You Wanna Supersize That? Amazon Ships New Kindle DX

The third-generation Kindle offers a 9.7-inch screen that, while not as portable as the original Kindle and its 6-inch screen, makes it easier to read big-format material such as magazines and newspapers. The reader also includes native PDF support, allowing users for the first time to read PDF documents on the device.

The DX, which is being released less than four months after Amazon debuted the Kindle 2, carries a price tag of $489, compared with the $359 cost of the standard Kindle.

On the plus side, the Kindle DX is only one-third-of-an-inch thick, weighs 18.9 ounces and holds up to 3,500 books, periodicals and documents. The e-ink screen offers 16 shades of gray and auto-rotates between portrait and landscape mode for viewing full-width documents such as maps and tables.

The Kindle DX also includes some features that Amazon calls "experimental," including a text-to-speech feature that can read out loud, a basic Web browser for reading text-centric Web pages, and the ability to transfer MP3 files for playing background music