On Tuesday February 9, Amazon announced the second generation Kindle – called appropriately the Kindle 2. On the surface, the changes appear to be somewhat subtle, but to us died-in-the-wool Kindle freaks the differences are significant. The Kindle 2 is slightly larger than it’s predecessor, but thinner and lighter(by an ounce). Here’s a picture of the two, side by side: 
One on my major complaints with the original Kindle was the “Next Page” / “Prev Page” button placement. Almost the whole right and left sides of the original Kindle were “Next Page” and “Prev Page” buttons which made it difficult to hold without inadvertently turning the page. It took me several weeks, but I did adapt to in and eventually learned to hold it with the random page turns. The Kindle 2 has smaller descreet buttons on each side and it should be much easier to hold without the unwanted page turns.
While the screen appears to be the same size, there is a major difference. The Kindle 2 boasts 16 shades of gray where the original Kindle only could muster 4. This improvement should yield sharper text and much crisper images.
New battery technology is supposed to provide 25% longer battery life. Storage is increased to 2GB – seven times more than the original. They say you can keep 1500 books on the new Kindle but who would really want to? Page turns are supposedly 20% faster and I hadn’t noticed them being slow on the original Kindle.
Now here’s a new feature – the Kindle 2 can supposedly read every book, blog, and newspaper out loud to you at a variety of different speeds. I’m curious to see how this really works.
The new Kindle uses the same wireless 3G network which continues to be fast, reliable, and Free.
So the release announcement was yesterday and I waited as long as I could to order one – yeah, I ordered it last night. Now we will be a 2 Kindle family; I’ll have mine and Kay will have hers and what pushed me over the edge is confirmation that since the two kindles are under the same account, we can share books and other content between the two. Hey, thet’s just like we’ve always done with paper backs. Kay’s new Kindle ships on Feb 24 and I she should have it by the 26th (and free shipping). I love Amazon!
Posted by DRHamp as Gadgets & Stuff at 3:16 PM GMT-0500