วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 24 กันยายน พ.ศ. 2552

Will The Kindle DX save you money

Financial Aid News 123: Will the Amazon Kindle DX save you money?
Student Financial Aid News

In an attempt to enter the electronic textbooks market, Amazon released its newKindle DX yesterday, a wide format eBook reader. At $489, Amazon’s positioning it to replace many college textbooks. Will it save you money?
Given the price of a textbook can be in the hundreds of dollars, it’s not inconceivable that you could buy a Kindle DX for just two or three textbooks’ dollars, but chances are that publishers will not provide a significant discount on e-texts. Right now, many Amazon titles sell for about 20% off their physical versions. If you spend $1,000 a year in textbooks, it’ll take you nearly 3 years to recoup the Kindle DX’s current price tag.
Granted, the Kindle DX will save some backs and reduce chiropractor bills, but it’s questionable whether it will save you money on textbooks, UNLESS professors begin to use more and more electronic texts available for free. For example, you can use the Kindle plus freely available software to make electronic magazines from popular blogs and RSS feeds. If a professor assigned a custom-made Kindle book compiled from blogs and other online sources for free as a master text for the semester, then the Kindle could quickly pay for itself.
The early verdict: publishers will save far more in expenses than they’ll pass on to students in electronic text savings. Don’t expect the Kindle DX to lift your wallet.
Want to buy a Kindle DX? Purchase one through our Amazon affiliate program and help support our ongoing free scholarships fund. All profits and proceeds from our Financial Aid Podcast affiliate program are contributed to Scholarship Points scholarship awards.

Kindle DX - $489 is just too much
As heavily leaked over the past couple of weeks, Amazon have announced the release of a new Kindle, The Kindle DX.

Kindle DX at $489 - With no colour display & no video
The Kindle DX is two and a half times the size of the previous Kindle and significantly more expensive than the other, already expensive Kindle models. Although it can display 16 different versions of grey, the device cannot display other colours and it is still unable to play video.

The Kindle cost barrier
Right now, even its fans will admit that the cost of the Kindle DX is way too high. Forgetting the price Amazon charge for Kindle books, the cost of newspaper and magazine subscriptions (what the Kindle DX was designed for) adds up to a huge outlay - especially during a recession.
As a tech lover, I am VERY aware of the extra price we pay in order to be an early adopter. I have a boxes, filled with thousands of pounds worth of tech gadgets, which are all-but worthless today. However, even for me, the Kindle DX is just too expensive and not sexy enough to justify the price tag of owning and ‘feeding’ it.

Amazon Kindle DX XL E-Reader
Amazon finally announced the Kindle DX (for Deluxe) extra-large e-reader this morning. The 18.9-ounce device has a 9.7-inch screen that measures 8.5 x 11 inches — 2.5 times the size of Kindle 2’s display. The Kindle DX is described as having a 1200×824 pixel resolution at 150 ppi, and 16 levels of gray.

At one-third of an inch in thickness, it’s about the same thickness as a magazine, or a multiply-folded newspaper section. The new device will autorotate the image from portrait to landscape. It has native support for PDF files. Kindle DX can also read print for you like the Kindle 2.
Amazon is pursuing relationship with textbook makers as well as newspapers to provide content for the device. Once you’ve purchased a newspaper or magazine subscription, Amazon will push the content onto your device overnight automatically. Like the Kindle 2, the Kindle Dx does not require a PC for downloads; it has its own 3G connectivity.

Read for four days on a charge with wireless on, up to two weeks with wireless off.
Although this is not quite the e-paper newspaper envisioned in movies like Stephen Spielberg’s 2002 movie Minority Report, it’s starting to get close.
Kindle DX offers RSS feeds as well, so you can get exactly the online news that you want, along with standard newspapers. SF readers may be trying to get Hugo Gernsback’s 1911 classic Ralph 124c 41 +, so they can read about his prediction of personalized news that is pushed to subscribers each night.

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