Why Kindle DX Won’t Save Newspapers

Review Kindle DX Review

With its large-format Kindle DX (being announced this morning), Amazon aims to reinvent newspapers for the modern age. (And for textbooks, for that matter, but that’s a separate commentary.) The popularity of the Internet, coupled with the current economic downturn, has left the newspaper industry in a shambles. The magazine industry is not too much better off. But I don’t see the Kindle DX and other such e-reader devices previously discussed by companies like Hearst and News Corp. as the salvation of newspapers.
Woebegone Print Days
All of that said, I remember my days as a railroad commuter, and can see the appeal of digital version of newspapers pushed to a device. After all, the Kindle-delivery of newspapers has its advantages such as no more newsprint bleeding onto my fingers, no more wrestling with a tabloid and broadsheet-sized newspapers (New York commuters have perfected the four-way fold for reading The New York Times), and no more paper to have to recycle.
But the danger for Kindle DX, and other Kindle-clone devices, is that the aforementioned advantages only apply to a dwindling subset of the population that still subscribe or buy newspapers. The rest of us will need more convincing to start paying again for news and for a hardware device.
Of course, if a publication wants to subsidize my device purchase, in exchange for a subscription commitment, that could sweeten the deal.
Maybe consumers that have given up on newspapers could be enticed if the device is heavily subsidized by publishers. But even that approach is fraught with caution: Acer’s Aspire One is not much of a bargain at $50, if you consider you’ll be committing to a 2-year AT&T Wireless data contract that will cost you $1440 to $2400 over the life of the contract.
Whether or not the Kindle 2 or Kindle DX will save newspaper is open to debate, however I find the more interesting question to be will the Kindle ever manage to save itself?
Instead of fixing conversion problems present in the Kindle 1 and 2 Amazon has produced a yet more expensive machine with a larger screen for “native” viewing. . . um, ok, but I just bought a Kindle 2 like five minutes ago, how about fixing the problem instead of simple producing an expensive stop gap?
Also what about increasing the ease with which notes can be written and highlighting accomplished. How about a touch screen so that I can actually write notes in my margins and have them instantly convert to typed text.
And really, doe the kindle NEED a knock-off accelerometer? That seems to be everyone’s pet add-on to every new technological device, but in this case, even when reading newspapers or viewing graphs with that ginormous screen I really don’t see the pay off, thin or not, wave goodbye to real portability, my kindle two fits in a coat pocket if need be, not so it’s gargantuan counterpart.
Unfortunately Amazon has circumvented rather than solved issues with the Kindle 2 and created an expensive giant that is scarcely different. Just look at their own side by side comparison chart.

Three differences
1) Kindle DX holds 3,000 instead of 1,500 books
2) Huge geriatric friendly screen.
3) Knock off Accelerometer
Worth the extra cost? I think not. Real solutions please!
Amazon Kindle DX Is Now Official

We have told already you pretty much everything that was needed to know about the new Amazon Kindle. The Kindle DX had all its details leaked a day before the official announcement and all we need now better pictures of the new device and the official price. The new ebook reader is about the size of a netbook and it will fit well with all your reading needs. The Kindle DX is now available for pre-order and the first devices will be ready to sheep this Summer. And you’ll need is $489 to get it.
Kindle DX Amazon releases a brand new
Amazon has released its brand new shiny toy today, the question is will it do everything they say it will do, and my question is why can’t we get an ebook reader in color?
The 489 dollar Kindle DX was showcased in New York this morning, and while I still want my tablet, ebook reader and still not getting it (come on someone), the Kindle DX is the next step forward, but it is still not color. I’ll hold out personally for the color edition of anything before I’ll buy black and white displays. In the mean time though what is interesting is that some people are calling it the Uber Device, the one device that solve textbook and the newspapers problems.
Probably not, while about a dozen schools are set up to use the device experimentally, newspapers are looking at this as a way to continue to deliver content to people without the costs associated of doing mass printing, the question remains, will you read your Sunday comics in black and white? I think the Achilles heel of this whole thing is that it is not in color, and we are by nature a group of people that want color output. While we dealt with monochrome screens in the 1980’s, no one would think of going back to the green monochrome screen for delivery of data anymore. Black and white is just as bad as green monochrome. While early adopters might pick this puppy up because it is a new shiny toy, the first one to market with a color ebook reader is going to win this game, and I am failing to understand why we are still working in black and white.
Needless to say, it will go over well, people will buy it, the text book test will most likely be successful (I know I would use it for some courses, but not for any of my web design courses where we need to see color pallets or photo color renditions), the news papers will probably see a spike in readership via the kindle because it makes sense (I know I would do this on a bus), but we are still back at the question of compelling value.
I just don’t see it with the Kindle DX, until it goes color.
Life is about colors, ebooks need to go in that direction to hit mass appeal and adoption. I will put money on this one, the first person with a color ebook display wins this one, and while we are distracted with kindle, Sony, and other black and white ebook readers, it still needs to be in color.

