

Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle - jrockway
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-DX-Amazons-Wireless-Generation/dp/B0015TCML0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1241620598&sr=8-1

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inigojones
The killer feature is that it reads PDFs natively now (i.e., without having to
convert them). For someone who prefers to read on screen and who has to read a
lot of PDFs, this is very exciting.

~~~
henning
Where can those PDFs come from? Can I just send it files from my computer's
hard drive and then read them on the Kindle, like an iPod for PDF?

~~~
jamiequint
You get a kindle email address. You email PDFs to it and they automagically
appear on your device. Although this costs $0.10 a pdf. You can also plug it
in and it opens as a flash drive, then you just drag and drop. (In the case of
the Kindle 2 you also have to convert to the right format, DX sounds like it
will be easier)

~~~
rufo
Not anymore.
[http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2009/05/amazon-t...](http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2009/05/amazon-
tighten-their-grip-on-kindle-distribution-.html)

To summarize: The price of e-mailing your Kindle is now 15c/MB, rounded up.

~~~
adamc
Much less attractive.

~~~
sketerpot
The USB drag-and-drop still works, right? That's not quite as trivial, but
still not particularly difficult.

~~~
there
the kindle 2 supports downloading files that you navigate to via the kindle's
web browser. i would imagine the new one still lets you do this.

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mikebo
This looks like it will be a great product, especially for all the technical
pdfs I've built up over the years.

Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed
music that I can't listen to anymore. I'm not going to do the same with books.

Anyone else trying to justify a $500 pdf reader? :)

~~~
chris11
Yes, I am.

I'm salivating over the idea of replacing all of my textbooks with pdfs. But
unfortunately I doubt I could get all of my textbooks on the kindle right now.
And price is an issue. Checking on Amazon, there is not a large price
difference between kindle textbooks, and real textbooks.

So the only reason I would get a dx is if the textbook and the kindle pdf were
bundled together for a reasonable price. But I doubt that will happen.

~~~
andreyf
I'm not sure if it's obvious or not, but PDF's of many popular textbooks are
widely available either free as in beer:

<http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html>
<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html>

Or free as in money from a bank robbery:

<http://thepiratebay.org/browse/601/0/7>

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pchristensen
Even though I probably won't buy one anytime soon, I'm much more excited about
the big one for $500 over the little one for $350.

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talison
Looks great but does anyone else think the price is a bit expensive? Not that
this is a great comparison, but I can buy a netbook for $299 or less these
days.

Why such a up-front hardware cost when Amazon will get recurring revenue from
Kindle books? Are they taking a loss on the book sales to boost downloads?

~~~
syoutsey
Because I believe Amazon is losing money on each ebook sold. They want people
to move to their platform so badly that they're willing to accept a loss on
each ebook and make it up with the hardware costs.

~~~
aneesh
That makes no sense - the more books they sell, the more money they lose. No
business should sell below their marginal cost for any length of time unless
they're _really_ desperate for market share. What's more common is selling the
hardware at a loss, and reaping the profits on the e-books.

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mdonahoe
I hope there is a way to disable auto-rotation for reading in bed. That is a
big pet peeve with my iphone.

~~~
anuraggoel
There seems to be. From the manual at
<http://s3.amazonaws.com/kindle/KindleDX_Users_Guide.pdf>

_The screen changes automatically when you rotate your Kindle from portrait to
landscape or vice versa. Or, you can lock your screen to a particular
orientation to fit your reading position._

However, since this is a much bigger device, I am not sure if reading in bed
is going to work the same way it does for the iPhone.

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gcheong
I wonder how Safari Online would look/work on it. It would be great to have
this display in combo with an online bookshelf.

~~~
tlrobinson
This would be my dream combination. Right now I'm using an OLPC XO to read
Safari Books, which works ok but could be better.

[http://tlrobinson.net/blog/2009/04/06/using-olpc-xo-as-an-
eb...](http://tlrobinson.net/blog/2009/04/06/using-olpc-xo-as-an-ebook-reader-
for-oreillys-safari-books-online/)

~~~
gcheong
Will have to try your hack out on my OLPC as I was trying to use it for the
same purpose and was frustrated for the same reasons. Thanks!

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akirk
I wonder how PDF in larger paper formats (A4, US Letter) look on the bigger
screen. They get rendered with illegibly small text on my Sony Reader (which
has the same-size screen as the normal Kindle).

Too bad again, that the Kindle is US only.

~~~
sireat
I plan on getting Kindle DX even though I am based outside US presently. The
wireless features are not that important to me, nice screen and native PDF
support however is.

~~~
htrbtrb
With the first kindle that was very difficult unless you had a US credit card
with a US address.

