With the Kindle DX I can have almost all of the lovely stories that I rememebr from my younger days as well as new things from up and coming writers that I like. I hae problems grasping things (arthritis), but the Kindle DX is very easy for me to use and with the ability to chnage the font I can read easily with out the eye strain that had given me such bad head aches.

Like my computer this is another window to the world outside and it makes my life richer every time I pick it up. I recommend it to anyone who like reading but is short on storage or who just wants to be able to have their favorites at the flick of a switch.

Yes they don’t have every book but I am sure that will continue to grow in scope as time goes by, where else are you going to able to store 3,000 plus books in an area the aise of a magazine? I really like the rotation thing as well if I get tired of holding it upright I just open out the cover (I got the nice leather one) and stand it up on it’s own.

By	Arry’shanna-Selene

]]> http://blogger.sanook.com/amzonkindledx/2009/07/07/customer-reviews-kindle-dx/feed/ http://blogger.sanook.com/amzonkindledx/2009/07/06/amazon-launches-kindle-dx/ http://blogger.sanook.com/amzonkindledx/2009/07/06/amazon-launches-kindle-dx/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:50:34 +0000 new_sukae1@sanook.com http://blogger.sanook.com/amzonkindledx/?p=18 Amazon Launches Kindle DX

Amazon introduced the third edition of its Kindle this morning, a version that, in addition to offering trade books, will now display textbooks, computer books and cookbooks on a 9.7 inch electronic display screen that includes 16 shades of grade—the same gray-scale as the Kindle 2. Magazines and newspapers, already available on the Kindle, will increase their presence on the new device. Price for Kindle DX is $489 and Amazon will start shipping the device in the summer.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was present at the press conference at Pace University in lower Manhattan to unveil the Kindle DX, which is essentially a larger, enhanced version of the Kindle 2. Bezos quicky reviewed the commercial history of the Kindle beginning with the growth in titles available—90,000 titles in 2007 up to 275,000 today. “We have what people want to read,” he said noting as well the low battery consumption, nonbacklit e-ink screen, no computer needed and most importantly, 24-7 wireless connectivity on a cell phone network—“no need to run looking for hot spots,” said.

Amazon hopes the larger screen and improved display will entice students to use Kindle DX and Cengage, Pearson, and John Wiley have agreed to make textbooks available through Kindle DX. Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College, Pace—unannounced at the press conference—and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia will launch trial programs this fall in which they will distribute Kindle DX to students across a range of subjects. “We look forward to seeing how the device affects the participation of both students and faculty in the educational experience,” said Barbara Snyder, president of Case Western.

The controversial text to speech function will be enabled on the Kindle DX. According to Laura Porco, director of Kindle books, the university pilot program will have “hundreds to thousands” of students and include “hundreds to thousands” of textbooks. Textbook prices, she said, will be unchanged. Geoffrey Brackett, provost for academic affairs at Pace, said Pace would have about 50 students in “discreet sections of coursework” included in the pilot. And while he suggested that Pace would likely subsidize the price of the devices to some extent, he said students would likely pay for the textbooks. But he emphasized that the details of the pilot arrangement were still being negotiated. “We think this will be highly useful and efficient for students,” he said.

To induce newspaper readers to use Kindle DX, Amazon is teaming with The New York Times (Times publisher A. O. Sulzberger Jr. was at the press conference), the Boston Globe and Washington Post in a program that will let would-be subscribers who live in areas where there is no home delivery to buy the Kindle DX at a reduced price if they agree to subscribe to a long-term subscription to the paper via the Kindle DX.

By Jim Milliot and Calvin Reid

Amazon Kindle News) The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) has filed a lawsuit against Arizona State University to stop the University from purchasing the Amazon Kindle DX to replace textbooks in the classroom. Both the NFB and ACB say that the Amazon Kindle DX cannot be used by blind students. The main contentions in the lawsuit is that while the Kindle DX has a text-to-speech feature, the menus to select a book or purchase a book are not blind-friendly, making it impossible to select textbooks for download.