Supersized Kindle DX Makes E-Reading

Supersized Kindle DX Makes E-Reading Easy for a Supersized Price

Size seems to matter to the folks at Amazon. While the Kindle 2 has a 6-inch (measured diagonally) e-ink screen — roughly the area of a mass-market paperback book — the DX’s 9.7-inch screen resembles a page from a typical hardback. Put another way, the DX flaunts 2.5 times more display space. More text on a page means more lines and, if you prefer, a bigger font, without having to turn the page as often. What does that mean for you? It’s easier to read via the Kindle DX.

Best of all, the Kindle DX was engineered not to feel big. Virtually the same thickness as the Kindle 2, the 19-ounce heft won’t tax your wrists. Its keyboard is actually a little smaller than the Kindle 2’s, so almost all of the DX’s front surface is covered by the screen. This feels less gadgety, more tablety. It’s very comfortable to hold, and as with the Kindle 2, the DX becomes invisible once you become entranced by an author’s spell.

The reader’s appearance is further streamlined by its absence of buttons on the left-hand side of the unit; the controls to turn pages have migrated exclusively to the right side. Even though I’m a righty, and do most of my page turning from that side, I do miss the Kindle 2’s Next page button on the left, which I use when reading in bed, head propped up by my right arm. With the DX, I find myself reaching across the page with my left hand to turn the screen, giving me a sense of the difficulties that southpaws may face with the Kindle DX. Amazon’s suggested fix is using the DX’s controls to invert the page image, and flipping the unit so the keyboard is on top. But that gives lefties an upside down QWERTY.

The DX’s other giant step forward is a built-in PDF reader. With previous Kindles, you cannot use many PDF files, including thethousands of tomes available on Google Books. Shortly after I got my DX, I downloaded the Google Books version of the public domainAutobiography of Benjamin Franklin and e-mailed the 9-megabtye file to my Kindle DX. Inside of 10 minutes, the document arrived via Whispernet (Kindle’s wireless service) and I was reading the scanned pages.

At last month’s announcement, Jeff Bezos made it clear thatthe Kindle DX was targeted largely to students requiring textbooks and professionals accessing business documents.

The textbooks haven’t arrived, but the DX crisply displays monochrome output of PDF or MS Office files. Workers who normally carry binders full of documents will greatly lessen their load by toting a Kindle DX, which has 3.3 gigs worth of usable storage. When you view those pages, it makes sense to use the Kindle’s sensors for the auto-rotation that orients the image between portrait and landscape mode. But just plain readers won’t appreciate the feature. People assume weird, tilted angles when they get comfy with books, and they’re bound to get upset when the text of the new Michael Connelly thriller goes sideways. Fortunately, by pulling up the control panel triggered by a special font key, it’s easy to turn off the pivot.

Another promise made at its coming out party was that the Kindle DX would usher in new business models and formatting for newspapers and magazines. We’ve yet to see the implementations, let alone the fine print on this, so as of now, subscribers to Kindle periodicals are stuck with a cumbersome interface that makes magazine articles readable but dull in appearance. Reading a long newspaper article on the Kindle DX can be daunting, as it appears like a dense block of text

Battery life is similar to Kindle 2. In line with Amazon’s claims, my test unit went four days with the wireless on before a warning message appeared. I assume that, as with the other model, you can go almost two weeks if you turn off the wireless.

