Submitted by acohill on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 08:51
The new Kindle DX by Amazon is out. It's a bigger version the older Kindles, and the main feature is a much bigger screen. The gadget cost $489, but some of that goes toward the free connectivity on the Sprint cellular network. You can download books and news via the wireless link, and recent novels start at $10.
While leveraging almost everywhere cellular connectivity is clever, it limits the device's usefulness as a substitute for a full-fledged computer for Web access. The slower cellular data speeds are fine for downloading a book and then reading it offline, but trying to read the New York Times in the morning over a cellular data link is likely to be pokey, and the whole connectivity model does not scale up well once lots of people have the device. AT&T's 3G network can barely handle the still small number of iPhones.
Kindle will pave the way for better devices with color screens and WiFi connectivity to news and books. Kindle may also help publishers finally make the pricing and business model shift to better accommodate selling books in electronic format.
But there is still another shoe to drop: Apple has been making veiled hints about "new and interesting" devices, that many think could be a tablet iPhone. It would not take much to do that, as the iPhone is already a full-fledged computer running a modern, open source version of Unix. If Apple releases a tablet version of the iPod Touch this summer (an iPhone without the cellular phone but everything else), Kindle will fade quickly into obscurity.
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