The Kindle DX arrived, on schedule. The initial charging of the battery is done, the “Welcome Aboard” letter from His Bezosness has been read.

I’ve trained MLB in the usage of the Kindle 2. She’s diggin’ it.

Initial reactions:

• It’s incredibly easy to share books between the two devices. The DX has retrieved content bought on the K2, and is happy to display it.
• I bought a book and had it downloaded to the DX this evening. MLB’s K2 is happy to let her read that one as well, providing she has any interest in Security Monitoring.
• The DX screen is every bit as sharp and crisp as the K2.
• The DX is heavier; I knew that going in. Initially, the heaviness is not an impediment. It’s more of a balance thing; the DX seems bottom heavy. I make this observation after less than a half-hour of using the DX, whilst sitting in my chair, training MLB, drinking a beer, and watching the Stanley Cup Final. I’ll revisit this point.
• The DX auto-rotate feature works nicely, at the expense of some strange page breaks. It is possible to lock portrait/landscape display. This is a Good Thing.
• Initial copying of vendor supplied PDF manuals shows the DX on-board PDF reader does the best job yet of displaying arbitrary PDFs. Once again, some come up smiling, others are less than spectacular. Even the less than spectacular ones are readable. With some tweaking, I think things will improve. My naive hope of blindly copying arbitrary PDF documents over with no intermediate processing has faded somewhat, but the inital DX handling of them gives me hope.

The DX is a keeper. My initial observations are encouraging. I’ll fiddle, tweak, test, and let y’all know how it goes.

-k-

kindle, kindle dx

The Big Ol’ Kindle DX, from Amazon, is on the truck:

Ship Carrier: UPS
Tracking Number: 1Z7xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Status: In transit

Order #: nnn-mmmmmmm-zzzzzzz
Shipment Date: June 10, 2009
Destination: RESTON, VA, US
Estimated Arrival: June 12, 2009

Hmm… new Kindle, WordPress upgrade, multibooting Fedora on a test laptop.

The geekiness thickens…

-k-

From Amazon:

Items not yet shipped:
Delivery estimate: June 12, 2009

* 1 of: Amazon Kindle DX Leather Cover
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
* 1 of: Kindle DX: Amazon’s 9.7″ Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

And the anticipation heats up.

-k-

I’m on order. The potential of the Kindle DX was just too great to leave unexplored. Having manuals, usually in PDF, handy on one easy to use device will be a good thing. Nearly all vendors distribute their documentation in PDF; even when you get a CD with the documents, they’re PDFs. Firing up Acrobat and wading through docs on a new product has always been hard for me; I can’t easily highlight and bookmark pages of interest, and I’m stuck reading on a computer screen.

I’ve even resorted to sending important documents to Kinko’s, and having them printed and bound. Not only is that pricey(one manual costs around $30, depending on length), but the spiral binding wears out over time. Then there’s the problem of finding storage space for these volumes. Oh, and when V 2.0 of product X hits the streets, the manuals are now obsolete. On the Kindle, delete and archive the old, load up the new.

MLB has expressed an interest in the Kindle 2, and she will be taking that over after the DX arrives later this summer. She’s already pointed out that the DX is my “Happy Father’s Day, Happy Anniversary, Happy Birthday, and Merry Christmas” present for the year. I’m OK with that.

-k-

I never have been behind the curve so fast; I’m still digging my Amazon Kindle 2, and now there’s this new thing called the Kindle DX.

I have no quarrel with the screen size, quality, and ease of use of the Kindle 2. The DX has entered the mix in an effort to better render newspapers, a feature which fails to excite me. However, part of the DX allure is a native PDF reader, which should deliver my personal long-sought holy grail of having one device capable of holding any vendor-supplied manual that I might need or want. Add the additional storage capacity of the DX, and I’m salivating. At $489, though, the DX has entered netbook, if not low-end laptop territory in the price category.

I have no burning desire to have the newest Big Shiny Thing; were I Kindleless, I’d seriously entertain a DX, even at that price point. Had I been prescient enough to bet $10 on the Kentucky Derby winner on the nose, I’d be a DX’er for sure.

I wait, and watch.

-k-