Why you Might Rethink Buying a Kindle

A while back, we commented on why a Kindle might not be so cost-effective.

Today, things change. On Wednesday, the Kindle DX was introduced. It will be an alternative, not a replacement for the Kindle 2. It boasts a 9.7-inch display with auto-rotation, high-speed wireless access to 275,000 books, 3.3 gigabytes of storage(roughly 3,500 books), native support for PDF documents, with no panning, zooming or scrolling necessary.

The product will begin shipping this summer and will cost $489. Three newspapers will offer a reduced price on the Kindle DX in exchange for a long-term subscription: The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. This is where one might reconsider the Kindle, if the reduction is enough to justify the purchase. However, this apparently will only be offered where Home Delivery of the papers are not. That may be offered through the Kindle 2 as well. Details are not yet available.

The Kindle DX eliminates some of the problems with the Kindle…namely that documents are printed on 8 1/2 by 11 sheets of paper most commonly, and the Kindle 2 is half that size at 6 inches. The DX has 2.5 times the surface area. Amazon has reached agreements with three leading textbook publishers that represent 60 percent of the market: Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley(But not McGraw-Hill Education.). Thus, the Kindle DX will be a perfect tool for college campuses, where textbook savings(hopefully) can be applied toward the device. Students will try out the Kindle DX this fall at Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, the University of Virginia, Reed College and Pace.

As Techcrunch pointed out, for the 275,000 books that are available on the Kindle, sales are already 35 percent of the same books in print. That is a shocking statistic.  But while we continue to be impressed by the Kindle and its variants, the price tag is still a matter of concern. BusinessInsider pointed out devices you can buy for less than $489, including a netbook, iPhone, AppleTV, Wii, Xbox 360, 22″ LCD HDTV, etc.

Which is our point. When given the choice between a netbook and a Kindle, we opted for the netbook, where we can read the New York Times and most news sources free with a net connection. It isn’t a dedicated device, which has its pros and cons, and it lacks the always-on connection included with the price of purchase(which is certainly an advantage) Web anywhere for life is certainly a pro as well.

On the software side of things, we feel certain a Kindle Reader will come for the PC(although Linux will no doubt take more time), as they already have an iPhone reader and they want to corner the e-book market. Barring that, you can always turn a netbook into an e-book reader with something like FBReader, which supports most non-DRMed formats, and buy your books from non-Amazon sources(More on this in a future post).

What it comes down to is that we love what the Kindle represents, and we are impressed by its continual evolution, but we are staying away for now.

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