A really quick summary:
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Kindle Goes Deluxe With The DX
Posted May 7th 2009 1:01AM by Deidre Woollard
Filed under: Gadgets
Care to read your newspaper on a Kindle? Amazon has unveiled the Kindle DX (the DX stands for deluxe) that has a 9.7 inch screen with graphics (still black and white, no color). The new Kindle DX will cost $489 but as our sister blog Daily Finance reports, if you subscribe to the New York Times, Washington Post or Boston Globe, it will cost less. The exact amount less hasn't been determined yet but instead of having your paper show up on your doorstep each morning it will be waiting for you on your Kindle.
The latest Kindle has 3.3 GB of storage which can hold up to 3,500 books and there's no monthly cost for the 3G wireless access. So for there is no release date but you can pre-order on Amazon. When it does begin shipping Amazon will also launch trial programs at several universities to put textbooks on the DX this fall.
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Kindle Goes Deluxe With The DX
So this is pretty big. Everything this new Kindle can do makes sense, even though it comes with a price ($489).
It's incredible that you can access the 3G network at no cost to purchase books and newspapers and access blogs and Wikipedia. It has a built-in dictionary to look up words at anytime, and it now reads PDFs natively (a huge improvement).
The larger screen is incredible. This opens the doors to other markets beyond books: newspapers, magazines, textbooks, business documents, etc.
- Do you think this will further open the doors to electronic reading?
- What impact will this have in the further growth in ebook sales?
- What impact will this have on newspapers and magazines?
- What hangups do you have on using a device such as this?
Personally, I'm excited for this kind of device. I'm a bit biased since I work in publishing, but as a techno-geek and reader, it goes beyond that. I really think Amazon is getting it right here. They're helping build a market for electronic reading materials, which is certainly a boon to them. The market seems to be focusing on Kindles, and so now I'm wondering why we're not hearing as much from Sony and the other manufacturers. With this new Kindle design, they certainly have a lot of catching up to do...and I have a feeling the screen (e-ink) technology has much room for improvement. It will be interesting to see the technologies for these devices develop.
Is the Kindle becoming the iPod of reading materials?