Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, introduced the the Kindle DX at Pace Univeristy in New York on Wednesday.
11:07 a.m. Wrapping Up: Mr. Bezos is summarizing the features of the Kindle DX. Large 9.7-inch display with auto-rotation, high-speed wireless access to 275,000 books, 3.3 gigabytes of storage, or room for up to 3,500 books. Native support for PDF documents, with no panning, zooming or scrolling necessary. “Kindle is now a family,” with two models, Mr. Bezos said.
11:04 a.m. More Details: And now the screen is back up, just as it appeared Mr. Bezos was about to fire someone. He is showing how The New York Times looks on the device. Also, “Biology of Fishes, Third Edition.”
Meanwhile, as a commenter notes, Amazon has put up a product page for the new device, indicating that it will cost $489 and ship this summer.
11:01 a.m. Whoops: In an awkward glitch during a demo, the image of the Kindle DX is projected onto a big screen backward. “I’m going to choose to find this hilarious,” Mr. Bezos said. And now the screen has gone completely dark.
10:58 a.m. Ink-Free: “We’ve known for more than a decade that one day an e-reader product would offer the same satisfying experience as the reading of a printed newspaper,” Mr. Sulzberger said. He called the partnership with Amazon an experiment and a laboratory to test new digital distribution strategies. Mr. Sulzberger did not give details on the size of the discount the papers will offer.
10:55 a.m. On to Newspapers: Three newspapers will offer a reduced price on the Kindle DX in exchange for a long-term subscription: The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. [Corrected that sentence.] These offers will be available starting this summer in areas where home delivery of those papers is not available. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, has taken the stage.
10:50 a.m. Freshman 15: “We’re going to get students with smaller backpacks, less load,” Mr. Bezos said. Amazon is also announcing six universities and colleges whose students will try out the Kindle DX this fall: Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, the University of Virginia, Reed College and Pace.
Barbara Snyder, president of Case Western University, is now speaking, saying the school will test the device this fall and measure how students use it to learn and communicate with each other and with professors.
10:48 a.m. Heading to School: The Kindle DX is especially suited for textbooks, Mr. Bezos said. Amazon has reached agreements with three leading textbook publishers that represent 60 percent of the market: Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley. (That pretty prominently leaves out McGraw-Hill Education.)10:47 a.m. A Wider View: “You never have to zoom, you never have to scroll, you just read the documents,” Mr. Bezos said. The device automatically shifts to a horizontal display when you turn it sideways, suggesting that there is an iPhone-like accelerometer in the device.
10:44 a.m. The Kindle DX: Mr. Bezos is talking up the advantages of the Kindle and its specialized reading screen. But people still print their documents. “Computer printers have proliferated, and so have their evil companions, the ink toner cartridge. We sell a lot of these.” The reason we still print so much is that computer displays “are a worse display device than paper. Paper is just better.” Kindle’s paper-like display solves that problem, he says.
But still, most documents are 8 1/2 by 11, and of course the Kindle 2 screen is about half that size, Mr. Bezos said. “Even with electronic paper you need a big display.”
And with that Mr. Bezos pulls out the Kindle DX. Its display is 2.5 times the size of the display on the previous model.
10:40 a.m. Some Stats: Mr. Bezos on the Kindle vision: “Every book ever printed in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.”
“Were making progress on that vision, Mr. Bezos said. Today there are 275,000 books available for the device. On Amazon.com, 35 percent of sales of books that have a Kindle edition are sold in that format.
10:38 a.m. Getting Going: We’re here at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University in lower Manhattan, as Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, is being introduced by his chief spokesman, Craig Berman. My colleague Motoko Rich notes that the crowd of journalists seems somewhat smaller, and a bit More muted, than the one at the Kindle 2 event in February. Mr. Bezos has taken the stage.
10 a.m. Setting the Stage: Last February, Amazon introduced the Kindle 2 at a private library and museum in New York, a setting chosen to highlight the literary ambitions of its electronic book reader.
On Wednesday, as then, Amazon seems to be conveying a message in its choice of press conference location. At 10:30 a.m. New York time, Amazon will introduce its large-screen Kindle at Pace University in lower Manhattan, suggesting not only the company’s intentions to tailor the Kindle for textbooks, but newspapers as well. The Pace campus is located on the site of the 19th-century headquarters of The New York Times.
We’ll be at the event to record the proceedings live, hopefully with a minimum of typos and a modicum of on-the-go analysis. As always, we welcome comments, questions and remarks below.
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