Six educational institutions, including ASU, are deploying the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks in the classroom. The NFB and ACB have also filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, asking for investigations of these five institutions, which are: Case Western Reserve University, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Pace University, Princeton University, and Reed College. The lawsuit and complaints allege violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

“Given the highly-advanced technology involved, there is no good reason that Amazon’s Kindle DX device should be inaccessible to blind students,” says Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind. “Amazon could have used the same text-to-speech technology that reads e-books on the device aloud to make its menus accessible to the blind, but it chose not to do so. Worse yet, six American higher education institutions that are subject to federal laws requiring that they not discriminate against students with disabilities plan to deploy this device, even though they know that it cannot be used by blind students. The National Federation of the Blind will not tolerate this unconscionable discrimination against and callous indifference to the right of blind students to receive an equal education. We hope that this situation can be rectified in a manner that allows this exciting new reading technology to be made available to blind and sighted students alike.”

By Joe Tracy

In my initial review of the Kindle DX I rated it 3 stars, but am revising that upward to 4 stars as I have used it more. This is primarily due to the excellent readability of the screen and the sheer utility of the device. I had not bought a Kindle previously because of lack of true PDF support and returned a Sony Reader because of very poor PDF support. One of my key reasons for wanting the Kindle DX was the promised PDF support. My impressions so far: 
1. The software puts Kindle format reading ahead of PDF, MP3, and browser support. I am fine with that to start, but hope Amazon will put the resources behind software updates to improve the Kindle DX for these other data types. 
2. The PDF support is servicable, but has room for improvement. For PDF articles it does a great job. For PDF books downloaded from the web (Google books or Internet Archive), will occasionally get “Some elements on this page could not be displayed” messages. These pages take extra long time to render. Hopefully, Amazon will identify the sources of these “elements” and improve the PDF rendering. As stated in other reviews, the Kindle DX does not support PDF index and other features, which is not ideal for book-length PDFs. Also, in general loading and turning pages in PDF is somewhat slower than the book formats. 
3. PDF cropping of white space is inconsistent. On clean PDF articles, it works great. On scanned books from the web in general will not work (I assume it is interpreting the noise lines near the edge as a real feature). A zoom would be helpful here with no loss of content. 
4. It is nice and convenient to have audio capability built in, eliminating the need to carry a separate audio player. However, the experimental version included is so rudimentary it is barely usable. The MP3’s sound nice (thru headphones, marginal thru speakers). There are play, stop, and forward buttons, but they forgot the back button. One needs to let the last song play out before it will loop back to the beginning. Add to this you cannot view what MP3’s are on the machine (except by using your computer in USB mode) nor set the play order. Hopefully Amazon will create some kind of audio player to create at least basic functionality. 
5. Keyboard buttons could have been a little bigger and more spread out in the same space on the bottom of the Kindle DX. That would have helped a lot. Typing into webpages is somewhat painful. I consider this a lesser sin for this generation of book reader, but would like to see something better in future generations. 
6. Some kind of foldering system would be nice. At this point I have loaded ~100 files, which take 7 pages on the home screen to go thru. Again, I hope Amazon puts the resources behind improving the software. 
In the future, I can imagine a Kindle size device that is a great book reader that you can read in bed, on an airplane, or just generally traveling about. It will have an audio player. It will be in color, providing full support to color books and PDF. It will also likely include a web browser (though how web access is paid for is separate issue). Nothing like this exists on the market today (net books and tablets just are not there yet either). Hopefully someone will see this as a vision for a product that will displace all current book readers. 
The Kindle DX is a step in that direction, and has some really nice characteristics-excellent screen rendering, very long battery life (4 days and still have half the initial charge), and portability. These are the reasons that justify to me purchasing the Kindle DX over a netbook or tablet for reading books and PDFs. I think the vision above is a few years away, and the Kindle DX can provide a lot of value now, so I am overall happy with my purchase. I hope Amazon will make me even happier over time by software improvements. 

BY Thomas Block

It is a little heavier than I had hoped and the slide switch, located at the top of the device, is a little cheesy as is the tiny keyboard. Both could be slightly larger. The button for turning the page is conveniently located on the right side, or left for you South Paws, if you just turn your Kindle upside down (remember the text follows you). The other controls are also strategically located making for a user friendly product.

I don’t for one minute regret buying this device. Granted it is a little on the expensive side, but you are saving all kinds of $$$ by ordering the books electronically at prices that are drastically reduced. The most glaring deficiency is the fact that it is does not provide color graphics. When paying almost $500 this should be standard. It is because of this, and this alone, that I give the Kindle DX four instead of five stars.

