Amazon today announced its much anticipated and awaited Kindle DX product – the new, larger version of its hot selling portable e-book product.
So what of it? What does this new Kindle mean? Kindle in its original form has been a much greater success than anyone ever planned. My Mom actually bought one before she and I ever even discussed it, and she is NOT a technology oriented woman! Why did she buy one? Because she is an avid book reader, and an avid Amazon customer, and saw it on the website and thought – Hey… That’s a great idea! No more carrying around suitcases of books when I travel!
I have to admit, I have one now also. It truly is the greatest traveling companion – all my books in one place. And, on top of that, seamless and simple book acquisition with the built in wireless networking, connecting me straight to Amazon for new purchases without any recurring networking costs! A brilliant business model and application for general consumer use.
So now… The new Kindle DX. It’s BIG. Kind of takes away from the whole ease of portability thing. As much as I love larger screens, the original Kindle is about the size of a paperback (screen size – it is much thinner than any paperback out there). That’s more than adequate for my book-reading needs.
Who would need this larger screen? Yes, it might be helpful for students, for textbooks. But don’t most students have notebook (or now netbook) computers these days, so they can carry their schoolwork around with them? And if they have computers, can’t the read their books on their as well?
It will be interesting to see how Amazon does with this new, larger version. It is more expensive, and looks too large for me to easily carry with my other travel necessities. Don’t get me wrong – I love my Kindle. I’m just not sure why I would need a larger one!
I cart a load of PDF reports around on my notebook, and with the larger screen and native PDF support, this is just right for me. From the reviews I’ve read of the existing Kindles (and the other alternatives) the PDF rendering on the smaller screens is not great. Remains to be seen how well it displays on these, but we live in hope 🙂
Your comments are spot on… I spoke with someone else this morning on this. He is a magazine reader. And is really excited about the larger format, and what this will do for the reading experience. I can see your point on PDFs also. I can’t wait to get my hands on one and see what the true size differences are like, and whether it ‘feels’ as portable as the existing model.
Kindle for iPhone is also a great way to read ebook too instead of carrying many reading gadgets. I have been using it and it worked perfectly great for me to carry in my small purse anywhere. Even while I was chilling at the wine bar reading ebook from Kindle on iPhone.