Well, I was hoping to see some sort of subsidy announcement today from the newspapers when Amazon announced its big-screen Kindle DX, and while the New York Times did say that they’ll do just that at some point later this year, it will be in a limited capacity, meaning only offered in areas where daily delivery isn’t an option. For the rest of us, it’s a $500 device. I’d love to have a Kindle that can display letter-sized pages at full scale not-quite-full-scale, as well as PDF files natively without problematic conversions, but I think I can skip this for now and stick with my trusty Kindle 1, which is more portable anyway.

$500 isn’t an outrageous fee for a student these days–or rather, it’s not an unexpected fee, compared to all the other costs of getting an education–but I think the real test of value will be the pricing that textbook publishers use for their Kindle editions. If the Kindle DX doesn’t end up saving you money compared to buying your textbooks the traditional way, then you’re going to have to place a lot of value in the Kindle’s portability, and overlook its shortcomings, like the grayscale display and slow page turn time, to justify the cost.

Update: judging by the video demo on the Amazon page, it’s possible they’ve shortened the lag between page turns.

“Amazon unveils 9.7-inch Kindle DX with focus on education” [Apple Insider]