, but those just don't have the same magic as the Kindle series. Sony has a way of trying to make everything more complicated than it should be. Books are simple. I like what Amazon has tried to do with the Kindles. Keep it Simple Stupid must be pasted in their office. Apple might come out with a Tablet PC, but that would be a back lit screen with short battery life that would run $34,000. I am just not sure that these other companies would be content having a machine that just shows words on a page. Even now many people are screaming for the Kindle to surf the web and do other things which makes the Kindle a laptop which makes it not good for books which brings us back to the start. In my opinion we should keep the Kindle a book reading device only.

So what about the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX? I have been buying books on palm pilots for years. I am an early adopter of this technology. I have read books on very small screens and have had no problems. I have never read a textbook on such a device however. I can see where a textbook would be something that is not easily viewed on a small screen. So for textbooks the Kindle DX looks like an excellent choice. Long battery life, excellent design and the ability to download books without using a computer make it an excellent choice for schools. I hope that many colleges adopt this and start requiring that the books are purchased this way. The amount of resources that are saved by not printing a 1000 page monster textbook is huge. Why be wasteful in this day and age where we have the technology to get the job done? The standard Kindle is great for most readers. Those of us that read standard books that come in paper back form. The DX is awesome for anybody that wants to read textbooks and newspapers and doesn't want to carry textbooks and news papers. So really it is just a question of how it will be used.

I have read online that many people don't think that the $489 price tag is very kind. I agree it seems steep, but last year I paid $1500 in textbooks for my senior year in school. I now have an entire shelf of books that I would like to keep because someday I might want to return to the information. If those books were half as much on the Kindle as they were in the book store I would have saved $300 in the first year. I would have less clutter in my home and I could archive those books to use them whenever the need came up. So in my case I think the Kindle DX would have been a great value for me.

Now if I didn't read textbooks the Kindle 2 would be the way to go. I have an entire shelf of Stephen King books that have about 2" of dust on them. I would like to read "The Stand" again sometime so I keep the book around but it is amazing how dirty the book has become over the last several years. This doesn't even take into account the fact that using the Kindle 2 I could access new books in minutes. No more driving to the store or making the UPS guy deliver a tiny book using 4 gallons of gas to my door. It is just more efficient and that is why I love the concept of it.

Here are the comparisons:

Kindle 2 6" Screen
Kindle DX 9.7" Screen

That may not seem like much, but it would make lots of difference when viewing full page documents. Add an inch of screen size and you really increase the viewable area of a screen by a larger percentage.

Kindle 2 holds 1500 books.
Kindle DX holds 3500 books.

I don't own 1500 books so the Kindle 2 would be good for me. I only know one person that owns 1500 or more books, but I don't think he reads them all at the same time. So 3500 books seems like more than enough even for the person that only reads books all day long.

Kindle 2 supports PDF through conversion, while the Kindle DX supports PDF right from the box.

Again this has something to do with screen size anyway. I don't think I would read many PDF files on a Kindle 2 but that is because I would be reading mostly books and novels on that device. So the PDF feature really isn't a big one. On the other hand if you are a student you will definitely make use of this feature in the DX. So again it depends on the type of reading that you are doing.

Things for the Future:

I can really see this Kindle thing catching on like MP3's. Now that the DX supports PDF I can envision a day when papers in college are to be saved in PDF, and then posted so that they are automatically delivered to the professors Kindle. Maybe they will have a professor version? The balance in all of this however is to not have the Kindle cross the line and become a laptop computer. It needs to be a niche device that is made specifically for reading. The minute that the Kindle becomes an "all in one" device it will loose its appeal because of the complicated nature of the laptop. The more a machine can do the more knowledge is required to use it and the more things that can go wrong. You can pick up a book and read it. That is what the Kindle needs to stay true to. You must always be able to just pick up this device and start reading within seconds. As long as Amazon keeps this in the back of their minds I think there is a really strong future for e-books.

Popularity: 2%