The most glaring hindrance of the Kindle DX is its price. It costs $490 &mash; more than the original Kindle cost at its launch 19 months ago. Even Apple, which operates on a premium pricing philosophy, typically introduces its improved models at the cost of the previous one. You’d expect the Kindle DX to come in at $400, with the Kindle 2 tariff (which remains at $370) dropped to $300. That’s plenty for a device that sends you directly to the manufacturer to buy books.

By elegantly supersizing the Kindle — and ramping up its ability to read files — Amazon has improved the best all-around e-reader available. But the hefty price tag doesn’t fit Jeff Bezo’s stated philosophy of getting the best value for his customers

Putting the Kindle DX Through Its Paces

Putting the Kindle DX Through Its Paces
After a fair amount of hullabaloo surrounding its announcement in May, Amazon is now shipping its large-screen Kindle DX. I got to spend some time with the Kindle recently. Here’s how it shakes out.
Amazon.com Amazon’s new Kindle DX.
As with previous versions of the e-reader, the Kindle DX’s $489 price tag includes a wireless connection, and books are still about $10 a pop. You can also read e-books you’ve bought for the Kindle on your iPhone. So what do you get for the higher price? For starters, it has a 9.7-inch diagonal electronic ink display (compared with the Kindle 2’s 6-inch diagonal screen), which increases its total footprint to 10.4 inches by 7.2 inches -– almost the size of a piece of paper.
You can also rotate the Kindle DX so text can be read in landscape mode. The auto-rotate feature seems somewhat unpredictable –- sometimes it would rotate at the slightest turn and other times it wouldn’t rotate at all. Turning the device off and then back on seemed to do the trick.
Amazon hopes its larger display will attract readers who want to read documents, newspapers, textbooks and other materials that would benefit from a larger screen. The company is working with textbook publishers and a handful of universities that will offer the Kindle DX to students. It also includes a built-in PDF reader, using Adobe’s mobile reader. For those who want — or need — to zoom in on a picture or a chart, the Kindle DX lets you do that, too.
The larger size also means a bigger keyboard. While its feedback is slightly better than the one on the Kindle 2, the wider Kindle DX e-reader makes typing a little awkward. Of course, keyboard feel is one of those things where everybody has their own opinion. All I’m saying is this: a) I have small hands and b) I’ve gotten used to typing with my thumbs on a BlackBerry, so the Kindle DX experience was not ideal for me.
There’s a new “experimental” tab on the main menu, which offers users a simple Web browser, the ability to play MP3 music files you’ve added to your Kindle from your computer and Amazon’s text-to-speech option.
Amazon labels its browser option “Basic Web,” which is fitting. It comes with preloaded bookmarks for pared-down versions of Web sites like Google, CNN and Yelp. I tried to get around the need to subscribe to the newspaper by going to nytimes.com, but quickly discovered that the browser doesn’t support the full version of the Web that we view on our computers (and now, some smartphones). Tricky.
I also tested the text-to-speech option, which you can access by pressing the “Aa” key on the keyboard (the font size, words per line and screen rotation can also be changed when you click that key). You can still find the text-to-speech feature under the main menu, but it’s been moved to the experimental tab. At the default speed, the voice reads a tad too fast, but at the slower speed, it’s in slow motion. Also, Amazon has some work to do to get the computer-generated voice to pronounce words like real humans.
When I reviewed the Kindle 2 in February, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to get on the e-book bandwagon. Still, I found it to be convenient and just the right size to fit in my handbag. It at least felt like a book. But after toting around the Kindle DX, it suddenly feels as if I am carrying a computer. Furthermore, its larger size means the DX is, while no heavyweight, still heavier than I think I’d want it to be. (One indication: eventual palm fatigue when holding the Kindle DX in one hand, as I would when riding the subway.)
For those of us who don’t need to read PDFs or, say, all 1,328 pages of “Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies,” the regular Kindle should suffice.

