Kindle DX – The Big Screen Kindle

On Tuesday, we had a post which mentioned the rumours of a big-screen Kindle being released. Yesterday, Amazon released Kindle DX and is targeting it at the education, magazines and newspaper market.

Via Mashable

The device itself features a larger screen with more shades of gray for better display, a bigger hard drive (3.3GB) that can hold up to 3,500 books, and auto-rotation, so that users can read content in either portrait or landscape mode.

Most interesting to us, however, is what the company is doing with a number of universities and newspaper companies to make its device more widely available. Amazon has signed on The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe to offer the Kindle DX at a reduced price in exchange for long-term subscription commitments, while 5 universities are launching pilot programs where the Kindle will be offered to students as a replacement for textbooks.

Specifically, the newspapers are using the Kindle to expand their distribution to areas where they don’t currently offer home delivery of the dead tree paper.

Via Ars Technica

Next fall, a number of universities will be running pilot programs with the DX; Bezos listed Arizona State, Case Western, Reed, Princeton, and the University of Virginia. Pace itself, the host of the event, apparently completed a deal too late to be included, but had someone in the lobby, announcing its participation. Pace may actually be the most interesting of the lot, as its student population is very ethnically and linguistically diverse, and generally commutes to and from classes. The campuses will have access to a decent collection of materials, since Amazon has cut deals with three leading providers of textbooks: Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Wiley.

As for the device itself, giving consumers another point on the balance between compact form factor and screen size is undoubtedly a good thing, as is the built-in PDF reader. The documents chosen by Amazon to highlight the feature looked excellent, but I’ll reserve judgment until I put a few of my own on one of the devices. In all other respects, however, it’s just a big version of the Kindle 2. Well, all respects but one, and that may be the deal-breaker: a hefty $489 price tag.

The Afterword has a good roundup of articles and views of the Kindle DX.

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