College Students Picking on the Kindle DX
Posted 10/18/09 at 04:14:36 PM by Justin Kerr
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Amazon is betting the future of textbooks lies in e-ink, not paper, but even more evidence is mounting to suggest that they still have some work to do before the device is accepted universally. The Kindle DX which comes with a slightly larger screen than most eBook readers, along with a $489 price tag aims to reduce the burden of carrying dozens of books from class to class, but its shortcomings have some students ready to trade back down to the dead tree edition according to the Associated Press. "I like the aspect of writing something down on paper and having it be so easy and just kind of writing whatever comes to my mind," says Claire Becerra, a freshman at Arizona State University. Becerra further complained that notes made on the device often didn’t make sense because they were laced with typos and she relies more heavily on the highlighter tool as a result.
When asked how the device could be improved Madeline Kraizel, a freshman at Case Western Reserve University said a better system for managing bookmarks was needed, and a way that page numbers could remain consistent, so both teacher and student could reference material properly. Other students suggested that reading PDF files was often difficult, and if they weren’t formatted properly, zooming in to make the text readable didn’t always work. John Sherman, a first-year MBA student at the University of Virginia, claims that he still finds himself printing off case studies delivered in PDF format about half the time. "For the cases that require a lot of calculations, I find paper cases to be better," says Sherman, 31. "For me, it helps to scribble my thoughts in the margins."
It wasn’t all bad news for Amazon mind you. Students generally liked the concept behind the initiative, and many made use of some of the more unique features such as text to speech, allowing them to study more often. So, do you think the future of textbooks lies in e-Ink?
What about porn? Is there
Submitted by snapple00 on Mon, 10/19/2009 - 7:45am
What about porn?
Is there any good Amazon Kindle porn?
I get in trouble frequently with professors when I whip out a stack of 'Jungle fat asses' in my women's study class.
Something needs to change!
Submitted by MeTo on Mon, 10/19/2009 - 7:21am
These things need two screens so it would be like a open book. You could see two pages at the same time. Or you should beadle to open two different books one on each screen. The way they are they are just to limited.
Submitted by domih2009 on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 9:38pm
...to have a lot of technical books handy. I finally solved the need with a tablet PC (a HP TX2 discounted at $800, got rid of Vista put Win 7 instead). Pros: it has colors, a pen, is not unencumbered with limitations or proprietary formats, doubles as video player, it's a PC. Cons: much heavier than an e-reader, less battery time (my guess), more expensive than an e-reader. A dream come true on an airplane (low-life class seat) when you use it in tablet mode. So far, I love it. Next in pipe: indexing PDF, DOC, CHM with some OSS software.
Submitted by YoshiHNS on Mon, 10/19/2009 - 5:45am
yeah. I get a lot of shop and repair manuals in PDF form since they're cheaper and easier to get that way. I just use a laptop to read them. I can always print out the pages I want to have in paper form. Laptop allows me to look up any information I need on the web if the manual isn't good enough, listen to music, and store pictures of the repair process as I go along. So I guess the best eReader is pretty much just going to be a thin tablet computer.
Submitted by aviaggio on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 8:03pm
The only way it'll catch on is when you can do everything you can do with regular text books and more. Until then there won't ever be an incentive, especially if it's going to be less useful and/or cumbersome. The day will eventually come when this is true, but I don't think it'll be anytime soon.
And let's not forget the biggest glaring issue right now -- lack of color in e-readers. Very few disciplines have B&W only textbooks.
I looked
Submitted by CTskifreak on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 6:48pm
I looked at the picture and thought it was talking about the Dell Adamo netbook/notebook.
Submitted by YoshiHNS on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 3:02pm
For most of my engineering textbooks, I have the book tabbed and marked thoroughly. There's a lot of information that I need to flip to quite often while working on problems. The reader would have to have a really easy way to bookmark a page, label it, and then have a very quick way of going back to it. And even with that, how do you navigate the bookmarks quickly enough if you have more than, say, 20 bookmarks.
Just the beginning.
Submitted by JohnP on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 2:07pm
It is inevitable that e-books replace print and sooner rather than later. E-ink is the first truly readable device that I use consistently for reading large amounts of text. Yes, the shortcomings are very noticable...for now. There will be a tremendous number of readers in competition soon and eventually one will hit a home run (probably Apple! Heh).
There is nothing magical about books that will save them in the end. Newspapers and magazines are already on their way out.
Textbooks are heavy...
Submitted by 1337Goose on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 2:06pm
Interesting... but for what it's worth, I like the fact that it's light.
Textbooks *will* crush the fluid out of your spine.
~Goose
The DX
Submitted by nmanguy on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 2:06pm
The DX only saves you money if all your textbooks are available, and you were originally buying new books. I buy mega-used books that carry hefty discounts.
For the same price tag I'd
Submitted by Vano on Sun, 10/18/2009 - 1:41pm
For the same price tag I'd rather buy a netbook...which has more potentials then kindle
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