News : Amazon Gadget : Kindle DX

Amazon Kindle DX Review : Good E-Book

Exterior & Ergonomics

Amazon Kindle DX is much larger and slightly heavier than Kindle 2. In fact If you put K2 on top of DX, K2 would be almost the same size as DX’s screen. It’s still comfortable to hold and flip pages, at least for right handed people like me. Of course it works upside down and it’s usable this way but I will pass on making a judgment on how comfortable such setup would be for left-handed people. One thing for sure - alphanumeric keyboard is not usable this way. Landscape mode is comfortable. As Kindle is rotated, 5-way controller is automatically remapped so left remains left and right remains right.

Amazon leather cover now comes with two magnets to keep itself shut. If you are still using floppy disks from the previous millennium you shouldn’t put them next to Kindle DXif you are using the cover.

Kindle DX vs. Kindle 2

Screen and fonts

It’s large. That’s for sure. 824×1200 pixels. It seems to update faster than Kindle 2 and whiles seems to be slightly lighter. There’s minimal ghosting sometimes just as on my second K2. The first K2 that was bricked by airplane didn’t have ghosting problem.Screensaver pictures seem to be the same as in K2 but upscaled and they do look gorgeous on the big screen. Fonts seem darker. So looks like Amazon took complaints about low contrast in Kindle 2 seriously and decided to address them. Spatial resolution is slightly lower - 150ppi comared to 167 in Kindle 2.

I’ve downloaded samples of some of the “books that look good on Kindle DX’s large screen“… Really they should be called “books that would have looked great on Kindle DX should have looked great on Kindle DX if images were not downsampled to lowerresolution… I’ve checked 3 books and none looked as good as screensaver images. You could clearly see that illustrations in these books are much lower resolution than the screen. Hopefully this will get fixed as some point.

There are 7 font sizes just as in previous models. However the smallest font on Kindle DX seems to correspond to second smallest on K2. I can’t say for sure because I have Droid fonts installed on my K2 so that I can read Cyrillic. When font size dialog is invoked there are 2 additional options there that are specific to DX: “Words Per Line” and “Screen Rotation”. The second one is pretty much self-explanatory: you can explicitly select one of the four rotations or set it auto and let the accelerometer control it. “Words Per Line” really controls left and right margin width. Three available options are: default, fewer and fewest. At the moment I don’t quite understand the use of it. If I would want smaller screen area I’d just use K2. As this option is changed inline pictures as downscaled as well.

Screen rotation

Works as advertised - the image rotates as you rotated the device. Refresh time is good. Changing scren orientation is as fast as flipping a page.

Kindle DX Landscape

Keyboard

Keyboard layout is QWERTY. Numeric row is merged with top letter row. To enter numbers you need to hold the “Alt” button. If you just need to enter one digit, you can press “alt” and digit in sequence (”alt” is “sticky” just likethe “shift” button). On DX buttons stick out more and are harder to press. Overall I found K2 keyboard more comfortable and easy to use than DX. Except “Next page” button being larger on Kindle DX, buttons on the right edge of the device are identical. 5-way controller stick is higher on DX.

PDF support

Kindle DX relies on it’s large screen to display PDF files “as is”, without re-flowing the text (which would be next to impossible with PDF since the format lacks any concept of paragraphs or text continuity). The only way to zoom that I could find is to switch to landscape mode. It’s not such a big problem because most PDF files that people would want to read are preformatted for either Letter or A4 page size and Kindle DX screen is comparable in size to these formats.

Although there is concept of pages in PDF and you can navigate to any given page, both internal and external links in PDF files are disabled. Structured table of contents that is present in some PDF files is not usable either.

Graphically PDF files look fine and crisp. Rendering time is also good. It usually takes around 5 seconds to open the file initially and after that pagination speed is the same as when reading ebooks.

It’s not possible to download PDF files to your Kindle via WhisperNet. Most likely this is because Amazon pays 12 cents per megabyte to Sprint while keeping Internet connection free for Kindle owners. Given decent support that Kindle DX has for PDF files, abundance of PDF files on the Internet that people would like to download and read and relatively large size of these files it wouldn’t be a good idea for Amazon to enable such downloads.

