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Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

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Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#51
post #10

Can you load your own .txt files onto this? This is actually big enough to carry & review my source code without booting up a laptop.

How often do you browse your source code without the intent to edit it? Just curious if you have an interesting code review or development process because I don't think I've done that before.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#52
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A software keyboard is much more likely. It shouldn't be too long before E Ink displays can reliably/cheaply handle touch input.

source? I'd like to see news on such tech,

http://eink.com/kits/amepd.html

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious but orders of magnitude harder in difficulty. I'm thinking 2 years, from a Japanese company.

The problem here is that nobody can release a similar device and get adoption because they don't have the content. Similar to iTunes and the iPod. I'm pretty sure this is going to be a device monopoly. The only people that could pull off a licensing deal would be Barnes and Noble or Borders and they don't seem to be in a position to do that. At least Apple has the Zune Store as competition (as much as it sucks). Amaz…

I think an O'Reilly Safari ebook reader could work. Or maybe a Google ebook reader could take advantage of the book rights registry.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#54
post #23

This looks like it will be a great product, especially for all the technical pdfs I've built up over the years. Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed music that I can't listen to anymore. I'm not going to do the same with books. Anyone else trying to justify a $500 pdf reader? :)

I'm going to be using this to read technical books, a lot of which can cost between $50 to $100. Compared to the cost of my library, I think $500 is easily worth it for being able to take most of these books with me anywhere I go.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#55
post #51
post #10

Can you load your own .txt files onto this? This is actually big enough to carry & review my source code without booting up a laptop.

How often do you browse your source code without the intent to edit it? Just curious if you have an interesting code review or development process because I don't think I've done that before.

Not often at all. I carry hard copy and multi-colored pens everywhere.

I just figured that if I'm spending $500 on a full page sized device, it sure would be nice to load all of my recent source code on it. I travel alot without a laptop and I'm always thinking about my work. I often follow the trail to a hard copy or an older module that I'm not carrying with me.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#56
post #17

Looks great but does anyone else think the price is a bit expensive? Not that this is a great comparison, but I can buy a netbook for $299 or less these days. Why such a up-front hardware cost when Amazon will get recurring revenue from Kindle books? Are they taking a loss on the book sales to boost downloads?

Because I believe Amazon is losing money on each ebook sold. They want people to move to their platform so badly that they're willing to accept a loss on each ebook and make it up with the hardware costs.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#57

The killer feature is that it reads PDFs natively now (i.e., without having to convert them). For someone who prefers to read on screen and who has to read a lot of PDFs, this is very exciting.

This is really cool. I have the Kindle 2 and the PDF conversion on many books is really bad, but especially programming books. However, the Kindle DX looks huge . I'm not sure I could carry that thing around the same way I do the Kindle 2.

As stated a few places. I think this may work well for students that need to carry around many large/heavy textbooks. Since it would still fit nicely in a book bag. However, the price tag is a bit high for students, unless the textbooks are already included :)

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#58
post #23

This looks like it will be a great product, especially for all the technical pdfs I've built up over the years. Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed music that I can't listen to anymore. I'm not going to do the same with books. Anyone else trying to justify a $500 pdf reader? :)

I'm going to be using this to read technical books, a lot of which can cost between $50 to $100. Compared to the cost of my library, I think $500 is easily worth it for being able to take most of these books with me anywhere I go.

But how much do the PDF versions of the technical books cost ? And where do you get them? I am also trying to calculate the costs and see if I can throw the bookshelf away.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#59
post #17

Looks great but does anyone else think the price is a bit expensive? Not that this is a great comparison, but I can buy a netbook for $299 or less these days. Why such a up-front hardware cost when Amazon will get recurring revenue from Kindle books? Are they taking a loss on the book sales to boost downloads?

Because I believe Amazon is losing money on each ebook sold. They want people to move to their platform so badly that they're willing to accept a loss on each ebook and make it up with the hardware costs.

That makes no sense - the more books they sell, the more money they lose. No business should sell below their marginal cost for any length of time unless they're really desperate for market share. What's more common is selling the hardware at a loss, and reaping the profits on the e-books.

Re: Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle

#60

The kindle is in a strange position now. The more features they add (like native PDF) the more people will clamor to make it more input friendly (like the talk of a wacom-esque interface below). Here's hoping Amazon knows where to draw the line and it just remains a damn good way to read text.

To me, that's the killer feature that it's missing. For a small reader, it doesn't matter, but for the large one, I want to be able to take notes, sketch out ideas in the margin, and so on.
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