Here Comes the Kindle DX

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the large-screen Kindle e-reader at Pace University yesterday (hint: primary market is university textbooks with high hopes that it will save newspapers). Called the Kindle DX, the list price is $489 (!) or the price of a low-end utility laptop that does much more. Peter Glaskowsky's early analysis can be read on CNET. Some snips:

It's 7.2" wide and 10.4" tall, just a little smaller than I expected. With so many things in our lives adapted to the size of a standard 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, it seems to me that would have been a better target for the DX. (Internationally, A4 paper serves the same purpose at 8.3 x 11.7 inches, so perhaps 8.3 x 11.0 inches would have been a good compromise.)

The DX's monochrome E Ink display is much smaller than I was hoping for, only 9.7" diagonal. Like the original Kindle, much of the space on the front of the unit is occupied by page-turning buttons and a physical keyboard.

The screen has 1,200 x 824 pixels, about the number on the LCD of a 12" Dell Latitude E4200 laptop, so the Kindle DX's linear resolution is significantly higher than that of most notebook displays. However, it's about 10% lower than that of the 6" E Ink display on the Kindle 2 (150 dpi vs. 167 dpi).

Quick Look at the Kindle DX

Bottom line: big screen obviously, but monochromatic, proprietary format, and prohibitively expensive. Discount pricing for students coming soon? Practical for today's color-rich college textbooks? [JH]