Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Students on the New Kindle DX

The Kindle DX, with a 9.7-inch screen is targeted to college students for displaying textbooks. A quick survey of students from Wired magazine. Students Skeptical Kindle DX Can Replace Paper Chase
students polled by Wired.com on Twitter listed various reasons for why the DX would fail to replace their mountains of textbooks. Their complaints ranged from the reader’s $500 price tag to the DX being inconvenient for study habits.

“I’d need five Kindles just to hold a single thought while writing essays,” said Marius Johannessen, who is studying for his master’s in information systems at University of Agder. “Books work just fine.”
[Not sure I get this one - MQ]
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Indiana University business student Chandler Berty told Wired.com he would consider a Kindle DX if e-books cost less than used physical textbooks. He added, however, that college students already carry laptops, which are superior to the Kindle, rendering the reader unnecessary.

“Two devices = fail,” Berty said.

Students pointed out plenty of other issues about the DX to Wired.com. For instance, students often loan textbooks to one another, and currently that’s not practical with a Kindle, as you’d have to loan your entire reader and library. Also, the beauty of paper textbooks is the ability to highlight sentences, underline keywords and keep all of them open at once. While the Kindle does have highlight and notes tools, the reader is sluggish with performance, and the keyboard is unnatural and clunky to type on.
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Overall, 19 students replied to our query via Twitter, five of whom said they would definitely purchase a DX, seven who said no and seven who said maybe.

“Law students are waiting for Kindle books!” said Twitter user “SoCaliana.” “We have so many books to carry around. I couldn’t find my texts on CD or anything!”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now that my cell phone will render pdf why would I use a dedicated device. I will use the PC desktop and portable. I will use the cell phone ( android) but why buy a another device.

However the real issue is the quality of textbooks and the need for multi screens.

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