I've owned my Kindle DX for almost a month now, and I'm still conflicted about it:

The Good

It's large, and it's easy on the eyes.  This is a big plus.  The technical books I read on the original Kindle displayed graphics and tables poorly, due to resampling effects and lack of decent screen resolution.  The Kindle DX doesn't have this problem - charts and diagrams are very clear and the resolution (824x1200) is quite sufficient.

The battery life is outstanding.  I took it to California with me last week, and used it on & off for several hours over the course of the week.  It's Sunday now, and I've yet to plug it in for charging.  The battery graphic at the top right only lost one pixel - so I suspect this is ~ 90% capacity.  Not bad.  I only had the wireless on for an hour, though.

It reads PDFs.  And it does a great job at it, too.  I sent a few slideshow-style PDFs, technical documents, and a 3rd-party eBook to the Kindle; all of them display flawlessly.  I actually find reading PDFs (even when the same content is available via a native Kindle books too!) much easier than reading native Kindle books.  Discrete page numbers are great - makes skipping around a breeze.  The "locations" abstraction in the Kindle books really never works for me.

It reads to you.  I'm putting this down as good only because the feature exists, not that it's necessarily done well.  I tried it out once on an official Kindle book, and although quite understandable (compared to, say, listening to an offshore customer care representative from credit card companies) it wasn't all that decent.  It had trouble detecting when to pause in sentences, first off.  Sometimes it would just ignore periods or commas and just keep rambling.  Other times it would inexplicably stop in mid sentence after reading a word (perhaps to catch its… breath?), then keep going.  Additionally, and I don't know if this is a Kindle book problem (several of them are like this) or text-to-speed problem, but sometimes two words will appear sandwiched together on the screen, and the Kindle will read them almost as a compound word.  All this is annoying enough to distract from the real content of the text being read.  I don't think I'll ever use it.

You can read Wikipedia for free, forever.  Amazon isn't charging for web browsing, (yet?  look at their new wireless delivery charges) so you can use the Kindle to browse the web and Wikipeida as much as you want.  It's really slow, but Wikipedia looks really nice on th e Kindle screen.  You can even send tweets from the DX, but I wouldn't recommend it (too annoying).

The Bad

It's slow as heck.  And, I mean slow.  If I put the Kindle side by side with my old Compaq SLT/286 running Windows 3.1, the screen redraw will be about the same:

(ok, I didn't actually switch on the Compaq, and no it won't run Linux, I tried)

To elaborate, the screen redraw is pitiful.  Compared to the original Kindle, I suppose the per-pixel redraw rate is about the same, but since there's a whole lot more pixels that compose the larger screen, it results in slower whole-screen redraws.  Additionally, the user interface feels slower, due to the new Kindle software (again, I'm comparing this to the original Kindle) redrawing pieces of the screen as things happen, rather than waiting for all input to cease, and then redrawing the whole screen at once.  There are a couple instances where there's a type ahead-style search that dynamically updates the search results as the user is typing in the keyword(s).  It makes the unit feel laggy, since letters don't immediately appear on the screen as they're typed.  Also, the removal of the silver LCD navigation gizmo (I don't know what to call it) was a mistake, since now the E Ink screen must complete several partial redraws when scrolling through items or lines of text, leaving a silly-looking trail across the screen as it happens.  It's also much slower than the wheel on the original Kindle.  There's a number of other supposed UI enhancements that result in tons of partial redraws - and it either just looks sloppy (like a 286) or leaves horrible ghosting effects on the screen.

The display isn't backlit.  Even though the original Kindle wasn't backlit (not possible with E Ink, anyway… supposedly?), I still want a backlight.  If you know me at all, you know I like it dark.  I hate bright lights (sunlight is OK), and usually find it easiest to work in a dimly-lit room.  I have to position myself near a light source or turn on the main light to see the Kindle DX.  It would be nice if I didn't have to do that.  And a silly battery-powered gadget that clamps onto the side of the kindle to provide light is not a viable solution.  It was ok back in the days of the Game Boy, but not anymore.

I suppose this is a continuation of previous thoughts: the UI sucks.  I find it hard to navigate through books, especially when I have to flip back and forth between chapters and sections (like I was trying to do in Church, today) quickly.  There need to be some accellerator hotkeys, like, oh, for instance, the movement keys in vi.  For example, I wanted to skip ahead 15 or so pages to step farther into the book of Romans, without going back to the start of the book and clicking the chapter links.  I had to sit there pressing the "next" key several times.. slowly, before I got to where I wanted to be.  Perhaps if I could type "15" then hit the "next  button, it would advance 15 pages instead of just one.  I think it would help.

It's a ripoff.  Yes, and no.  When the original Kindle was released ($399), the protective leather cover and all wireless delivery was included in the purchase.  Now, we're at the point where Amazon is charging an arm & a leg for wireless delivery and doesn't include a cover anymore (DX is $489 + $44.99 for the cover).  I just suspect they incorrectly estimated the ratio of wireless usage to Kindle book purchases.  I really wonder what that partnership with Sprint looks like, on paper.

Other Thoughts

It's hackable.  I used the attachments listed in this thread to enable the USB networking on the Kindle.  Yup, you get root shell access, so you can do whatever you want.  If you think you can just tether to the Kindle for generic Internet access to download warez and movies, think again.  Sprint has everything firewalled except for their proxy server address.  Even DNS requests time out to everything else.  The proxy server isn't exactly open, either - you'll need an encrypted key to access it.  So, after a little toying with tcpdump and SSH, I was able to browse the web from my PC via Sprint's EvDO connection on the Kindle.  However, I won't tell you how to do this (it's not too difficult, if you know anything about the HTTP) because if lots of people start using the Kindle as their primary source of Internet access, Amazon is probably going to punish all Kindle users and start charging for all wireless access from the device.  Judging from their previous turn-arounds on free wireless delivery, they'll do it.  You've been warned.

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