It so happens that in my past life I spent a lot of time writing software that would process PDF files. Some time later I’ll run a comprehensive test of PDF support in Kindle DX and publish the results here.

Basic Web

Web browsing seems to be that same as on Kindle 2. “Advanced mode” is now called “Desktop mode’”. Basic mode is still much faster and usable than desktop mode. I tried to render BlogKindle.com in desktop mode and Kindle DX actually rendered it quite well. The only problem I could see was the lack of PNG transparency support.

Kindle DX Basic Web

9 inch screen definitely makes browsing a better experience.

Text-to-Speech

There are seemingly no changes in this feature. Funny thing that I’ve noticed as I experimented with it that female voice seems to have trouble pronouncing word USB. With male voice turned on is sounds much more natural.

Software

Apart from PDF support, changes to font size dialog, picture viewer mentioned above and additional game mentioned below Kindle software remains the same. Kindle DX comes out of the box with firmware version: 2.1 (337560062). Source code for Kindle DX is already published by Amazon and I’ll take a look at it. What seems important is that it has a separate section for Kindle DX sources code. On this basis I would speculate that next version of software for Kindle 2 is going to be 2.0.4, for Kindle DX it’s going to be 2.1.1. These will come from separate branches of code so I wouldn’t hope too much for PDF support being ported to Kindle 2 any time soon.

Hacking

Unfortunately Kindle DX was unresponsive to the “old way hacking”. When I created a small “update” using Igor’s tool to dump the system log along with full directory listing to the root of Kindle drive the “Update Your Kindle” menu item remained disabled. Either Amazon has changed the format of the update files or they’ve come up with some way to digitally sign them to prevent hacking. Either way this means no unicode fonts for Kindle DX for the time being

Kindle DX Sold Out!

Its only been six days since the Amazon Kindle DX release…and already it’s sold out!
Either they didn’t make enough or there is a huge demand. Whatever the reason, It’s really hard to tell without the numbers.
In any case, if you order the device today, you will have to wait until June 22 for shipment. Add another couple days and you should get it in a week.
That’s not bad compare to Kindle1 back in November 2007. The wait time was much longer…yet faithful followers were willing to join the line and wait regardless of time.
Oh how times have changed!
Are you a Kindle DX enthusiast?…or a potential early adopter? If you are, then you will need to join the line now! If you don’t, t you could be waiting for a while.
Until next time.
Kindle DX… does Size really matter?
What is the real scoop with the Amazon Kindle DX? Why was it built with such a large screen…9.7″… when the only difference between it and Amazon Kindle 2 is it’s size and capacity?
The answer …it was built with Newspapers, magazines and textbooks in mind!
Yes, Kindle 2 can display magazines, newspapers…but where are the ADs that goes along with them?…they are all missing in action!
…as a result, Amazon not only set the price for these Newspapers and magazines, but also deprive the publishers of making additional income.
The publishers are grumbling, and Amazon is listening. After all, what else can they do, when there are some many competitors on the horizon?
They have to oblige if they are going to stay ahead of the game!
…and what will this mean for the public? Magazine and Newpaper subscriptions will be cheaper, Amazon will still gets it share, and publishers will stand to earn more from the ADs… so they can afford to cut subscription prices.
I can almost assure you that very soon after the Kinlde DX is released, you will see an advertising component added to its newspaper and magazines issues.
When and how it will be done? We don’t know yet, but it’s coming…mark my words.
One more thing about this new Kindle DX, the increased screen size is “perfect’ for magazine and newspaper display…making them somewhat closer to the “real” thing.
TextbooksOne other component that’s being tested right now is textbook. Imagine the income potential from making textbooks available on the Kindle DX. Schools will get involved, more people will become aware of the Amazon Kindle, Kindle sale will skyrocket, and the snowball will grow out of control.
…well, its in the works!
In fact there are pilot programs going on as we speak.
Can you see into the future? Kindle DX is about to change some things for sure.
Until next time….Let us know your thoughts!.

