Is the Kindle DX Worth the Money? 263
Posted
by
timothy
from the wouldn't-turn-it-down-in-a-gift-basket dept.
from the wouldn't-turn-it-down-in-a-gift-basket dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Now that some little time has passed, and the hype has died down a bit, I'm wondering if anyone has taken the $500 plunge and gotten a Kindle DX. From the academic-paper-reading-geek perspective, is it worth the money? How well does it work with PDFs, and is it easy to get them on and off? I haven't been able to find any good reviews on the interweb that address its usability as I would like to use it."
Why not a laptop? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, a wifi-equipped laptop can be had for less than $400, and with a 15" screen and decent storage, why would someone want a limited, single-purpose crippled laptop such as a Kindle?
The Kindle would make sense if it were under $100; it would fall into the nice Christmas gift or Father's Day gadget category for someone who has everything. But for $500? That's a lot of books.
You could buy a laptop and download thousands of free books from Gutenberg.org or wherever, and spend the rest on used books and have more than you can ever hope to read.
Alternatively, you can spend $350-$500 on one of these Amazon gadgets and then have to pay to read books on it.
I think Amazon should move to the inkjet approach of giving away the initial hardware and then making money on the refills. I wouldn't mind paying $5-$10 for a new bestseller (as long as it didn't crash/timeout and disappear on me) but the initial investment is rather daunting.
Plus, physical books are kinda cool; they don't need to be recharged, you can drop them from amazing heights and they still work, they're infinitely reusable and lendable, and they effortlessly multitask--leave one in the bathroom, one on the nightstand, one in the car, etc.
Re:Nokia n810? (Score:3, Interesting)
Given he is asking about the larger Kindle, the DX, I hardly think a smaller screen would be considered a plus. The point of the DX is that you can view an entire page, just like having a textbook in front of you. For that the N810 - while an awesome tool is hardly a substitute.
The N810 also misses the mark, because it has a standard screen, not an e-ink one. That's great for reading a web page, but really strains your eyes if you want to read extensively.
My own thoughts are that the DX still lacks decent annotating and that's a big flaw. There are several schools trialing them at the moment as a substitute for 1st year text books, and I'm sure this will be pointed out. Either Amazon will release a new model with decent annotating (either make a decent keyboard or get very good at handwriting recognition) or Sony will beat them to it in an attempt to recapture the market.
Re:Kindle DX and PDFs (Score:3, Interesting)
It cannot zoom, except to turn the device into landscape mode, which provides a small magnification. Fortunately, the software does automatically eliminate margins, making the screen about the right size for most documents. What's worse is that all of the annotation features available for ebooks and other documents do not work with PDFs; no highlighting, no note-taking, etc. I think it supports bookmarking, but that's it.
Yeah, those are my only issues with it so far (I've had it for almost 3 weeks).
I haven't had a need to zoom on any PDF yet, but the feature would be welcome. It supports bookmarks, but all you can do is 'dog-ear' the page. You can't leave a note about the bookmark.
hopefully they'll remedy this with an update in the near future.
Re:Nokia n810? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's cheaper, smaller, and it's pretty much a full Linux based computer... oh and it has a colour screen too!
I'm sorry, but at $500 you can buy any of a number of laptops, netbooks or PDAs that all do much more than the Kindle does. Their price point is definitely in the wrong place for such a limited device.
And it fails on the second property you mentioned. For PDF, a netbook is about the smallest practical display. Not to mention the fairly short battery life of the N series web tablets. I have an N800, and I agree. they are great for the proper tasks. But reading PDFs is not one of them. I know. I tried with my N800, and the screen size was only one of the drawbacks. Loading time was the worst.
I'm a keen e-book reader. Got myself an e-ink based reader last year, and I love it. For it's intended task, it's fantastic. That task being reading fiction. NOTHING ELSE
But I have a grand total of zero PDF files on it. Because when it comes to using PDF files, the current range of readers are all basically crap. Including the Kindle DX. The screen updates far too slowly. so paging back and forth is irritating. Search if it works, is slow. looking up the index is also slow, and usually set over several pages if it even has links..
If you want to read fiction, great. You will get onto the habit of pressing the next page button mid way in the last sentence of the current page, so you don't even notice the page refresh blink after a few chapters. And as fiction is read one page after the other, it is perfectly suited to this. Graphic novels may be ok. A bit small on a 6 inch screen, but the bigger Kindle screen might work out ok. These too are page by page, not random access.
But if you need to read a few paragraphs here, look in the index, and read a few pages somewhere else.. All common tasks with manuals.. Forget it. Get a netbook for portability or a tablet for functionality. Both great choices for manuals and text books. Do yourself a favour. Avoid e-ink displays unless the primary function is fiction reading. No matter how big the screen. You will either be disappointed, or worse.. end up justifying the extra cost of a 9 inch book reader that only works for manuals in the same way an iPhone works as a camera.