In conclusion, if you are a serious reader like me and would love to dump those old glasses, the Kindle DX is made just for you! It is convenient, fun, and very easy to use. I doubt the price will go down anytime soon so I recommend you take the plunge and buy the new Kindle. You will be reading like you’ve never read before!

By	Michael J. Scott

Only OK for academic researchers w/ lots of PDFs

I am a professor who was hoping to use the kindle DX to store, organize, and display the hundreds of pdfs that I have containing research articles, books, book chapters, and scanned notes. I was hoping the DX was an opportunity to ditch most of my paper. However, it has a few shortcomings that will prevent me from being truly paperless:

1) The Kindle lacks the ability to organize content: Every document on the kindle is displayed in a single giant list. I’ve moved about 100 pdf documents over to the kindle, and I have another hundred to go. The document list is already cluttered, and, as a result, it is difficult to find the documents I need. [PLEASE Amazon, at least send a firmware update that will allow the Kindle DX to recognize and use file folders. That way, I can put related articles together in a folder and keep things nice and organized.]

2) The Kindle system is not conducive to reference works: Want to quickly skim around to part of an article or book? You can’t. You can use the menu system to jump to a certain page, but the page numbers refer to the pages of the pdf, not the document pages, so it is difficult to know what page number to jump to. As a result, finding that certain graph or picture or table buried within a book or long article is difficult. Ideally, the kindle would have a method of skipping several pages at a time, or displaying thumbnails (6 pages on screen) so that a reader could skip to the desired page with greater ease.

3) It takes some prep to ensure your pdfs are fully usable with the kindle: If you have adobe acrobat (the full version), save yourself some headaches and prepare each pdf by a) using the OCR function so that text is identified, b) making sure pages are all in the correct orientation or kindle’s default rotation setting will prevent you from turning the page sideways to view a landscape table or graph (but you can turn off auto-rotation in the menu) and c) trimming excess margins by cropping the document.

This fall, I’m scanning in my lecture notes and will attempt to use the kindle when I teach. It will be an interesting experiment.

Overall, the Kindle DX is definitely better suited to readers with a limited selection of pre-formatted books that have been optimized for the kindle (i.e. the books amazon sells). If you are someone like me, looking to use the kindle as a way to carry around your entire academic library, be forewarned–it works, just not all that well.

By Erika Ayala 

Kindle DX Review

Kindle is a revolutionary e-book reader by Amazon that has changed the way folks buy and read books. With this gadget, you can buy ebooks and receive them under 60 seconds, and you are always connected to the Internet, enabling you to do your research properly. Many skeptics complained about the screen being too small with the 2nd generation Amazon reader. That complaint has been answered with Kindle DX. Now you get a 9.7 inch screen that will let you read books in a more convenient fashion.

Here is a summary of features that you get with Kindle DX:

• Screen: the 9.7″ screen makes this device more attractive to college students and newspaper publishers/readers.
• Color: 16 shades of Gray which is currently the best in the industry.
• Auto-Rotate: auto-rotate your screen (portrait, landscape) as you turn your device.
• PDF Reader: native support for PDF has been added to this gadget. In the previous generation, PDF support was provided through a conversion service.
• Thickness: it’s as slim as a regular size magazine. And it’s portable too. You won’t have any trouble taking this with you in your trips.
• Storage: holds 3,500 ebooks on the 4 GB internal memory. That’s more than twice as much storage as the previous generation.
• Wireless: you still get wireless 3G connection on your gadget. You can download your content in less than 60 seconds.
• Read To Me: let your gizmo read your book to you.
• Battery Life: you can read your device with wireless turned off for two weeks.
• iPhone: you can easily switch back and forth between your reader and iPhone.
• .docx support: support for .docx is at experimental at this stage but it’s a welcome addition.

Like other Amazon readers, you gain access to 275,000 ebooks available on Amazon. You can also subscribe to newspapers and magazines right on your e-reader. Overall, Kindle DX is a nice improvement over its predecessor. If you have trouble reading on those tiny screens, this is a device you should try. See a complete Kindle DX review and comparison diagram on the other side.