The Kindle DX is particularly interesting because of its 9.7 inch screen — the exact same size as the screen on the iPad. And now, with the new black trim around the screen, the Kindle DX looks more like an iPad. Of course, the key difference is that the iPad’s screen is both in full color, and it’s a touchscreen — the Kindle DX still has neither of those features. What it does have, is a more attractive price: it’s now $379.

The price cut is also interesting. Previously, the Kindle DX was $489, which is only $10 cheaper than the cheapest version of the iPad. Undoubtedly, that was a very hard sell for Amazon to make. It’s still going to be a hard sell, but Amazon is pushing hard for the reading crowd with 50 percent better contrast and darker fonts on its e-ink screen.

Not surprisingly, Amazon is also playing up the Kindle’s access to a huge digital library — one larger than the one the iPad has access to. Amazon says that over 200,000 titles have been added to the store in just the past six month (in other words, since the iPad was announced). And they now have over 620,000 books in the store to buy — on top of 1.8 million free, out-of-print books.

It’s still not clear why anyone would get a Kindle DX when they can get the iPad for a little bit more — or a regular Kindle for much less. But it’s clear that Amazon it willing to try different things to see what, if anything works.

The Kindle DX is available for pre-order now. It ships July 7.

I don’t think this is entirely surprising: the e-reader is still a pretty novel invention. Heck, desktop computers have been in schools for decades and they’re still poorly utilized! To think that a second-generation device in a brand new market is going to revolutionize higher learning is a bit wishful.

I think we can all agree that the promise of e-readers is exciting: replace a stack of heavy books with a single svelte device. But even the most sophisticated device is still going to have major limitations in comparison to the basic utility of your standard textbook.

In June 2009, NFB and ACB jointly filed a discrimination lawsuit against Arizona State University (ASU) to prevent the university from deploying Amazon’s Kindle DX as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students because the device cannot be used by blind students. Sounds arbitrary, I know, but more on that later.

ASU was one of six institutions of higher education to deploy the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks and reading devices in the classroom.

The main contentions in the lawsuit filed by NFB and ACB – which also targeted the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) – was that while the Kindle DX has a text-to-speech feature, the menus to select a book or purchase a book are not blind-friendly, making it impossible to select textbooks for download.

The blindness organizations alleged that this was in violation of federal law. ABOR and ASU denied and continue to deny any violations of the law. Either way, the parties this morning announced that they have reached a settlement agreement.

The agreement was reached in light of several factors, according to the press release: ASU’s commitment to providing access to all programs and facilities for students with disabilities, the fact that the pilot program will end in the Spring of 2010 and the university’s agreement that should ASU deploy e-book readers in future classes over the next two years, it will strive to use devices that are accessible to the blind.

Interestingly, the settlement agreement also stipulates that Amazon “and others” are making improvements to and progress in the accessibility of e-book readers. It’s unclear which what these improvements are and when they will be into effect.

It’s kind of ironic that I found this TechFlash story minutes after I stated at the bottom of the latest Nook story that we haven’t heard of any Kindle shipping issues. It seems like I need to get another monitor just for ebook news these days. That will make a total of five.

via Wired

Another month, another version of the Kindle. I’ve been using a Kindle since it was shaped like a very thin doorstop and I’m delighted each time I see a new version. The latest version is the DX, a monstrous 9-inch version of the smaller Kindle 2 that supports direct PDF reading without conversion.

Why am I interested in the Kindle? Well, I already have a first-gen Kindle so I’m not too keen on upgrading immediately. But I’ve been waiting for Amazon to solve something with the Kindle DX that has been nagging me for quite a while. You see, I have a problem. I don’t want to read the New York Times on paper anymore but paper seems like the only logical way to read it. Reading the newspaper on a gadget is rude and dangerous – especially with toddlers around the house. It’s a tough sell to have a gadget at the breakfast table. But then I know that I’ll never read it on the desktop whether through the Times Reader or any other source. So the DX sounded great. I has all of the features of the current Kindle plus rotational sensing and a beautiful, huge screen that might just fit the entire NYT front page and not just one article. So that’s why I wanted to see the DX.

