Review: Kindle DX - Amazon's miracle bast
" To make one bast shoe requires seven bast two meters long each " - says wikipedia . I don’t know how many Jeff Bezos CEO Amazon used, but in the manufacture of the Kindle DX he definitely came out with the best bast shoes in size and quality. Read the Kindle DX e-book reader review. Under the cut a lot of letters and photos.
Those who regularly read my tweeter several days ago found out that I got the Amazon Kindle DX. This is no accident. The fact is that I am in every way looking for ways to expand the assortment of my store and try to get some interesting reader into my hands for testing. Well, if such a reader is good enough, then it soon gets straight to my blog about e-books. The same book turned out to be so good that I decided to write a special review for the readers of Habr. Enough entry, start on-site inspection.
The first thing that inspired me was of course the packaging. Even from ordinary yellow cardboard, the Yankees can make a brand. Pay attention to the instructions and boxes with cables in the photo. For safe transportation inside the box, the device is placed in a special monolithic form in such a way that it does not touch the walls anywhere. The set is minimalistic: a reader, instructions, mini-USB, power adapter with a European plug and specifications. Separately, the cover and backlight were purchased.
So, we pull the cardboard braid with the inscription "Pull" and in our hands we will have a snow-white color device. The Kindle DX case is a thin candy bar weighing a pound, no screws or hints for the cover. Only on the back side at the top is the rubberized part. I carefully tried to move her, but she did not succumb.
There is one long volume control button on the right side, a mini-USB port for charging and data transfer at the bottom, as well as an LED. At the end of the top is the power button and headphone input. On the front of the device: E-INK screen of 9.7 inches, 5 buttons and a joystick on the right, QWERTY-keyboard on the bottom. The buttons on the keyboard are interesting, and you won’t understand the touch, either plastic or rubber. Something average. The joystick is very small, but it is convenient to control it, as it has excellent sensitivity and is made of the same material as the buttons.
It should be noted that experts in the field of User Experience apparently worked on the device. Everything is simple and intuitive, unlike many multi-button samples.
However, it is time to move from the aesthetics of form to the aesthetics of the soul. Turning on the device, I was immediately politely asked to register on Amazon. Ok, no problem ... After entering the username and password, the Kindle suggested turning on Wireless, and then surprisingly quickly, no problem, and most importantly, for free (I live in Ukraine) I connected to Amazon. The device has been registered. Along the way, the system reported that an email of the form mylogin@kindle.com was registered for me, and documents for conversion to my device can be sent to it.
I went to the main page. To my surprise, the interface turned out to be quite ascetic. No icons or widgets. The main page is a simple list of books, reminiscent in structure and form of the content that we used to see in paper books.
In the center of the list is the name of the book, on the left in small letters format, for example, pdf. On the right is a little metadata, apparently about the author. Under the name in the form of barely noticeable points, an indicator of progress in reading this book.
My whole interface is not associated with anything other than good old hypertext in its simplest form.
It is known that the Amazon Kindle DX out of the box supports the following book formats: AZW (DRM protected), Mobi, PRC, TXT, PDF. Three of the five formats are owned by Amazon, and in order to read HTML, DOC, RTF, you will need to convert them using a magic email account. However, I have not tried. Of course, no one bothers you using any desktop converters.
Let's put some good books to test. I chose two books in PDF, because it is the most complex, but very popular format for electronic readers. I just copied both books via mini-USB. The first was just text with small tables, and the second was complex markup with drawings.
As you can see, the Kindle DX handled both files with a bang. The text is quite readable. The advantage of the 9.7 "screen makes itself felt. But of course, even on this device, just text formats work much better.
You can adjust the font size, word density in the line, follow links, and even your notes can be tweeted right there. (!) Or otherwise “share.” For texts in English there is a function “Text-to-Speach”.
Speaking of the Amazon network. You do not need to configure anything to enter it. You just turn the Wireless on and off when you need it. As soon as you log into Whispernet, that's what the Amazon network is called, your synchronization is automatically activated, bookmarks, notes and books that you downloaded from Amazon are saved. All personal content that you copied from your PC does not get into Whispernet.
Directly from the reader you can buy new books from the Amazon store, provided that you freely read in English. The store page and content are specially adapted for viewing from a reader. Conversely, from your personal web page you can control what and in what order to upload to the reader.
The last point of my testing was the built-in experimental browser. He walks the wikipedia mobile version remarkably and rather quickly, but, unfortunately, is clearly limited and selective in choosing other sites. For example, I could not visit the mobile version of the Habr, but it's a pity.
Among the disadvantages of the device, one can also note the weight in half a kilogram, and with the cover probably all 800 grams and large sizes.
I came to the conclusion that Amazon Kindle DX is perfect for those who are tired of problems with reading PDF files in their electronic library, as well as for everyone who reads, writes, or maybe already thinks in English and wants to get access to Amazon bookshelves. Now this pantry of literature contains about 600,000 paid books with copyrights and more than a million free or almost free books on which copyright has already expired.
I wanted to thank Roman Vilyavin (chesszone [at] ya.ru), who was not afraid to fall victim to an expensive experiment. He is now the happy owner of the Kindle DX, but unfortunately he does not yet have an account on the hub
PS Kindle is already somewhere on the way to Sri Lanka, but from fresh memory I can answer questions, so ask, dear habro-readers.
