Monday, February 9, 2009

Kindle 2.0

The rumors are true. Amazon just announced the debut of the second generation Kindle, and it looks a lot better than the first edition. The new device, which will be released on February 24th, is much slimmer and will have increased functionality as compared to the first edition. The battery life is longer, and there's more storage capacity. There's a "text-to-speech feature" so, apparently, the new Kindle can read out loud to you. The sticker price is $359. You can pre-order yours here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Read my previous comment on "questions to ask" about the Kindle. 1)did it support .epub format? and 2)did it have a place to stick your memory card?

The answers to both: no and no.

What this means: it doesn't support the format which will soon be as ubiquitous as PDF. This was a conscious business decision--and a bad one.

The things that appeal to me: faster refresh time and built in dictionary.

Two pieces of advice for readers: 1) don't buy until you've held one in your hand and 2)buy the accident protection policy (an alarming 15-20% are breaking within the first year, according to a Teleread survey).

The choice of an ebook reader is not that big of a deal. You buy one and then don't look back. But do you want to be dependent on a company to provide content for your ebook reader?

Serena said...

Wow, interesting. I don't even have the first kindle! LOL

Meytal Radzinski said...

Much as I admire Amazon's efforts, I doubt I'll buy a Kindle until it's way cheaper, a bit friendlier, and I've held it in my hands and seen how it works and feel completely comfortable with it. rjnagle, I'd never thought of those points, they're quite interesting. Does this mean that the Kindle doesn't accept any other formatted eBooks?

Zibilee said...

This still isn't a must have for me, although I do think it's very cool that the Kindle can now read aloud to you.I think it would have to be about $100 cheaper for me to invest in one.