Comments on: Kindle DX Announced- Who Is It For Again?

By: Gary

Gary — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:48:34 +0000

I’m buying a DX for my Mom who is 84 and suffering from macular degeneration. I’m splitting the price with my Dad and brother. Mom loves to read and can only read her books now with a magnifying glass and a strong light. The large format, variable text size, easy-on-the-eyes e-ink and landscape capability means she can now enjoy her favorite novels and not feel like she’s ‘going blind’. It will give back her independance and pride.
In light of all this, it’s more than worth it!

By: John

John — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:15:52 +0000

Why should they offer you a discount on the DX? You chose to buy it knowing what you were getting.

By: KDF

KDF — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:11:39 +0000

Has anyone actually had their hands on a DX yet? PDF and Mobipocket support is really important for me..

By: dc

dc — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:13:30 +0000

More and more I see Kindle, I ask, why there is not touch interface??? It is so lacking in today’s tech scene I just wonder why it was not designed with it.

By: Sam Hill

Sam Hill — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:59:29 +0000

I will buy it.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:48:32 +0000

Thanks for your post. It is useful for me.

By: SAM

SAM — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:01:03 +0000

Only black and white, large & unfoldable, no
memory card slot?

Aren’t the colur suggestions, multiple file formats, and
more flexibility just re-inventing the tablet pc?

By: Fernando

Fernando — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:48:07 +0000

You make a very good point. To each her/his own. I have not read a newspaper in “paper” form in more than 10 years, and would much rather ready ANY book on my screen (I have been doing it in slate tablet PCs since the old TC1000) than on paper, if I have the option. I even have scanned some old textbooks I use now and again to prepare class lectures (I teach) just so I don’t have to read them on paper.

So for me, this Kindle is a welcomed development, although I do hope that the comment above above the upcoming “iPad” is true. I would really jump on that one.

By: Stephen Feger

Stephen Feger — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:51:36 +0000

That’s a good point and it shows a continuing problem. If the real effort were to get books into digital format and grow the market, then where are the readers for other formats? Why just the Kindle and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Why not Windows, why not Mac, why not Windows Mobile and RIM and Android? I understand these things take time and I was very impressed with the initial effort on the iPod Touch. But it’s a big glaring hole.

The light weight, excellent screen and long battery life of the Kindle are truly impressive and they do make for an enjoyable reading experience. But if has to expand.

Hopefully we’ll see some more software readers in the near future.

By: AL

AL — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:09:23 +0000

James-

The K keyboard is not bad at all. No touch typing, of course, but it is fine for making notations which I do all the time. In my humble opinion, having used both, it is worlds better than an on-screen virtual keyboard.

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:08:49 +0000

I’ve been spoiled using my Tablet PC and PDF Annotator to mark up and highlight PDFs in color. I can’t bring myself to buy a Kindle or Sony Reader and sacrifice that feature.

By: AL

AL — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:04:48 +0000

I have the K1 and K2. My comments:

I am extremely bummed that two months after I purchased the K2, they come out with what I view is a much better and more useful model. They SHOULD quickly offer K2 purchasers a trade-in or a 20% discount.

AMAZON continues to ignore the most important failing of the Kindle line: no ability to organize books. I have 67 books (and theoretically could have thousands) and NO ability to categorize and sort the titles in any way at all. I must scroll through them all. My wife’s K2 has only 12 books and she complains about not being able to sort them into read/unread, fiction/non-fiction, work/non-work…etc. etc. etc.

I personally very much value the large size of the DX, the rotating screen and the PDF capability. Those are meaningful and necessary improvements. Have you tried to read the NYT or New Yorker on your K1 or K2…the DX was needed.

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:51:15 +0000

Anybody depending on annotation with that tiny keyboard will be sadly disappointed, I’m sure.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:12:06 +0000

This is much closer to what the Kindle should have been. I’m interested, though the annotation and highlighting interface will make it or break it for me. Right now I think the annotation/highlighting interface looks somewhat clunky. Also the resolution is somewhat lower than I hoped for. But a good effort and an interesting device.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:08:37 +0000

Ignoring the price and weight/size issue, I don’t think I would want to read a newspaper or text book on an eReader. It’s not how I work. I love reading a real newspaper — scanning through the pages to quickly identify what I want to read, jumping around, skipping somewhere else if an article turns out to be boring. I like reading fiction on my Sony eReader, but it’s generally a sequential/serial process. Start on page 1, read serially to page 350. Done.

Same with computer books: I love to own them in paper format. I also love to have a softcopy in PDF available, so I can always have it on my computer with me, and to make searching easier. But my primary reading will be done with the paper version.

By: bluemonq

bluemonq — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:50:39 +0000

As a couple of folks mentioned before, a thing you missed was native PDF support. This is actually, a pretty big deal. From personal experience, conversion (or rather, reflowing) from PDF to Kindle/Kindle 2 format was between mediocre and atrocious. Mostly due to the nature of the format (absolute positioning and whatnot), but still.

Interestingly enough, if the DX were to take off, I’d expect book piracy to rear its ugly head, as it seems to be pretty easy to find all sorts of books in PDF in the darker corners of the Internet.