The Kindle DX means Jeff Bezos hates you.

Did you drop $360 on the Kindle 2 a few months ago? If so, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos hates you. Why? He's just announced a new Kindle. A cooler kindle, you might say. Big screen, lots of storage, all that crap... also it's super expensive at nearly $500. Pricey to say the least.

Above: Still not as practical as dead trees.

I'm going to just say this: as big a nerd as I am, I just can't grok the whole e-book thing. I'm very skeptical of introducing another expensive piece of technology into my life to fill a niche that dead trees fill quite well. I'm already terrified of breaking of losing my phone while out. Why have to worry about spilling something something on my e-book reader? I'm still not happy with the crispness either. Every time I've looked at a Kindle it seems too muddy. E-ink isn't there yet.

There was all this hubbub about a Kindle DX trial run on university campuses. On the face of it, this seems like a good idea. If you can get a big discount on the Kindle version of a text book (and the school is providing a Kindle DX), it could really be appealing. If students had to buy their own Kindles, not so much. Can you imagine how big a target Kindles would be for theft? Much like a laptop, they are very portable (i.e. portable by someone other than the owner).

So lets say you buy a pricey Kindle DX and get all your text books on it. Maybe when all is said and done you only spent a bit more than you would have on all the dead tree versions. Sure, you can't really doodle in the margins, but look how portable! At the local coffee shop someone steals your Kindle, because lets face it, people are dicks. Mid-terms are coming up and you now have no books at all. Time to buy another Kindle? Jeff Bezos sure hopes so.