Kindle DX: Will Law Schools Soon See the eCasebook?
And, most importantly, remember the light, weightless feeling of your wallet after purchasing said casebooks?
Future students of the law might not share those memories, if Jeff Bezos of Amazon has anything to say about it.
Amazon announced the Kindle DX this morning and made the device available for pre-order on Amazon.com. The Kindle DX boasts a significantly larger screen than its predecessors (9.7in), a landscape viewing mode, a native PDF reader and increased storage space.
It also carries a $489 price tag, which perhaps isn't something to boast about.
With this latest incarnation of the Kindle ebook reader, Amazon has set its sights on the textbook and newspaper industries, betting that the larger screen will make reading large-format works a little easier.
Since the E-Ink screen doesn't change very quickly, scrolling used to be a hassle when a book's pages didn't fit the Kindle's screen. The larger screen was added to address that issue and broaden the types of content that can be viewed well on the device.
The company has also opened up possibilities in the professional market with the native PDF reader. Since professional organizations are accustomed to using PDFs anyway, Amazon is hoping that it's a short jump to using the Kindle to share and access those PDF documents.
(Law firms take note: Is there money to be saved in the long run by giving attorneys Kindles instead of printing paper copies of case documents?)
Some colleges and newspapers simultaneously announced pilot projects to distribute the new Kindles to students and subscribers to determine whether Bezos' claims will actually pan out.
Amazon has also convinced three textbook companies to offer their books in the Kindle store.
If everything goes the way Bezos is hoping, trips to the bookstore at the beginning of the semester will eventually be replaced by a single wireless download session.