New larger screen Kindle coming May 6

There are articles in today's NY Times and Wall St. Journal about a new larger format Kindle that will be released for better reading of newspapers, magazines, and, in a trial, for textbooks. Several colleges have joined with Jeff Bezos to give the new Kindle to specific college students and load it with their textbooks. Tomorrow, May 6, there will be a public unveiling.

If I would like to have a larger screen Kindle (and who wouldn't?), I wonder if some of us early adopters will get a significant (more than $50) discount.

There was no discount for early adopters when K2 arrived....

My question is how big the unit is as a whole.

I really wouldn't want a larger screen Kindle. Anything bigger isn't going to fit well into my pocketbook, and I assume a larger screen will mean a larger (and heavier) overall unit.

Personally, I'm a big fan of K1, especially for its user-replaceable battery (and the SD card slot is also useful). K1 is just a better constructed piece of hardware than K2. On the other hand, I actually use my K2 much more since its thinner size and lighter weight makes it more convenient to carry around in my pocketbook.

I really don't want anything bigger, though. I'm not that much of a newspaper or magazine reader anyway (although I do subscribe, on my K1, to Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov's Science Fiction), and at my age I really don't need textbooks. Actually, though, now that I'm retired, I've been thinking of going back to graduate school for an advanced degree in English (I was just a few credits short of a Master's degree in English back in the 70s but got distracted with other stuff going to law school), but literary courses don't require "textbooks" in the sense that term's used in reference to eBooks.

This could be beneficial to all Kindle users. I'm sure the students won't be bashful about telling Amazon that their scanning software is inadequate when tasked with scanning graphs, exponents, and formulas; and that the hyperlinks need to be improved. As an investor, I tried several times to tell Amazon, but to no avail. So I sold all my Amazon stock. They'll probably listen to the kids.

>4 IronMike:

And now won't you be sorry you sold!

The Kindle DX looks to be a good addition to the Kindle family. It is targeted at Text Books and newspapers. I don't think this will save the newspaper industry, but who really knows. As for text books, I suspect college students will be the 1st to grab these units. It will probably filter down into the high schools in a few years.

You can all read online about the introduction of the new Kindle DX. It will hold 3500 books (that's almost my entire library of real books). Its screen has a 9.7-inch display vs. 6-inches for the K2 (and K1). It measures 10.4 by 7.2 by 0.38 inches and weighs 18.9 ounces with "about the same heft as a spiral bound paper notebook". It comes with 4GB of memory and can store about 3,500 books. It's priced at $489 (available now for pre-order) and will be available this summer. Articles said that the NY Times and the Washington Post will offer the K-DX to its subscribers at a discount but there are no other details about that.

From PC Magazine: "One key improvement is the addition of an accelerometer. Like the Apple iPhone, the Kindle DX can detect its orientation and rotates the screen accordingly. This lets you view documents, photos, and charts in landscape mode. . . . . The Kindle DX also adds native PDF and RTF file support. Although previous Kindles have been able to display PDFs, this support was experimental and often achieved mixed results. The Kindle DX will ship with native PDF support that uses Adobe Reader Mobile technology."

I don't think the DX will interest me. The greatest benefit of the K1 or K2 to me is the small size and easy portability. My brother, however, is waiting for a Kindle screen that rolls up and fits in his pocket.

I'm perfectly happy with my K1, but I would have loved a KDX in college. Too bad they weren't available in the '70s! Those were the good ol' days of punch cards and green bar printouts.

I always love NEW, but how would it fit in my purse?

Guess I'll await K3.....

Well, Auntmarge, I briefly considered getting a larger purse! Then I had a cup of tea, came to my senses and decided to keep my K1. k4k

>10 krazy4katz:

LOL - hadn't thought of that! Darn, now I'm undecided again (not really, I need a new desktop and can probably get one for the price of the KDX).

I was looking for pictures to see the size difference between the K2 and Kindle DX, and found this article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17630

I could easily fit the DX in my purses, but then I buy purses based on whether or not they'll hold a hardback!

I thought the author of the article was definitely underestimating the costs of textbooks. My university has a rental system ($35 per class for whatever textbooks you're assigned), and each textbook has its cost printed on the inside cover so you know how much you'll be charged if the book is lost or damaged beyond repair. I haven't seen one for less than $130; the average student takes 5 classes and is usually assigned more than one textbook in at least one class, so it would seem like the number is closer to $800 than the $488 the author estimated.

Anyway, I think if universities were really trying to save students some money, they would institute textbook rental, the DX seems like an expensive way to save money, especially since they don't say how much they'll be charging for textbooks. The applied chemistry textbook that came up in search is $96; hemophilia textbook is $175; chemical peels textbook is $280.

I like the larger screen, and some day when my K2 wears out and needs replacing I'll probably jump for the DX (or whichever version is out by then), but judging by the product description it doesn't do anything different from the K2 (except the screen auto-rotation, which is neat).

I asked Amazon 8 questions, and they answered 2. They said they have no plans to upgrade the K2 so that charts and graphs will be readable. Apparently they can't handle more than one or two questions at a time, so I'm asking them my unanswered questions one at a time to make it easy for them.

John W. Moffat is a wonderful scientist working in Canada, who disagrees with Albert Einstein's view of the universe. Moffat wrote a book entitled Reinventing Gravity which I was enjoying on my K2. When Moffat began using the simplest mathematics, however, the K2 screwed it all up. So I asked Amazon: If I buy a DX and order Reinventing Gravity, will they send me the same screwed up version of the book that they sent to my K2, or will they send a new version with the correct mathematical notation?

I await their response.

I didn't check the stock price of AMZN today... (I know the market went up...} but as of yesterday it had dropped about 3 points from where I sold it the other day. (To be technical, I sold it twice...once at $85 and once at $83) I think I'll wait to see what Sony comes out with before investing in the DX.

>> 13 "When Moffat began using the simplest mathematics, however, the K2 screwed it all up."

I'm very curious to see just how Amazon intends to display mathematical symbols on K-DX or any eReader. My understanding is that the Kindle now supports Greek characters, so that's some help with trigonometric formulas, but I'm not sure how an eBook can handle something like the integration sign, especially for definite integrals where you need to indicate the start and end values.

Sure, they can use images, but that's going to create big & clunky files.

Anyway, textbooks so often need color graphics for illustration purposes, where you're trying to show graphs and tables.

I'm just really skeptical about this K-DX thing. Oh well, I'm pretty much past the textbook age anyway.

>>14 CurrerBell: Amazon told me they would send the same screwed up copy of Reinventing Gravity to the DX that they sent to the K2. In other words, they'll send a Kindle file rather than a PDF file. However, they said they will be looking into the problem.

p.s. I didn't sell my AMZN stock out of annoyance... I figured if I'm dissatisfied, lots of others will be dissatisfied too. When the stock dropped to $74, I considered buying it back. I waited too long. Now it's $78.