Kindle is not ready for school.
Amazon's Kindle DX is a lean and elegant eBook reader that may someday replace textbooks--or so they say. But is the device up to the task? According to a Princeton University study, the Kindle DX suffers from poor annotation tools and slow performance. And while future generations of Kindles (and/or other e-readers) may very well dispatch back-breaking textbooks to the trash heap of higher learning, they're not quite there yet.
The Daily Princetonian reports that the university's Kindle e-reader pilot program, which began last May, provided 50 students with free Kindle DXs. But after only two weeks, many recipients "were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices," the college newspaper writes.
Amazon provided the e-readers for three courses. The pros and cons were: Â
Kindle pros:
•· A single lightweight device, better than lugging bulky, heavy textbooks
•· The Kindle display is easy to read
•· It conserves paper
Kindle cons:
•· Annotating pages is difficult
•· Citing courses is a challenge because Kindle reformats pages and uses "location numbers" rather than page numbers
•· The Kindle DX is slow