<p>Does anyone have kids using the Kindle to download texts? BusinessWeek says it pays for itself in one term. True?</p>
<p>I doubt it.</p>
<p>I have never seen one in real life & I live in geektown.</p>
<p>I hadn't heard of this, but I would be very interested, having just spent almost $700 on one semester's worth of textbooks for my son, an engineering major. </p>
<p>I did a google search on "kindle textbook." From the many articles, it seems that this is something that is on the horizon, but is not happening yet. I do think it has potential.</p>
<p>Try [url=<a href="http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/%5Dbestwebbuys%5B/url">http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/]bestwebbuys[/url</a>] for book deals- looks at sites such as Amazon/B & N & Powells concurrently.
Saved hundreds of dollars every year.</p>
<p>Now that more classrooms are featuring interactive whiteboards, are the Kindles going to be able to download the info? that would be really cool.
Still, I would rather have an airbook. :)</p>
<p>They ( smartboards) even have been installed in my daughters inner city high school after the remodel ( that had been put off for 50 years)</p>
<p>My son is "Mr. Kindle" and hasn't found any of his texts available for it.</p>
<p>Another good resource for used books is AddALL</a> Used and Out of Print book search. Just used it to find an international version of a textbook for a class for the spouse, 1/3 the cost of the textbook at the campus store.</p>
<p>It might depend on the subject, and the student's major. A chem major taking a gen ed course in anthropology might be perfectly willing to buy the anthro books in a Kindle edition, but may want a hardback o-chem text because that's a long-term reference. On the other hand, many students might want to keep their art history book. </p>
<p>High school and younger kids would be a GREAT target market. Many (most?) schools can't afford to have enough of those backbreaking textbooks so that students can keep one book at home and use a class set at school. Parents can't afford or can't find duplicate copies to purchase for home use. If a parent can buy a kindle and then cheaply and easily buy an e-text for home use, voila, a new market for textbook publishers and no more aching backs for students.</p>
<p>I have a Kindle, and I love it. It would be ideal for textbooks. All that information stored on something the size of a paperback! I hate reading computer screens, but I like reading my Kindle better than a book. It's much crisper, and one can adjust the type size. </p>
<p>Not sure about text with illustrations, though.</p>
<p>I doubt that it would work. S has to mark passages for use in seminar discussion, and writes a lot of ideas in the margin. Can you do that on a Kindle?</p>
<p>However, I could see the value of having high school textbooks on it as a resource for home use. D is carrying about 50 pounds of texts every day. (I am afraid to actually weigh her backpack and bookbag....)</p>
<p>Isn't the Kindle black and white right now?</p>
<p>Do textbook makers want to be locked into a proprietary device for their materials?</p>
<p>How long can you hold the information in the book?</p>
<p>If you have textbooks, you can loan them to others.</p>
<p>This would seem to kill resales.</p>
<p>Over the summer S1 bought a gently used older-version Sony reader (sort of like a Kindle) on eBay for $100 or so. He was able to download a bunch of foreign policy texts and several books for free (I have no idea how). He used it a ton over the summer, but not so much now that he is back at school. He didn't use it for textbooks.</p>
<p>Compared to staring at the computer screen (which if I do for long enough, my eyes water and feel like they're shriveling into dry little raisins :( ), the reader seems A LOT more easy on the eye, if a bit dark. The Kindle is probably a step or two up, though.</p>
<p>Text has been available on PDA for at least a decade. I used to load texts and books in text on my Palm and Garmin devices. But what about textbooks with color diagrams and examples?</p>