Jeff Bezos and crew just pre-launched the Amazon DX at a press event in New York City. You can check out the live blogging here. TechMeme also has a bunch of news.
Here’s a breakdown in what the Kindle DX offers:
9.7″ E-Ink display (1200 x 824, 150 ppi with 16 shades of gray)
1/3″ thick (10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″)
3,500 books (3.3GB available for content)
Native PDF support
Auto-rotation
EVDO connectivity
3.5mm stereo audio jack, built-in stereo speakers
18.9 oz
Up to 4 days battery life with wireless on, charge time 4 hours
Formats: Kindle (AZW), PDF, TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.
1 year warranty
You can pre-order one, for summer shipment, on Amazon here for $489.
Although I have no idea how I’m going to pay for it, I decided to pull out my credit card and pre-order one. Here’s why:
1) The Kindle DX is about viewing documents as they are laid out. For worksheets, puzzle books, etc this is a winner. Yeah, there’s very little interactivity supported in the Kindle DX, but I want to get a feel for what it might be like to use one now.
2) There’s no touch or ink, but that’s OK. One step at a time.
3) Did you see how thin this thing is? And the weigtht is only 19 oz. Now we’re talking.
4) Why not wait for the TechCrunch CrunchPad or the Apple “tablet”? Well, neither of these products are out now, so even if they are announced in let’s say another month or so, there’s still going to need to be ship time and so on. So my guess is that the Amazon Kindle DX is going to come out first. That means I’m going to get in line now to give it a go. If, by chance, Apple releases some must-have gadget at WWDC, I’ll think about changing my order.