September 28th, 2009
Ivy League students: Kindle DX a 'poor excuse of an academic tool'
One of the original colleges and universities selected for Amazon’s educational pilot program for the Kindle DX e-book reader is Princeton University, and now that the school’s students have had some time with the device, well, they hate it.
The Daily Princetonian reports that its Generation Y students are “dissatisfied and uncomfortable” with the Kindle DX, with one student going so far as to call it “a poor excuse of an academic tool,” adding that the DX is “clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.”
The main criticism of the device is the Kindle’s poor annotation features — the kind of features that replace highlighting and margin notes possible on a digital device. (Example: a lack of true page numbers — the Kindle uses “location numbers” — leaving students who want to cite references properly lost.)
The DP reports that rumor ’round campus is that Princeton won’t be bringing the Kindle back to school next year — but there’s plenty of time for Amazon to make good.
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Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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