Kindle DX, a girl’s review

I wanted to upgrade from my Kindle 1 to the new Kindle DX, I really did. I’ve been looking forward to the announcement for days and finally got to see what it looked like today. Sadly, I won’t be upgrading. There are several very cool things about it as well as several problems that did not get addressed in the DX. But I won’t bore you with the details of any of those because there’s basically ONE thing that will keep me from upgrading: it won’t fit in most of my purses.
I know they’re pushing out to a new market - the business and student market - and those users would have bigger bags. But this Kindle DX version is not ready for prime time on the academic market, believe me, I’ve done some research on my Kindle and the highlight/notes functions are quite primitive and they don’t seem to have improved those. So to me, that means they still need to please their biggest current market which seems to be women. Women read more books than men. Women follow Oprah more than men. Hence, the Kindle should suck up to women. If only they had made it about an inch and a half shorter, it would fit in most of my purses and certainly all my favorite ones. To have your Kindle determine the look of your purse is a fashion no-no, in my opinion. We all have our own tastes and although mine is far from Vogue’s, it’s still my own style, not Amazon’s.

Amazon starts Kindle DX e-book reader
You are fond of reading books? And you don’t have a lot of place and time to bring the books with you? Amazon gives you an answer. It is the Kindle DX e-book reader.
You can read your favorite books on a 9.7-inch e-ink display. It is comprehensible for reading newspapers, books and other large articles. Kindle DX is user-friendly and has a built-in accelerometer. With it you can simply rotate your e-book reader for more suitable reading. Also Kindle DX has installed PDF reader. It can help you to open documents without converting them using Amazon’s service.
Let’s look inside. You can store your favorite books on a 4 GB internal storage. Approximately it is enough for 3.500 high-grade books. Also Kindle DX has the free 3G access to the Kindle store databases. You can easily download books or articles through web browser.
Hands On with the Amazon Kindle DX
Hot on the heels of the super-successful Kindle 2 launch, Amazon announced the Kindle DX ($489 direct), a larger, higher capacity, and more expensive version. I was able to get some hands-on time with the device and found it to be just as advertised: a larger version of the Kindle. That said, that extra screen size and the new partnerships with textbook vendors could help the Kindle DX open markets previously untapped by e-book readers.
The Kindle DX’s interface hasn’t changed much from Kindle 2. The Home button is still the best way to restart your navigation process and the five-way directional toggle lets you navigate the menus. I still think this process could be smoothed out some, but it isn’t too difficult to move around. Although the Page Forward and Page Back commands are still along the right side of the device, they’ve been removed from the left-hand side.
One key improvement is the addition of an accelerometer. Like the Apple iPhone, Amazon Kindle DX can detect its orientation and rotates the screen accordingly. This lets you view documents, photos, and charts in landscape mode. In fact, the device can even be operated upside down, so that left handers can use the Page Forward/Page Back keys with their left hand if they want. (Typing on the QWERTY keyboard upside down is much, much more difficult.)
Otherwise, the Kindle DX supports the same assortment of file formats, including Kindle, (AZW) TXT, Audible, HTML, Doc, JPEG, GIF, and PNG. Files can be sideloaded via the microUSB cable or sent through Amazon’s Whispernet service for $.15/MB.
As with the Kindle 2, the DX comes with a built-in 1xRTT EVDO modem for wirelessly loading books and other digital content using the companies Whispernet service. Whispernet works seamlessly in the background, but it should be noted the company recently moved to per MB pricing for files that you upload to the service. If users do start uploading lots of their own files to the device, as Amazon seems to want them to, this could end up adding to the price of the device.
Other than the increased size, the biggest improvement in the Kindle ecosystem is the deal with textbook publishers. The textbook market will be key for the DX to succeed. Amazon has already signed up three of the top five textbook publishers (Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley) as well as 27 University Press Publishers. The Kindle DX will be used in trials with at least five universities this fall.
There are lots of unanswered questions about the Kindle DX that I will answer when the device comes into PCMag Labs for testing. That said, given how closely the device builds on the Kindle 2 platform, it seems like a useful addition to the Kindle portfolio. This will be especially true if Amazon can succeed in evolving the device from a pure e-book reader into a device for reading all sorts of digital documents, including textbooks, magazines, blogs, word documents, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, e-mails, or any other document people currently print out.

