Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

The Daily Princetonian covers the just released data from Princeton’s Kindle DX study.

Kindle DX Study – The Good

Let’s start with a few of the good things -

… reduced the amount of paper students printed for their respective classes by nearly 50 percent …

Wilson School professor Daniel Kurtzer, who taught WWS 555A, said he found the Kindle conducive to the format of his class because it consisted of “very traditional reading.” (Class discussions were a problem though)

Survey participants cited the Kindle’s battery life, wireless connection, portability, search feature and ability to consolidate all course documents in one place as convenient features.

The article has a bunch of positives scattered throughout and they include - 

1. It reduced paper usage by approximately 50%.  
2. Students liked Kindle’s long battery life, wireless capability, portability, search capability, and ability to have all course documents in one place. 
3. Ability to download notes and highlights to PC.  
4. Lots of availability of books without having to carry a lot physically.
5. 35% of students said they would buy a replacement eReader if their free eReader (free in return for participating in the study) broke.
6. Professors of all 3 classes testing the Kindle said that with improvements they’d be willing to do another trial.

While there were positives listed the article mostly focuses on the negatives.

Kindle DX Study – The Bad

The Kindle DX comes under a lot of fire. The strongest negative reactions include -

“It’s not very well designed for academic use, it’s not very helpful in page-turning or note taking, and the annotation software is very poor,”

Because there are no page numbers, I also had no conception of how much reading I had to do,”

I found it disappointing for use in class because I emphasize close work with the text, and that ideally requires students to mark up the text quite a bit,” Professor Katz said. “Though it doesn’t prevent highlighting, the annotation function is difficult to use, and the keyboard is very small,” he added.

The complete list of negatives -

1. Ill-suited for class readings. 
2. Lack of page numbers.
3. Difficult to highlight and annotate.
4. Tiny keyboard.
5. Difficult to use folder structure (think they mean lack of proper Folders feature).
6. 65% of participants said they wouldn’t buy a replacement eReader if their free eReader broke.
7. May be more suited for leisure reading. 

The article paints the Kindle DX as not up for the task of being a textbook reader - unfortunately there is a lot of truth to it.

One student’s assessment is, in my opinion, spot-on -

“I think the only way the Kindle can become suitable for academics is if Amazon makes a specially designed device for use in the classroom that would allow easy and seamless annotation and notetaking.”

Amazon can’t expect to just increase the screen size of the Kindle 2 and add rudimentary PDF support and pass it off as a textbook reader.

Kindle DX in Education – Where do we stand now?

Amazon moved too fast with its University Trials and ran into numerous problems including the National Federation of the Blind shutting down trials in some Universities.

The main problem though is that the Kindle DX is just a large screen ebook reader. It’s not a textbook reader and the trials clearly showed that.

The upside is that Universities are now more aware of eReaders and open to improved eReaders that are actually optimized for textbooks and college education.  

In a sense Amazon did a great thing for eReaders’ future in colleges while hurting its own cause.

What are the killer features for a textbook reader?

The feedback clearly shows that the main issues with the Kindle DX during the study were -

1. The difficulty in taking notes and making highlights.
2. The device not being designed as a dedicated textbook reader.  

There are also some features that are borderline necessary -

1. Color screen for textbook illustrations. 
2. Excellent PDF support. 
3. Page Numbers.
4. Folders and other ways of organizing documents.
5. Education related apps like Flash Cards and a Journal/Notebook.

It’s tough to decide whether the ideal is an eReader that almost approaches a laptop in functionality or whether the ideal is a dedicated textbook reader.

Don’t really have an answer

The textbook reader market has so many landmines it’s perhaps best left alone -

1. Textbook publishers have way too much power. 
2. Students are pretty demanding.
3. Various Rights Groups (like the NFB) have their own axes to grind.
4. Each University wants to do things at its own pace.
5. Each University has its own expectation of what an eReader should be.

At the current moment eInk just isn’t that suited for note-taking. This might change when Mirasol, Pixel Qi and Liquavista arrive.

There probably won’t be a viable solution for reading textbooks and taking notes for at least the next 6 months. In the worst case it might take a year and a half to get a real solution.