Amazon Kindle Fails First College Test

theodp writes "If Amazon hoped for honest feedback when it started testing the Kindle DX on college campuses last fall, writes Amy Martinez, it certainly got its wish. Students pulled no punches telling Amazon what they thought of its $489 e-reader. But if Amazon also hoped the Kindle DX would become the next iPhone or iPod on campuses, it failed its first test. At the University of Virginia, as many as 80% of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid (though more than 90% liked it for pleasure reading). At Princeton and Reed, students complained they couldn't scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages, or fully appreciate color charts and graphics. 'The pilot programs are doing their job — getting us valuable feedback,' said Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener. Martinez notes that Reed, Seton Hall, and other colleges plan to test the iPad in the fall to see if it can do better."

Piracy solves another issue

[h4rr4r]

A fast flipping display and cheaper unit would be a better fit.Any $150 Chinese android tablet would do. The books would have to be pirated, but college kids have been doing that for ages.

Print was first, iPad Comes second, kindle last.

[irreverant]

Coming from a generation that has seen the birth of the internet and school instruction online. I have to say, print is dead, or close to it, if the kindle or iPad have anything to do with it. It's promising that students gave honest reviews of the kindle as a tool for instruction, the kindle offers a lot of promise as a teaching tool, with it being a test and LOTS of room for improvement, maybe with all the honest and constructive criticism amazon will make many new improvements that will help individuals become better students. However, I can speculate that by shear performance alone, the kindle has 'a-ways' to go when competing with the iPad. Although I am not a fan of the iPad it can be a great tool for students. It will be interesting to see what direction amazon takes with this device.

sony got this right

[escay]

for scribbling margin notes, highlighting, syncing notes with PC/mac - and more, the Sony Daily Edition [sonystyle.com] perfectly fits the bill. That device is the right size, feature list and perhaps the correct price point. Sony should be peddling that to the universities to finally gain some respectable foothold in the e-book industry.

Re:Electronics != Best Solution

[jadrian]

True, that said it could have an amazing future in academia if they just come up with something good enough. I have hundreds of papers lying around, keep reprinting stuff I can't find, have plenty of notes on some and taking them with me when traveling is a pain. Honestly I am dying to have a nice device where I can easily read my scientific papers, tag them with keywords and bibliographic info for easy searches, add notes and what not.

Re:Odd choice

[cgenman]

I tend to find textbooks to be an outmoded form of communication anyway. In the classes I'm in we tend to switch between lab work, reading individual papers, reading smaller subject-specific paperbacks, etc. Most of the traditional thick / hardbound textbooks I've bought in the past year have just sat on the shelf. It's important background information that doesn't help you understand the political climate of China, why graphic designers work the way they do, or how to build flash applications.

Maybe Amazon should be targeting the smaller, single-use books in some way. Maybe buying individual chapters, so that professors can tailor a curriculum more tightly. Or having one-stop information compendiums that make it easier to buy everything for a specific class. Spend 100 dollars, and get the relevant chapters from 2 different textbooks, a few individual copies of relevant softbacks, and PDF archive versions of specific web pages that the class will use.

Re:I can see it now...

[dnahelicase]

Actually, it will be the opposite. No longer will textbook manufacturers have to update so quickly in order to make the books obsolete. From now on, the book is YOUR edition

YOU will own the book meaning nobody else can have it. It will have no resale value because you paid for in on your account and nobody else will be able to use it unless they can sync a kindle/ipad/ereader on your account.

Profs might actually like this better because books might change less, and book publishers might even give you updates for free/cheap, but everyone will have to buy it.

Of course, some kids will pirate, but many "value-added" features on websites will require a registered key to work. Or they might give you a cheaper "rental" option that expires after the semester.

They still need to fix math symbols

[Tawnos]

Biggest issue I foresee with ebooks is that, currently, none of them handle math symbols correctly. Imagine trying to read an economics text or calculus text without proper mathematical formatting. If you can't, check out the Nook for an example of how it looks. Fractions, even at the biggest text size, are smaller than 1/8" and almost entirely unreadable. Sigma notation looks like gobbledygook.

Until that is fixed, I don't see any school adopting ebooks, much less a technical one.

Re:Old-timer here. Oh... wait...

[bsDaemon]

comparing a Gutenberg bible to a hand-crafted, illuminated art-work bible is like comparing a Model-T to a Bentley. there is nothing superior about it, beyond its significance in a historical sense that probably took at least a few decades to come into perspective. part of being special is being rare or limited in supply, if not completely unique.

Re:Odd choice

[Lumpy]

And honestly, with this being published... the iPad will have this ability before the kindle devs even get out of the first meeting about it.

That's the advantage of having a huge developer base for your platform. I'm betting the guys that wrote GoodReader are already on it.

Give me a graphical MatLab on the iPad and it will utterly kill all the other eReaders that exist in academia circles. Let me open and view CAD drawings and board layout and schematics and it will rule the engineering side as well.

Honestly, I was sad that the ebook reader in the iPad did not have a "scribble on the book" function. although letting me highlight a section and link notes to it would be better.

Re:The Kindle is too slow and DRM hurts

[indiechild]

Agreed, the extreme sluggishness of the Kindle 2 user interface is the first thing I noticed when I bought mine.