~~~
ajju
My dad just bought a Kindle 2 with his Indian credit card and Indian billing
address (although he used my Amazon account and shipped it to my American
address)

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davidw
I'll consider getting one of these things when TAOCP looks decent in it.

~~~
nadim
How does TAOCP look in it? I'm curious to know what the limits of what this
device can display are.

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dschobel
The kindle is in a strange position now.

The more features they add (like native PDF) the more people will clamor to
make it more input friendly (like the talk of a wacom-esque interface below).

Here's hoping Amazon knows where to draw the line and it just remains a damn
good way to read text.

~~~
donw
To me, that's the killer feature that it's missing. For a small reader, it
doesn't matter, but for the large one, I want to be able to take notes, sketch
out ideas in the margin, and so on.

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vaksel
Based on the price of this one, I think we'll see the small Kindle go down in
price soon. Because right now it doesn't make any sense to buy the small one.

I still wont' buy one, chances are they'll release a color version in a couple
of months, thats the next obvious step

~~~
njharman
Are there even any color e-ink type displays in the lab?

~~~
patrickg-zill
Supposedly Fujitsu has one, using their own e-ink like screen (they call it
"FLEpia"). It has Wifi, has a web browser, and runs Windows CE.

[http://activitypress.com/2009/02/22/fujitsu-trials-
colour-e-...](http://activitypress.com/2009/02/22/fujitsu-trials-colour-e-ink-
reader/)

Supposedly, will be out in 2010.

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josefresco
You know what would be awesome? The same thing ... but even bigger. Gotta love
creative engineering and lazy product evolution.

No in all honesty this new Kindle looks pretty awesome, but also a little
ridiculous when held compared with other electronics.

~~~
jballanc
I just want them to get rid of the keyboard. Isn't there some rule about size
vs time-you-actually-spend-using-the-feature? At its present size, I'd say
that if you're not using the keyboard 1/4 of the time you're using the Kindle,
then it's too big.

~~~
jonknee
Not having a keyboard would make it a pain in the ass to search for content.
Amazon is highly vested in making it easy for you to get more content. Yadda
yadda, the keyboard aint going anywhere.

~~~
dschobel
they could always go with a virtual keyboard now that the refresh times of the
screen are getting better.

~~~
there
and you would push keys on that with what? it's not a touch screen.

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DLWormwood
You know, if this wasn't iPod white, I'd swear I'd seen something just like it
on TV before...

[http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/01/stpd...](http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/01/stpd.jpg)

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edw519
Can you load your own .txt files onto this? This is actually big enough to
carry & review my source code without booting up a laptop.

~~~
imp
How often do you browse your source code without the intent to edit it? Just
curious if you have an interesting code review or development process because
I don't think I've done that before.

~~~
jpd
As a debugger, I always browse source code without ever editing it.

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jgrahamc
Goodnews. When is this going to be available in the UK?

I'm there if I can read PDFs on it (check), subscribe to Le Monde (check), the
New York Times (check), The Economist and The Guardian. I can see a device
like this making me spend more on subscriptions than I currently do because of
the convenience and lack of paper to recycle.

I guess I might buy the occasional book, although I really like paper books.

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doosra
Does anyone know of a similar reader at about the same price point which
supports annotation of the text (for example with a stylus)?

~~~
Keyframe
iRex Iliad - <http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad> ... a bit pricey
though, 599 Euros

~~~
Xichekolas
Also (with bigger screen), the iRex Digital Reader 1000S:
[https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_35&pr...](https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_35&products_id=69)
(has wacom-style input)

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whacked_new
My, this is going to be a hit. I sorely desire a wacom on it though :(((

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zaph0d
I live in India. So probably the EVDO / 3G connection won't work here. Does
the Kindle DX also support vanilla WiFi so that I can still buy books from
Amazon?

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ftse
It looks great. Now let's compare it to the competition... Amazon's web page
for the Kindle shows only one entry under 'Browse similar items in
Electronics': 'Kindle DX'

~~~
ableal
(retailers must love you ;-)

iRex Digital Reader 1000S, 699 EUR; <https://www.irexshop.com/>

    
    
        10.2 Inch (diagonal) electronic paper display
        1024 x 1280 pixel resolution at 160 pixels per inch
        16-level grey scale
        Mini-USB connector
        Wacom® penabled® touch sensor input with Stylus
        ...
    

More data and opinions over at <http://mobileread.com>, etc.

P.S. I tossed this in because iRex is not using the same screens as most
everybody else: <http://www.eink.com/products/matrix/High_Res.html> (found via
MobileRead). I had nearly forgotten that.

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TweedHeads
"Kindle DX will be released this summer"

Amazon is just afraid of the incoming Apple iPad.

Very afraid...