Those who regularly read my tweeter several days ago found out that I got the Amazon Kindle DX. This is no accident. The fact is that I am in every way looking for ways to expand the assortment of my store and try to get some interesting reader into my hands for testing. Well, if such a reader is good enough, then it soon gets straight to my blog about e-books. The same book turned out to be so good that I decided to write a special review for the readers of Habr. Enough entry, start on-site inspection.
Packaging
The first thing that inspired me was of course the packaging. Even from ordinary yellow cardboard, the Yankees can make a brand. Pay attention to the instructions and boxes with cables in the photo. For safe transportation inside the box, the device is placed in a special monolithic form in such a way that it does not touch the walls anywhere. The set is minimalistic: a reader, instructions, mini-USB, power adapter with a European plug and specifications. Separately, the cover and backlight were purchased.
Appearance
So, we pull the cardboard braid with the inscription "Pull" and in our hands we will have a snow-white color device. The Kindle DX case is a thin candy bar weighing a pound, no screws or hints for the cover. Only on the back side at the top is the rubberized part. I carefully tried to move her, but she did not succumb.
There is one long volume control button on the right side, a mini-USB port for charging and data transfer at the bottom, as well as an LED. At the end of the top is the power button and headphone input. On the front of the device: E-INK screen of 9.7 inches, 5 buttons and a joystick on the right, QWERTY-keyboard on the bottom. The buttons on the keyboard are interesting, and you won’t understand the touch, either plastic or rubber. Something average. The joystick is very small, but it is convenient to control it, as it has excellent sensitivity and is made of the same material as the buttons.
It should be noted that experts in the field of User Experience apparently worked on the device. Everything is simple and intuitive, unlike many multi-button samples.
Interface
However, it is time to move from the aesthetics of form to the aesthetics of the soul. Turning on the device, I was immediately politely asked to register on Amazon. Ok, no problem ... After entering the username and password, the Kindle suggested turning on Wireless, and then surprisingly quickly, no problem, and most importantly, for free (I live in Ukraine) I connected to Amazon. The device has been registered. Along the way, the system reported that an email of the form mylogin@kindle.com was registered for me, and documents for conversion to my device can be sent to it.
I went to the main page. To my surprise, the interface turned out to be quite ascetic. No icons or widgets. The main page is a simple list of books, reminiscent in structure and form of the content that we used to see in paper books.
In the center of the list is the name of the book, on the left in small letters format, for example, pdf. On the right is a little metadata, apparently about the author. Under the name in the form of barely noticeable points, an indicator of progress in reading this book.
My whole interface is not associated with anything other than good old hypertext in its simplest form.
It is known that the Amazon Kindle DX out of the box supports the following book formats: AZW (DRM protected), Mobi, PRC, TXT, PDF. Three of the five formats are owned by Amazon, and in order to read HTML, DOC, RTF, you will need to convert them using a magic email account. However, I have not tried. Of course, no one bothers you using any desktop converters.
Reading
Let's put some good books to test. I chose two books in PDF, because it is the most complex, but very popular format for electronic readers. I just copied both books via mini-USB. The first was just text with small tables, and the second was complex markup with drawings.
As you can see, the Kindle DX handled both files with a bang. The text is quite readable. The advantage of the 9.7 "screen makes itself felt. But of course, even on this device, just text formats work much better.
You can adjust the font size, word density in the line, follow links, and even your notes can be tweeted right there. (!) Or otherwise “share.” For texts in English there is a function “Text-to-Speach”.
Network
Speaking of the Amazon network. You do not need to configure anything to enter it. You just turn the Wireless on and off when you need it. As soon as you log into Whispernet, that's what the Amazon network is called, your synchronization is automatically activated, bookmarks, notes and books that you downloaded from Amazon are saved. All personal content that you copied from your PC does not get into Whispernet.
Directly from the reader you can buy new books from the Amazon store, provided that you freely read in English. The store page and content are specially adapted for viewing from a reader. Conversely, from your personal web page you can control what and in what order to upload to the reader.
Browser
The last point of my testing was the built-in experimental browser. He walks the wikipedia mobile version remarkably and rather quickly, but, unfortunately, is clearly limited and selective in choosing other sites. For example, I could not visit the mobile version of the Habr, but it's a pity.
conclusions
Among the disadvantages of the device, one can also note the weight in half a kilogram, and with the cover probably all 800 grams and large sizes.
I came to the conclusion that Amazon Kindle DX is perfect for those who are tired of problems with reading PDF files in their electronic library, as well as for everyone who reads, writes, or maybe already thinks in English and wants to get access to Amazon bookshelves. Now this pantry of literature contains about 600,000 paid books with copyrights and more than a million free or almost free books on which copyright has already expired.
Acknowledgments
I wanted to thank Roman Vilyavin (chesszone [at] ya.ru), who was not afraid to fall victim to an expensive experiment. He is now the happy owner of the Kindle DX, but unfortunately he does not yet have an account on the hub
PS Kindle is already somewhere on the way to Sri Lanka, but from fresh memory I can answer questions, so ask, dear habro-readers.