Amazon Announces Kindle DX
Posted on 06 May 2009, at 10:42 am, by Christopher Gavula
Although much of this leaked out over the past couple of days, Amazon, at an event held this morning, formally announced the new Kindle DX – a larger-format Kindle, designed to support larger documents like textbooks, newspapers, and PDF files.
The new DX is 9.7″ (diagonally), compared to the Kindle 2’s 6″. It also supports auto-rotation.
They also announced content deals with 3 textbook manufacturers and trials with 5 Universities.
The DX is expected to be available sometime this summer (it’s available for pre-order now) at a price of $489. The Kindle 2 remains available with it’s price unchanged at $359.
In a related announcement a few days ago, Amazon also announced support for the DOCX and RTF formats along with some new fee structures.
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May 6th, 2009 at 10:53 am
What a lackluster event … and even the struggling newspapers only call it an ‘experiment’ and said “We will offer the Kindle plans where our paper is not available to provide our readers with what they want, and where they want it.” (according to the Engadget transcription)
May 6th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Sorry but at $359 it was expensive. At $489 its just wasting money.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Would be GREAT for viewing PDF’s at work.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
You know, it IS a lot of money for a single-purpose device – even the Kindle 2 is a lot of money for what it is, but you have to remember that you are also paying for a lifetime wireless subscription.
I got to thinking about this, and it may become more of a value proposition if you end up paying less for the actual textbook than you would for the paper copy. Those text books can get to be EXPENSIVE! And let’s not forget the convenience of not hauling around a huge bag full of books. But how are you going to scribble your notes into the margins?
May 6th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
There’s also no refund when you sell you books BACK to the bookstore at the end of the term… I agree with you, it could be a huge value add IF AND ONLY IF the price of the text book was insanely on the cheap side. Otherwise, the only thing I’m saving is the amount of books I have to haul around campus, and that’s not that big a deal…
May 6th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“Lifetime Wireless” … yeah, which started with a non-Amazon charge, and has now increased in the charge, and will likely continue expanding in what and how much is charged. In other words, if you read mostly non-Amazon stuff (i.e. had your own eBook library), the Kindle got more expensive recently …
May 6th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I read a lot of stuff that isn’t Amazon. I have a bunch of ebooks and PDFs and I’d love the larger screen Kindle. But its just too expensive when there really is no price benefit to buying it. I don’t see Pearson on Wiley charging $100 for a $200 book just because you’re buying the Kindle version. Actually in some cases I’ve found eBooks that cost more than the paper version.
Amazon would have done good to launch this at the same price as the current Kindle and drop the price of the current model by $100. This alone would have been a HUGE win for Amazon and brought them a much larger number of customers and made today a huge news day. Alas it was just another day of over priced gizmo meets crowd of “meh”s.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:20 am
I agree that I would have liked to have seen a reduction in the current pricing, but I also think that would have angered people who just bought the device in February!