Kindle DX, a girl's review
I wanted to upgrade from my Kindle 1 to the new Kindle DX, I really did. I've been looking forward to the announcement for days and finally got to see what it looked like today. Sadly, I won't be upgrading. There are several very cool things about it as well as several problems that did not get addressed in the DX. But I won't bore you with the details of any of those because there's basically ONE thing that will keep me from upgrading: it won't fit in most of my purses.
I know they're pushing out to a new market - the business and student market - and those users would have bigger bags. But this DX version is not ready for prime time on the academic market, believe me, I've done some research on my Kindle and the highlight/notes functions are quite primitive and they don't seem to have improved those. So to me, that means they still need to please their biggest current market which seems to be women. Women read more books than men. Women follow Oprah more than men. Hence, the Kindle should suck up to women. If only they had made it about an inch and a half shorter, it would fit in most of my purses and certainly all my favorite ones. To have your Kindle determine the look of your purse is a fashion no-no, in my opinion. We all have our own tastes and although mine is far from Vogue's, it's still my own style, not Amazon's.
Besides, it's too expensive. For $489, you can buy a real notebook/netbook now with an insane amount of memory.
I could have been talked into coughing up the bucks for my favorite gadget if only it would fit into my favorite purse...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Comments
My wife and I had a similar conversation this morning; the Kindle has got to be "kidding" with the DX. They are not trying to attract a new consumer audience, but and old tech audience. Look at their core sponsors, newspapers and magazines with their shrinking subscriptions; and text book publishers that are very nervous now that most students chip in to buy text books, scan them and either resell or give them away to their classmates.
Like you said, they should have stood by their women.
What do you base this on? Has Amazon published stats saying that their market is composed primarily of women? If you want to start comparing audiences, you need to consider how many men vs. women would spring for a $489 "single-use" tech device, especially, as you say, when a notebook is priced equivalently. Women may read more than men (except in history, biography, and business categories), but I think the sales figures for Kindles would be skewed, as I believe men still the majority of buyers buying duplicate function/leisure gadgetry (although I would have to get some numbers to back that up since the last numbers I saw were from 2004).
Either way, I agree that Amazon is alienating a portion of their audience by making the device so overpriced and "bulky". They should be working on slimming down the existing Kindle in both price and form to get down to a $129-150 price point - it's only then that they're going to see mass-market adoption of Kindles over notebooks/handhelds/plain books for reading purposes.