I’m still not buying a Kindle DX

For the second time since May, the Kindle DX is sold out. Amazon says if you order today, you won’t get it for a month to six weeks.

So demand is obviously there for the $489 wireless e-book reader that features a 9.7 inch screen, compared to the 6-inch screen of the $359 standard model.

I have the first model, with a six inch screen and have balked at upgrading.

Why? Four reasons:

First the text, while crisp and without flickers, is still not bright enough for me. There’s not enough contrast, either.

Second, there’s also a lag time of a millisecond or two when you push the button to turn the page. You get used to it eventually, but I find it irritating.

Third, the cost of newspaper subscriptions is way too much. The New York Times is $14 a month. The Detroit Free Press is $7 a month. Besides, the way they appear on the Kindle screen is not like they appear in the dead tree edition. Finding and reading stories is awkward. Newspapers are hard to navigate. That’s the only reason I’d get the DX, to get newspapers. But not they way they’re displayed and not at such high subscription rates.

Fourth, the small unit I have has room for over 1,000 books. I don’t need to carry around 3,500, which is how many the DX can hold.

That said, I’d still delighted with my first generation Kindle. The battery, even with wireless turned on, lasts forever. It’s addictively easy to download new books. Amazon has more than 300,000 now available for the Kindle. And my Kindle library can be read, and synced, to my iPhone.

I think the Kindle will eventually have a better screen, maybe even color. I think newspaper subscriptions will drop and a better way of displaying them will be designed. When that happens, I may upgrade.

But for me, the old works just fine.

If I was buying for the first time… yeah, I guess I’d go with the DX. And I suppose that’s where most of the buyers who have sold out the DX are coming from.

But this is one upgrade I’m not doing, Not yet.