It's been more than a month since a group of University of Washington computer science grad students each got a Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to test the device for reading course materials. TechFlash decided to check in with the group to see how they're responding to the Amazon electronic reader. Judging from the feedback below, Amazon still has some work to do to get the academic world on board. While there were some words of praise for the Kindle design, the students' reactions to the DX ranged from "nonstarter" to an "exercise in frustration." Read on for the full critiques.

Franzi Roesner:

Overall, I like the Kindle, though I wouldn't have bought it for myself. I don't really have a class that uses a textbook, so mostly I'm reading research papers and other pdfs. The pdf support isn't *amazing* but it isn't terrible either; you can effectively zoom in to half the page by rotating, and that's big enough if the full page isn't. I don't feel the desire to replace real books with reading on the Kindle (like, novels, non-fiction, etc.), not necessarily from a usability point of view but from a I-just-like-the-feel-and-collectability-of-real-books point of view. What I do find the Kindle most useful for is things that I would otherwise read on the computer -- papers, news articles, etc. Reading on the Kindle is much more pleasant than on the computer, so I tend to put those kinds of documents on it to read on the bus or wherever. Basically I think the Kindle is a great replacement for screen reading, but not really for paper reading, since it doesn't really give you much that a paper book doesn't, and takes away some things.

Peter Hornyack:

I haven't used my Kindle much at all. Soon after I got it, I turned it on, set it up and downloaded some of the free classic books that Amazon offers, but I haven't really had time to read any of them. The only time I have for pleasure reading these days is at bedtime, and I haven't used my Kindle for that because I've heard stories about people falling asleep on top of their Kindle and damaging the screen.

Once our course content became available on our Kindles, I turned it on again and flipped through a few pages of one of the textbooks (for another class; my class right now doesn't have a textbook). It looked nice, but it felt like it would be annoying to navigate to the chapters/pages I needed. I opened up one of the research papers for my class in PDF form on the Kindle, flipped through a few pages just to see what it was like, then switched to a printed paper copy for actual reading. Not being able to underline text, draw arrows, and write notes on the Kindle makes it a nonstarter for my academic reading purposes. Supposedly PDFs that have been converted to Amazon's proprietary format allow you to make annotations on the document, but I think only text comments are supported. If text highlighting were available, I might think again about using the Kindle for research papers, but I haven't bothered to find out if it is or will be supported.

Michael Bayne:

On the plus side: It's great to have all my recent and upcoming reading in one place. When I have a new paper that needs reading I just throw it on the Kindle and know I'll have it handy next time I have time to ready. I usually have around 200-300 pages on my Kindle that I would otherwise be carrying around in paper form in my bag which as you can imagine would be weighty. I feel good about all those trees I'm saving. I'm sure someone will do the math but its surely thousands of pages over the course of a full academic year just in papers. The texts probably add another thousand or so.

On the down side: Managing the dozens of papers, lecture notes and texts on my Kindle is an exercise in frustration. The only organizational principle in use in the Kindle UI is "a single giant list of everything sorted by most recent access." This is not especially useful when I have 200 documents in that list. It motivates me to delete things from my Kindle (particularly papers and lecture notes) which then undermines the whole point of being able to carry everything with you at all times. Typing is so annoyingly slow (because of limitations in the refresh rate of the display) that it is only useful to the extremely patient. This renders anything that might require typing (searching, note taking) completely useless for me because I am not a patient person.

Adrian Sampson:

It's really, really nice to look at. Not only is it a pretty sleek and comfortable device, but the screen is infinitely better to read off of than an LCD. In grad school, I spend about 80% of my day reading papers, so it's a godsend to not have to stare at a screen all day. It's important, also, that it's so small and light: it feels like less of a commitment to carry around or take out than a full-on laptop. And I don't waste so much paper!

The biggest thing I miss with the Kindle is annotation. To me, reading isn't just looking at words, it necessarily involves jotting notes. Unfortunately, the Kindle isn't the best for this. The keyboard is tiny and impossible to use except in a pinch. Furthermore, it doesn't let me annotate PDF files (i.e., all academic papers). So, I usually end up carrying a Kindle + a pad of paper to do any serious reading. If I could ask for anything, I'd want to be able to use a stylus to jot right on the page -- but that's probably "three to five years away."