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E-PrinceThe University will partner with Amazon.com to provide students and faculty members in three courses with the new Kindle DX electronic reader next academic year as a part of a sustainability initiative to conserve paper, according to a University ...(back to the article)
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That’s awesome that a larger-display version is coming out. It is kind of odd that it costs as much as a laptop for most consumers (not counting students subsidized by Amazon).
Colors would be nice. If they properly take care of tables, graphics, annotations, that would indeed make this a very powerful tool for textbooks. The impact on traditional newspaper is less clear, unless Kindle can have a very low price point.
I don’t have a Kindle but checked one out from a friend. The screen is very neat and unlike most standard back-lit LCDs. If you get a chance, check it out. Kindle’s display is VERY cool and more comfortable for all-day reading.
In any case, it is awesome that there is another, larger screen, Kindle coming out. It is pretty exciting that Amazon is putting a ton of effort into revolutionizing and popularizing eBooks.
On the note about Amazon, I came across an interesting table that shows Amazon’s discounts in various categories.
It is at http://www.uberi.com
Maybe someone will find it useful too, or at least somewhat amusing…
I would like to know what contaminate less:
XX Producing the paper
XX Producing the Kindle (batteries, lcd, plastic, electricity to make it work, etc...)
It takes ~100 trees to produce a million sheets of paper.
It takes an unknown amount of energy to produce the Kindle (the batteries may require 50-100 kJ through manufacturing (Li-ion is surprisingly ecofriendly), it has no LCD, the plastic might take 1kg of oil/natural gas depending on the resin and 54kg of water...).
What is interesting, however, is that Amazon hasn't been emphasizing the environmental impact of the Kindle in its advertising, at least before this project. Which, of course, does not bode well.
But to note how little these choices would influence Princeton's environmental impact, take, for example, your fume hood. A fume hood uses as much power as does 4 American households. A small research university would have probably a 1000 fume hoods; Princeton probably has more.
Princeton's fume hoods account for 4% of its energy consumption.
6%, to be correct.
Apologies, I'm an idiot.
ya its dumb to frame this solely in terms of environmental impact (although i am all for saving trees). imagine if ipod had sold itself on reducing the packaging wasted from compact disc sales.
regardless, this seems like a pretty cool product and i would prefer one tablet with all my books plus wikipedia and news/blog feeds over the many pounds of things i would have to put into a bag to replicate that functionality.
Trees are a renewable resouce, not sure that materials to make a Kindle are.
Environmental arguments aside, this is a good experiment for Princeton. If Kindle proves successful in the academic market, it will motivate textbook producers to make their books available for this kind of device. The cost of books is enormous over our four years here. A Kindle (especially if they can work to get the cost down) loaded with e-books could make a very significant financial difference to a lot of students.
The whole thing reportedly costs around $50-$60K, if I recall. That's almost $1K/student. Surely if the retail price is $489, it can't cost that much again to hire somebody to scan textbooks into .pdfs? Or are we financing some company writing e-textbooks from scratch?
"The three courses that will use Kindles next fall will be announced by the end of the month, Goldstein said"
Whatever happened to this? The page at http://www.princeton.edu/ereaderpilot/who/cours... says "The courses selected to partcipate in this e-reader pilot will be announced when course participants are notified and course enrollments are completed." Does no one in this project feel like offering an explanation? If this is the level of how little the people involved care, then I find that my preconceived expectations of the Kindle itself are falling even lower.