The Kindle DX is available for pre-order, does anyone care?

// May 6th, 2009 // Hardware, Mobile Computing, Op Ed

Today’s announcement of the Kindle DX, a 9.7″ version of the Kindle is being hailed as some sort of savior of the newspaper industry and a breakthrough for the college textbook market.

At almost $500 I don’t see it as either. The biggest negative about the Kindle will also be the last thing fixed, if it is ever addressed, and that is the ability to re-sell your content (or at least lend it to others). I’m sure the textbook companies are falling over themselves to support the Kindle. Here is the ability to sell a text book, with no production/delivery costs, and then know that the book will not be resold at the end of the semester.

The newspaper subscription idea has merit, but then again, they need to lower their subscription rates. I’ve looked at transferring my USA Today subscription to digital, but it costs almost the same as getting a paper copy! At least with the paper copy I can lend/give it to someone else, or cut out an article to save.

Is anyone looking at using the Kindle in a school? What would be the advantages of it over something like a netbook?

6 Responses to “The Kindle DX is available for pre-order, does anyone care?”

  1. Chris Hamady says:
    May 6, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    Ryan,
    You hit the nail on the head. I was planning on giving the evaluation Kindle that our department purchased to our school library. The trouble is, the content that we purchased for it is tied to my dept. credit card and my Amazon account.

    So I would have to get a new CC from the library and jump through hoops moving the Kindle and the content to another account/credit card (if that’s even possible).

    DRM is a pain and I don’t see anything that embraces it standing the test of time.
    Chris

    Reply
  2. Mr.Rcollins says:
    May 6, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    Do they offer any way for schools to own the Kindle and setup the account to have purchases approved and billed to the district?

    Another thought also hit me, the fact that they haven’t released a Kindle reader for any operating system other than the iPhone is probably because of the netbook issue. Why would you buy a Kindle when you could just use your current laptop or buy a netbook?

    Reply
  3. John Rundag says:
    May 6, 2009 at 6:35 pm

    I have been following the Kindle, but until the get the right price point, I will not purchase one. I am an online reader. I do not read very many books. I read to keep up on new technology and to soak in information. If I were going to read a book for enjoyment, I would be more apt to buy it on Audible and listen to it on my iPod.

    Reply
  4. Steve Dickie says:
    May 7, 2009 at 4:36 am

    Well, the Kindle has a couple of advantages over Netbooks. First is battery life. Most netbooks come with smaller batteries that won’t even come close to making it through a school day.

    The second advantage is that a Kindle would not be as threatening to many teachers. I can’t tell you how many teachers complain at me when I mention how great it would be if all our kids had a laptop. I’m continually told how off task and distracted students would be. Most teachers simply don’t want to adapt their teaching styles to suit a 1 to 1 environment.

    My wife has a Kindle and I should point out that it is easier to read a lot of text on it than a laptop screen.

    With all that said, I do have to agree that it is still way too expensive. I don’t really think it has much of a place in high school, but I would have loved one of these in college. Especially if it made text books were cheaper. If it cut the textbook price by a quarter you’d pay for it in a couple semesters.

    Reply
  5. Mr.Rcollins says:
    May 7, 2009 at 7:30 am

    I didn’t think about the “Teacher Acceptance Factor” which is pretty important, but I think as soon as they realize that it has unfiltered Internet browsing the acceptance will go down. :-(

    For the K-12 education market I would suspect they’d need to remove the EVDO modem and replace it with wifi. This should also lower the price since you wouldn’t need to pay Sprint for network access. The other change would be to make it easy to deploy content to the device. A classroom set of these, with wifi, becomes a lot more usable, basically an iPod Touch with a better screen. It will be interesting to see what Apple releases this summer.

    College would’ve been nice with it, if, they lower the cost of the textbooks. I hope they do!

    Reply
  6. Claunda Clearwater says:
    December 4, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    so how many electronic devices should one person have to carry…sorry but to me a kindle is just plain redundant when I already carry around a netbook….and quite frankly eventually that will be obsolete as the phones become more and more sophisticated….it is just that 60yr old eyes can’t deal with the smaller screens (maybe another technology such as lazer eye surgery soon will be able to address that condition). Oh and bty I think watches are redundant too and don’t understand why they are marketed as “status” items. Look at me I have a watch on my wrist that I paid too much for when I have the time on my netbook, ipod and phone!!!!

    Reply

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