Amazon KindleDX

Kindle DX : The Definitive Electronic Book… finally!

Kindle DX : The Definitive Electronic Book… finally!

Although I was an early adopter of the original Kindle, I’ve eagerly anticipated Amazon Kindle DX. The original device was, and is, well-suited for light reading of non-serious material, but its small screen size and lack of PDF support made it mostly a recreational device. I quickly realized that any serious technical book still worked better in physical form. That, combined with the original Kindle’s inability to handle PDFs in a usable form (the conversion left a lot to be desired), made me look at other eReaders, particularly the iLiad iRex. Unfortunately, the iRex, at above $800, was still a work-in-progress, with serious deficiencies in terms of functionality and reliability, and I didn’t want to be an alpha tester of a device that might never BE finished. Amazon’s announcement of the large-format Kindle DX with native PDF support seemed like the answer… so I plunked down the money for a DX and the Amazon case and got on the waiting list.Why would you want native PDF support? The small Kindles support PDFs file via translation; you send a PDF document to Amazon and they convert it to the Kindle’s AZW format and send it back to you, either to your desktop email account (free) or directly to your Kindle ($0.10 per document). However, if your document is anything more than simple text, formatting and imagery are mangled. What you get is readable but not nearly as readable as a Kindle document that was specifically prepared for the device. This is an inherent restriction caused by the difference between a document file structure that is meant to preserve formatting (PDF) and one that is meant to allow for text flow despite screen or font size concerns (AZW). The result was that you couldn’t practically use either the original or 2nd gen Kindles for reading even reasonably complex PDF documents. Having an integral native PDF reader on the new Kindle DX solves this problem and opens up a HUGE world of documents to the Kindle owner.
I’ve had the Kindle DX for about a day now, and it’s everything I was looking for. PDFs render beautifully, and Kindle AZW documents render even better than they did on the original Kindle due to the larger screen size and 16-tone grey scale capability. The large screen really elevates the new Amazon Kindle DX into something more than a convenient device for light reading. The Kindle DX shows the true utility of an electronic reader for the first time. It’s what the Kindle should have been from the start.
What has improved? Performance is better, particularly the screen refresh rate. The new button design means not turning pages accidentally anymore (although I wish they’d kept buttons on both sides of the device for us left-handers). I don’t like not having an SD card slot on the device, nor do I like not being able to change the battery without sending the device back to Amazon. Being able to turn the Whispernet modem on and off via software (menu item) is scads better than having to move a switch. The web browser’s ‘desktop’ mode makes the browser very usable, especially when combined with the rotation feature. Speaking of rotation, the ability to rotate the device and view documents in either landscape or portrait mode is KILLER. Text-to-speech works well, but I have yet to try it for actually ‘reading’ (listening to) a document while doing something else, e.g., driving, to see if it is really useful or just a checklist feature. The Amazon cover (extra charge) is WAY above the original Kindle’s flimsy cover; it actually holds the device securely, protects the screen, yet is easy to open (beware of the magnetic latch around external hard drives or near the bottom of your laptop).
Okay, so now I have two Kindles. My wife asked me why I need two, a good question. My answer is, the small Kindles are great for light reading… the latest fiction novel, public-domain classics, etc., but they’re useless for PDFs or more serious reading such as technical books because the screen size is too small and images, formulas, etc., don’t display well. The Kindle DX is great for any type of reading and shines with PDFs and more serious books, yet it is considerably heavier than the original Kindle (I’d say twice as heavy, if not more so) and not as convenient to stuff in a carry-on bag. I’ve already moved all of the technical books I own over to the Kindle DX, as well as many PDF documents. I had decided to not buy any serious books for my Kindle, using it only for light reading… but the new Kindle DX has changed my mind. The experience of reading a technical book is as good or better than the physical book, and that is something that could not be said about the smaller Kindles.
If I had to own just one electronic reading device, the choice is obvious: the Kindle DX. Amazon has gotten it right; the Kindle DX finally fulfills the ‘book’ paradigm in an electronic device.

By John Clifford