The Kindle, Amazon's latest greatest gadget, has been re-invented. Is it worth the high price tag?The screen is not illuminated like a phone or laptop. As a result, the battery consumption is low. You use power only when you actually turn the page, The image remains on the screen without power. You don't have to worry about turning it off.
Its wireless connection. Thanks to Sprint’s cellular Internet service, is always online, like a cell phone.
This sort of service costs $60 a month for laptops, but Amazon pays the Kindle’s wireless bill, in hopes that you’ll buy the e-books. You can buy and download books in seconds.
It’s all a thousand times more convenient and more exciting than loading books from a PC with a cable, as you must with Sony’s Reader, the Kindle’s competition. As a bonus, the Kindle includes a simple Web browser, great for quick wireless Wikipedia checks and blog reading.
The new Kindle is priced at $359. Amazon calls it the Kindle 2. The upgrades are noticeable, yet minor.
The page-turn buttons are now much smaller — and the clicky part is on the inward edge of each button — so you no longer set off page turns just by picking the thing up.
The new, square plastic joystick gets the job done. The back is now brushed aluminum. Turning pages on the Kindle is a tad faster now. The screen shows 16 shades of gray now, not four, so photos look sharper; you can also zoom in and rotate them.Too bad the image isn't full color. Now that would be an improvement worth making. Amazon says that it is trying to keep the price from sky rocketing. I would hate to think what they consider sky rocketing since the current price is far from cheap.
The memory card is built in and not expandable. However, it holds 1.500 books, which is a tidy sum, to say the least.
The battery is also sealed inside. Amazon says, however, that it lasts 25 percent longer per charge (four days of reading with wireless turned on, or two weeks if it’s off). If that battery ever needs replacing, Amazon has to do it ($60).
The Kindle will also read aloud to you through its tiny stereo speakers or headphone jack, and even turn the pages as it goes. It is a computer voice with no emotion, which still makes the audio book more appealing. Nevertheless, it can come in handy when driving and listening.
As before, your books, annotations and clippings are auto-backed up on Amazon.com. But now, if you buy multiple Kindles, all of them remember where you stopped reading in each book. (This feature will be more useful if, as Amazon has hinted, you’ll soon be able to read your e-books on other machines, like your laptop or iPhone.
The Kindle catalog is bigger, too; now 240,000 books are available. New York Times bestsellers are $10 each, which is less than the hardcover editions. Older books run $3 to $6.
You can have any of 30 newspapers wirelessly beamed to your Kindle each morning ($10 to $14 a month) — minus ads, comics and crosswords. Magazines (22 so far, $1.50 to $3 monthly) and blogs ($2 a month) can arrive automatically, too.
Finally, you can send Word, text, PDF and JPEG documents to the Kindle using its private e-mail address for 10 cents each. Or transfer them over a USB cable for nothing.
Not to worry, the printed book is still alive and well. The average, budget conscious, individual will find the Kindle too pricey. Also, who can resist the second hand bookstore where you can buy tons of books for pennies on the dollar? Not only that, not every book is available in e-format.The Kindle has the usual list of e-book perks: dictionary, text search, bookmarks, clippings, MP3 music playback and six type sizes. No trees die to furnish paper for Kindle books, either.
But as traditionalists always point out, an e-book reader is a delicate piece of electronics. It can be lost, dropped or fried in the tub. You’d have to buy an awful lot of $10 best sellers to recoup the purchase price. If Amazon goes under or abandons the Kindle, you lose your entire library. And you can’t pass on or sell an e-book after you’ve read it.
Some claim that the Kindle has missed its window. E-book programs are thriving on the far more portable (and far more popular) iPhones and iPod Touches.