There are supposed to be a few new displays coming out that are better suited to fast access, but you are realistically looking at several years before they are on sale anywhere. The current generation are a dead loss for PDF files.
Re:$500 is way too much no matter how good it is (Score:3, Interesting)
The Kindle 2 supports a large number of e-book formats and it is possible to convert some more to the pretty common .mobi format. I have run a .LIT (Sony) to .mobi format conversion myself (free program) and the results were very good. The DX supports the same formats, plus PDF in a limited way.
The problem wtih PDF is that it is a page description langauge where the page layout has already been determined. OK, so how do you transform a generic PDF to a different page format? Short answer is, you do not. If the PDF consists of nothing but text, you might be able to extract the text and throw everything else away, but this works for such a limited number of PDFs that the Kindle developers chose not to even try.
So, the common on the DX is that if the PDF page fits on the screen and is readable like that, wonderful. Otherwise, it isn't going to be very pretty. A significantly better approach for the Kindle 2 is to convert the PDF to .mobi form and allow the device to display the text and illustrations as best it can, with text scaling and full reformatting. Does this work for all PDFs? No. PDF was designed as a page description language, not a e-book format and it does a very poor job of being an e-book format.
Re:Why not a laptop? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the Kindle were actually like that, it would be wonderful, but I'm pretty sure you can't email your books around. E-ink is great, but the Kindle is too expensive, its books are too expensive, and I'm not going to deal with a company that puts limits on what I purchase.
I am waiting to see what Google does. I think that they are the only possible company that has the inclination and sheer might to give us an e-book reader and content that is reader friendly.
Re:Depends (Score:1, Interesting)
If the textbooks you require are available at Amazon, you can save money (ebooks cost less than paper)...
Basic economics failure. You can't sell your amazon purchased and thus reduce the actual costs of material. Heck, you can't lend them out or give them away. e-books need to be 99cents or less before DRM wankfests like the kindle will ever stand a chance of success.
Re:Skip until cheaper/better (Score:1, Interesting)
IWhat eReader do you want to use while you wait 2 years for the new displays?
How about the iNone? Until they figure out a way to KEEP the library of books that I apparently only "license" (for quite a pretty penny). For example, if I buy the Kindle now and "buy" some books - then in two years say Sony (OK, maybe not Sony, but someone) makes a better one and I want to upgrade - how do I transfer my books? Oh, that's right - they aren't "mine"; it's more like the VHS to DVD thing where you either stay on the old stuff (carry the Kindle as it slowly wears out AND your new reader) or buy everything again.
I guess this is a non-issue for the folks who read something once and then are done with it (for example those that read a physical book then take it to the used bookstore). However, I read things over and over and I don't want one of these devices until I can be assured of having my "purchased" material through vendor changes, vendor going out of business, format shits, etc.
I have 801 tchnical PDFs on my DX (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple answer: No (I returned mine) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:$500 is way too much no matter how good it is (Score:4, Interesting)
"Even less fathomable is why publishers are letting the ebook market degenerate into competing formats, proprietary readers and possible market dominance by Amazon."
Even less fathomable is why you need "publishers" once you fully reach the ebook era. The only necessary roll they play in the system is to publish books on dead trees. Good authors could easily start going direct to ebooks and completely cut publishers out of the system as long as they are willing to go without a dead tree version of their books.
Publishers play a roll in filtering out the crap but they also filter out stuff none of them like but at least a niche audience might find interesting. They play a roll in promotion which may still be necessary but in the Internet era probably isn't as importance as it once was.
Publishers are about as useful in the digital age as record companies.
Re:Why not a laptop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on where. For example, online e-book stores are a booming market in Russia - virtually all titles on the market are available in dozens of formats, from open TXT, RTF, PDF and FB2, to reader-specific formats such as LIT and LRF. No DRM at all. And even a new release generally costs no more than 50% than a paper book, and older books are 3x-4x cheaper - overall it's $1.5-$2 for a typical fiction book. A lot of ways to pay, from CC and direct debit to pay terminals and pay-by-SMS.
This isn't like AllOfMP3, either - no legal loopholes used, they work directly with authors and publishers (who set the prices). Quite a few authors have direct contracts, bypassing the publishers entirely. Thankfully, those people understand that setting the prices too high will only result in more piracy.
Coupled with any eInk-based reader (mine is Sony, but it's more a matter of taste), it's really great - a convenient pocket library at very affordable prices.
You could have that in U.S., too (with prices adjusted for your standard of living). What, you don't? Well, maybe your free market ain't so free...