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For context, here is what we said about the K2. We didn’t formally review it.

The DX is basically a 9.7-inch reading device. It has a small keyboard, navigation buttons only on the right side, and uses an improved version of the e-ink screen that displays gray scale with surprising fidelity. It has native PDF support and can store up to 3,500 books. It costs $489.00 and will be available next week.

Like the original Kindle the device has a wireless feature that lets you download books over the air but you can also drag books – basically Amazon’s proprietary format – and PDFs right onto the device via USB. It can last for up to 4 days with wireless on. It also reads your books aloud to you, where applicable. Some publishers are selectively shutting this feature down.

The Bad
First the cons. The Kindle DX is heavy. It’s heavier than the original Kindle by over nine ounces. It’s not much, but clearly Mosso and I share a strange affliction called “Ouch, our wrists hurt holding this thing.” It’s a big device. It works best on a table.

The second problem is the auto-rotation. If you move the Kindle a little too much in any direction, the screen rotates. It’s a good feature if you’re reading a newspaper or magazine, for example, but it’s not so good if you’re nodding off in bed.

The Good
Now the pros. This thing is quite easy to read books on. Each page holds a multitude more words than the original devices and you rarely have to press the page buttons – there’s just more real estate. Images are crisp and clear and books can be viewed horizontally.

Them there sure is a lot of words.

The page size also makes for an easier read although all that grey does get tiring. This thing is good for heavy duty reading. The annotations and notes system is good for research as it drags the notes off of the book and onto an Amazon website – a huge plus for students and scholars. My original complaint with the Kindle 2 was that it wasn’t good for research. This model has remedied all of those concerns.

Newspaper reading is a bit of sticking point. It is easier to browse stories on this larger screen and the nature of news stories allows many of them to fit on one or two pages as opposed to the endless parade of pages on the smaller Kindles. I’m going to be trying to read the paper on this for the next month and I’ll report back when I put the DX through those demanding paces. However, I understand that there are certain formatting considerations here that only updates to the software and hardware can fix.

In short, this is a bigger Kindle. But is it the Kindle for you?

Bottom Line

I’m convinced that the Kindle – as a brand – is the book reader to buy. Unless you’re into piracy, getting first run books onto any other reader is too convoluted and the UI and Kindle system is the best, hands down. I’ve used the Sony Reader and a few other e-readers and the Kindle is made for real readers i.e. people who read and want a seamless reading experience. If you like to read, get one. If you like to download PDFs and TXT files – say you’re a slash fiction fan – get something else.

That said, the DX isn’t the Kindle for the average reader. The Kindle proper, a 6-inch model that is quite light and nice, is the best they offer. Anecdotally, here is the best metaphor I can come up with to the difference between the Kindle and the Kindle DX. When my buddy worked at Dairy Queen we used to go through the drive thru and order a Blizzard, a concoction of ice cream and candy and other stuff that would have put a horse into diabetic shock. But instead of making the Blizzard in the normal manner, our friend would drop in little treats like a whole brownie or five scoops of M&Ms. The Kindle is a regular Blizzard while the Kindle DX is my friend’s extra-packed Blizzard. It’s more of a good thing, and sometimes that can be bad.

If you have a specific need for a bigger screen i.e. you’re doing doctoral research and intend to upload a lot of PDFs, get the DX. Otherwise, even if you’re a student reading textbooks and novels you’ll probably be better off with the smaller, cheaper model. It’s more portable and it has all of the same functions.

As for price, I can’t help you. $500 is a lot for a Kindle. But this is the best e-reader out there. It’s a complex and unique tool. You pay for that complexity.

And what about newspaper reading? The jury is still out. But we’re coming closer and closer to a paperless publishing industry and these are just baby steps along a long road.

The Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX pronounces “Barack Obama” as “Bay-rack Oh-bamma,” slightly embarrassing for a device designed to display and read newspapers. An NYT story find this to be slightly funny but, as we all know, text-to-speech has been a fail party for years, no matter what the Authors Guild says.

The technology is very advanced; everyone has the memory of the Stephen Hawking voice, which was very robotic,” said Patrick Dexter, the director of business development at Cepstral, a Pittsburgh company that does such work and has licensed its technology to Google. “The goal right now is to get a voice that sounds almost indistinguishable from a real person.”

The system, provided by Nuance, will update its dictionary to reflect the Presidential Pronunciation.

How is the Kindle DX going to save the newspaper industry when Amazon demands a whopping 70 percent of all revenue, plus the right to license that content (“the mayor said something important today at City Hall”) wherever it chooses? Such is the plight of the Dallas Morning News, and, presumably, other, smaller (compared to the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) newspapers.

The Morning News’ publisher, James Moroney, spoke at a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday, and tried to play down the Kindle’s ability to save print. (Meanwhile, the Huffington Post’s Ariana Huffington, whose Web site doesn’t have the same fixed costs as a newspaper does, raved about the Kindle’s prospects at the same hearing.) While Kindle is neat and all, you can’t ask someone like Moroney to hand over 70 percent of his revenue. The future is… handing over all of your money to Amazon, for the privilege of being read by a few early adopters?

Long term, Amazon and the newspapers may work out some sort of beneficial deal, but, as they say, in the long term we’re all dead. So…

My completely fact-less take: who reads newspapers? Older people. Who doesn’t buy the latest, greatest technology at the drop of a hat? Older people. That’s a problem.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be a newspaper executive right now, that’s for sure.

Photo: Flickr

UPDATE- Congrats to Goodo! Thanks for playing!

To win, post a comment describing which book would be great as a video game and why. Include your real email in the form. My choices are Catcher In the Rye and Choke.

Yes, Amazon announced the Kindle DX today, and it’s just what we thought it’d be. What interests us here, though, is what does Twitter think about the news. (And as we all know, Twitter created Heaven and Earth, such is its importance.)

@tariqi Very disappointed by the launch of the Amazon Kindle DX. Seriously, what’s the point? #kindle

@Howard_Scott nearly $500 for a Kindle DX? Come off it Amazon! That buys a hell of a lot of books before it pays itself off!

@sarahhaeger would love to get my hands on the new Kindle DX, but at $500 it’s a little steep

@noliberalbull seriously Amazon: Kindle DX waaay to expensive to justify for most people. I’d love to get one, but no way am I dropping $500 on it

@andreasceo Yeah!! Finally a solution for newspapers: Start throwing out your printing presses, reduce delivery cost – Amazon just launched Kindle DX!

@todesesser From the size of the Kindle DX I expect it to control the security systems of my volcano lair or order my private army to destroy James Bond

@Browntideguy How awesome would it be to read scientific papers on 9.7” Kindle DX? All it needs is a highlighter function. http://bit.ly/16HeuT

@L_Berry Dear Kindle DX, I don’t need you. But why do I want you so badly? Please lower your price and mail yourself to me. Thanks, Laura

@wmacphail Man, I think the Kindle DX is a dog. A one-trick pony needs to be easily portable, not a boat anchor.

And so on. The gist seems to be that, um, $500 to read New Yorker articles about race horses you’ve never heard of or 8 million words on why waterboarding is or is not torture may be a bit too much for most people.

It’s a madhouse here at Pace U., but I managed to grab a couple photos. Not my hands, but you can see how big this new DX really is.

South Paws might feel like they’re being left out with only right-hand side controls, but you can flip the Kindle DX upside and it auto-rotates so the controls are on your left (upside down though).

Oh, and Pace U. has been confirmed as the sixth University for the pilot program.

Update: Couple more images after the jump. We’ll have video in little bit as well.

UPDATE – Rotation video in place.

