Amazon unveils Kindle DX

Amazon.com is holding an event this morning in New York to unveil its large-screen Kindle, but already the company has posted a product page for the new device. Dubbed Kindle DX, it sports a 9.7-inch display and PDF support. It's priced at at a whopping $489, and will ship this summer.

According to the product page, the Kindle DX has:

• 9.7-inch display, two and a half times the size of the current Kindle.

• an auto-rotating screen.

• built-in PDF reader.

• ability to do bookmarks and annotation.

• a "basic web browser."

Update: The New York Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post will offer Kindle DX at a reduced price to readers who "live in areas where home-delivery is not available and who sign up for a long-term subscription to the Kindle edition of the newspapers," according to an Amazon press release.

Amazon is also making a big push into academia. Textbook publishers Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley, who represent more than 60 percent of the U.S. higher ed textbook market, will offer textbooks through Amazon's Kindle store starting this summer.

As expected, a number of universities will take part in a trial project with Amazon:

Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia will launch trial programs to make Kindle DX devices available to students this fall. The schools will distribute hundreds of Kindle DX devices to students spread across a broad range of academic disciplines. In addition to reading on a considerably larger screen, students will be able to take advantage of popular Kindle features such as the ability to take notes and highlight, search across their library, look up words in a built-in dictionary, and carry all of their books in a lightweight device.

Kindle DX's built-in PDF reader uses Adobe Reader Mobile technology. "Like other types of documents on Kindle, customers simply email their PDF format documents to their Kindle email address or move them over using a USB connection," Amazon said.

Update: Apparently there was a "whoops" moment during Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Kindle DX presentation at Pace University in New York this morning.

As Brad Stone of the New York Times described in his live blog of the event:

In an awkward glitch during a demo, the image of the Kindle DX is projected onto a big screen backwards. “I’m going to choose to find this hilarious,” Mr. Bezos said. And now the screen has gone completely dark.

A few minutes later, Stone wrote that the screen was back up, "just as it appeared Mr. Bezos was about to fire someone." Ouch.

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, who shared the stage with Bezos at the event, did not specify the size of the Kindle DX discount his newspaper would offer.

Here are more images:

Also here's an Amazon video demo of Kindle DX.

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