WyBlog

I'm not a Kindle kind of guy

Princeton University made a splash last week with the announcement that they're going to give a free Amazon Kindle DX to their students. Bloggers weighed in, as bloggers are prone to do, with most of the reactions being favorable. What struck me though was that the few objections raised only cited the price of the device, and not it's inherent clunkiness.

Admittedly at $489 that price is steep. One can buy a pretty decent netbook for less. But the netbook has a much smaller and lower resolution screen. So perhaps the Kindle will catch on.

I just don't see it being useful to most students. I remember when I was in school I rarely had just one book open at a time. Four or 5 was more likely. In my work today I still use paper manuals. Sure they're available online (or on CDrom) but it's hard to look at pages from two different books (let alone 4 or more books) on your pc screen at the same time. To me tabbed browsing doesn't compete with a table full of books open to the right page. Flipping through the pages and quickly skimming for the information I need isn't nearly as easy for me to do on a pc.

A benefit of the Kindle cited by Princeton is the elimination of the need for students to print out copies of digitized library materials. Maybe they'll download them as ebooks instead. But paper, especially if you only need a page or 2, is easier to carry around (not to mention lighter too). You can't fold up a Kindle and put it in your pocket.

I suspect the Kindle will supplement rather than replace printed books. Books we rarely use, or use solely for targeted reference purposes, will migrate to electronic form. I think though that the titles folks need every day will remain as discrete printed and bound books.

Posted at 16:08 by Chris Wysocki   []   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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