Update 2: Here’s a video demo of the screen rotation feature…

We were just going a little meta in the chatroom and Carlos Deleon pointed out that there would be a series of articles all appearing about the Kindle DX. They include, but are not limited to:

1. How the kindle will save print
2. How it won’t save print
3. Will students flock to kindle?
4. Something about the price – What is Amazon thinking!

5. Rant: “Kindle DX is what the regular kindle should have been from day one”
6. Rant: “But I like reading books not screens”
7. Rant: “Sorry, but I’ll wait for Kindle DX 2.0″
8. Is Kindle going color?
9. “We are against the Kindle,” say smartphone reader software companies/competing ebook manufacturers/cranky authors guilds
10. A Kindle for Mom!
11. Where’s my Kindle touchscreen?

Any time you see one of those posts today, drink.

Here’s Amazon’s demo video of the Kindle DX in action for those of you who prefer a more passive ingestion of features and information than traditional reading provides.

Amazon Kindle DX [Product Page]

More pics and info after the jump.

Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines

Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback

Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots

Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required

Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images

Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging

More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books

Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns

Read-to-Me: With the new text-to-speech feature, Kindle can read every newspaper, magazine, blog, and book out loud to you, unless the book is disabled by the rights holder

Large Selection: Over 275,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available

Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

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Introducing Kindle DX–Amazon’s Large Screen Addition to the Kindle Family of Wireless Reading Devices
Large Kindle DX Display and New Features Provide Enhanced Experience for Reading a Wide Range of Professional and Personal Documents
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May. 6, 2009– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today introduced Amazon Kindle DX, the new purpose-built reading device that offers Kindle’s revolutionary wireless delivery and massive selection of content with a large 9.7-inch electronic paper display, built-in PDF reader, auto-rotate capability, and storage for up to 3,500 books. More than 275,000 books are now available in the Kindle Store, including 107 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers. New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases are $9.99 unless marked otherwise. Top U.S. and international magazines and newspapers plus more than 1,500 blogs are also available. Kindle DX is available for pre-order starting today for $489 at http://amazon.com/kindleDX and will ship this summer.

“Personal and professional documents look so good on the big Kindle DX display that you’ll find yourself changing ink-toner cartridges less often,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks – anything highly formatted – also shine on the Kindle DX. Carry all your documents and your whole library in one slender package.”

New Large Display

Kindle DX’s display has 2.5 times the surface area of Kindle’s 6-inch display. The larger electronic paper display with 16 shades of gray has more area for graphic-rich content such as professional and personal documents, newspapers and magazines, and textbooks. Kindle reads like printed words on paper because the screen works using real ink and doesn’t use a backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays.

The New York Times Company and Washington Post Company are launching pilots with Kindle DX this summer. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post will offer the Kindle DX at a reduced price to readers who live in areas where home-delivery is not available and who sign up for a long-term subscription to the Kindle edition of the newspapers.

“At The New York Times Company we are always seeking new ways for our millions of readers to have full and continuing access to our high-quality news and information,” said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman, The New York Times Company and publisher, The New York Times. “The wireless delivery and new value-added features of the Kindle DX will provide our large, loyal audience, no matter where they live, with an exciting new way to interact with The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Additionally, by offering a subscription through the Kindle DX to readers who live outside of our delivery areas, we will extend our reach to our loyal readers who will be able to more readily enjoy their favorite newspapers. Meanwhile, we are continuing to work with Amazon to make The New York Times and The Boston Globe experiences on Kindle better than ever.”

Kindle DX’s large display offers an enhanced reading experience with another category of graphic-rich content—textbooks. With complex images, tables, charts, graphs, and equations, textbooks look best on a large display. Leading textbook publishers Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley, together representing more than 60 percent of the U.S. higher education textbook market, will begin offering textbooks through the Kindle Store beginning this summer. Textbooks under the following brands will be available: Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Longman & Prentice Hall (Pearson); Wadsworth, Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Delmar, Heinle, Schirmer, South-Western (Cengage); and Wiley Higher Education.

Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia will launch trial programs to make Kindle DX devices available to students this fall. The schools will distribute hundreds of Kindle DX devices to students spread across a broad range of academic disciplines. In addition to reading on a considerably larger screen, students will be able to take advantage of popular Kindle features such as the ability to take notes and highlight, search across their library, look up words in a built-in dictionary, and carry all of their books in a lightweight device.

“The Kindle DX holds enormous potential to influence the way students learn,” said Barbara R. Snyder, president of Case Western Reserve University. “We look forward to seeing how the device affects the participation of both students and faculty in the educational experience.”

New Built-In PDF Reader

Kindle DX features a built-in PDF reader using Adobe Reader Mobile technology for reading professional and personal documents. Like other types of documents on Kindle, customers simply email their PDF format documents to their Kindle email address or move them over using a USB connection. With a larger display and built-in PDF reader, Kindle DX customers can read professional and personal documents with more complex layouts without scrolling, panning, or zooming, and without re-flowing, which destroys the original structure of the document. Everything from annual reports with graphs to flight manuals with maps to musical scores can be viewed on a single, crisp screen with Kindle DX.

New Auto-Rotation

Kindle DX’s display content auto-rotates so users can read in portrait or landscape mode, or flip the device to read with either hand. Simply turn Kindle DX and immediately see full-width landscape views of maps, graphs, tables, images, and Web pages.

New 3.3 GB Memory Holds Up To 3,500 Books

With 3.3 GB of available memory, Kindle DX can hold up to 3,500 books, compared with 1,500 with Kindle. And because Amazon automatically backs up a copy of every Kindle book purchased, customers can wirelessly re-download titles from their library at any time.

Incredibly Thin

Kindle DX is just over a third of an inch thin, which is thinner than most magazines.

3G Wireless, No PC, No Hunting for Wi-Fi Hot Spots

Just like Kindle, Kindle DX customers automatically take advantage of Amazon Whispernet to wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download or receive new content in less than 60 seconds, and read from their library—all without a PC, Wi-Fi hot spot, or syncing. Amazon still pays for the wireless connectivity on Kindle DX so books can be downloaded in less than 60 seconds—with no monthly fees, data plans, or service contracts.

Syncs With Kindle for iPhone and other Kindle Compatible Devices

Just like Kindle, Kindle DX uses Amazon Whispersync technology to automatically sync content across Kindle, Kindle DX, Kindle for iPhone, and other devices in the future. With Whispersync, customers can easily move from device to device and never lose their place in their reading.

Massive Selection of Books—Plus Newspapers, Magazines, and Blogs

The Kindle Store currently offers more than 275,000 books, including popular books like New York Times Bestsellers, New Releases, and fiction and nonfiction released in the past several years. Dozens of newspapers and magazines are also available for subscription or single-edition purchase. BusinessWeek and The New England Journal of Medicine are available in the Kindle Store starting today, and The Economist will be available soon. Subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle overnight so that the latest edition is waiting for customers when they wake up. Over 1,500 blogs are available on Kindle and updated and downloaded wirelessly throughout the day.

Kindle DX includes all the other features Kindle customers enjoy every day, including:

Wirelessly send, receive, and read personal documents in a variety of formats such as Microsoft Word and PDF
Look up words instantly using the built-in 250,000 word New Oxford American Dictionary
Choose from six text sizes
Add bookmarks, notes, and highlights
Text-to-speech technology that converts words on a page to spoken word
Search Web, Wikipedia.org, Kindle Store, and your library of purchased content
No setup required—Kindle comes ready to use—no software to load or set up
Amazon Kindle is sold through Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

The Kindle DX will be launched today to an eager and excited cohort of folks who read the newspaper or enjoy textbooks. That’s right: Amazon’s 9.7-inch bigscreen Kindle drops today and our own Peter Ha will be on hand to relay all the goodness. Stay tuned.