Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, has unveiled the Kindle DX, a bigger version of its popular ebook reader and which is set to be shipped later this year for a rather expensive $489.
The DX weighs a mere 521grams - that's roughly a third of current 10-inch netbooks - and measures 8.5 x 11 inches (the dimension of a letter-size sheet of paper). Its most significant feature is its 9.7-inch screen which is 2.5 times the size of the Kindle's.
Furthermore, this model has a built-in iPhone-esque accelerometer feature which allows content to be rotated by 90 degrees. Another improvement is the fact that the DX natively supports Adobe's universally accepted Portable Document Format (or PDF).
The third feature that is likely to raise a few eyebrows is that you will be able to make margins wider or thinner within seconds. Amazon has raised the built-in storage to 4GB but, like Apple on its iPods, it has refrained from putting a card reader.
The economical e-ink display and the Wireless Connectivity (EVDO) still remain and the Kindle DX will already be able to access 275,000 titles in the Kindle's proprietary format as well as the tens of millions other PDF documents available.
Amazon has already enlists three major textbook publishers, Pearson, Cengage, and Wiley, to provide content for the Kindle DX while five US universities have also agreed to participate in a trial.
There are also reports that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe (and possibly News Corporation), will be subsidising Kindle DX readers in a scheme similar to the one used by mobile phone companies.
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Our Comments
Amazon is doing for reading whatever Apple did for music with the iPod. The cost of entry for the e-reader is still way too high but it hasn't prevent the Kindle from becoming a financial success.
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