The new Amazon Kindle is bigger and better. Pictured leaked.
Sidin Vadukut -
Tuesday, May 05, 2009 12:56 PM
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Nobody really thought that Amazon would make people
want to drool over a boring old e-book reader when the first Kindle was unveiled in
November 2007. But like other quirky successes such as the Flip video recorder
and the original series of Asus netbooks, the Kindle has been a success sales
wise and geek-craving wise.
Tomorrow’s unveiling of a Kindle with a bigger
screen—the new one will be 9.7 inches of awesome, against the six inches of
coolness the reader has currently—is worth watching for a number of reasons.
First of all the new Kindle DX will be more newspaper friendly than the old one
which was better for books and magazines. Which could be a ray of hope for
struggling newspaper companies. Engadget, who also reported the leaked hidden
camera pictures last night, say that the New York Times might offer
subscriptions from around ten dollars a month.
Most pundits however agree that the big Kindle
alone won’t save the newspaper industry in the US.
Om Malik said this
last night:
Indeed, Amazon would have to
sell millions of these devices to even come close to racking up enough
subscriptions to make up for the loss of advertising revenues.
More details in this Wall
Street Journal story.
Secondly, it sounds like Amazon will make a push
for the device in universities and colleges as the new screen can, I presume,
handle textbooks better. Engagdet quotes the Journal:
Chief
information officer for Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve University—the
college whose president will be taking
the stage with Jeff Bezos—Lev Gonick said select students are being issued
the new, larger screen Kindles (doesn't specify DX) in the fall semester with
pre-installed textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar.
An interesting, and quite environment-friendly,
idea. And one that helps Amazon lock in long-term customers for the Kindle
right from college. Once you’ve read through a textbook of metallurgical
thermodynamics on an e-book reader, then you’re pretty much set for the New
York Times, Ulysses and even War and Peace. (The device uses a Sprint mobile
connection to download new issues and e-books. Currently the connection is
free.)
One little thought playing on my mind is the
potential a cheaper, less feature-intense Kindle could have as a more useful
One Laptop Per Child. Assuming that the idea of the OLPC is to give children
access to information—including textbooks and perhaps Wikipedia—the Kindle
essentially just focuses on these things. Perhaps a stripped down Kindle
Version One could be just the thing?
And if you are too impatient to wait for the
official launch tomorrow, check out the grainy
images Engadget procured yesterday. It looks bigger for sure. Which is
always a good thing no?