FORT COLLINS, Colorado -- The love story continues. Kindle 2 grows what the original Kindle started. For those of you following my Kindle adventures, people who care replaced my stolen original Kindle. Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a great invention! (The Wall Street Journal loves Kindle 2 and BusinessWeek gives the new, larger-format KindleDX a thumbs up!) I can get whatever novel I want in about 10 seconds, and I can carry around 1,500 novels in a device that – including optional cover -- weighs and measures less than a single paperback. Kindle 2 When we tested the Kindle 2 in a foothills environment that sometimes loses cell phone connectivity, the Kindle 2 linked up without fail. I like that the Kindle 2’s battery lasts longer (many days) than the original Kindle’s battery, and the page-turning buttons are easy to use, yet defy accidental bumps that might cause unintended page turns. My original Kindle was stolen when I set it in a shopping cart at Albertsons and turned away for a minute. I now have a Kindle-friendly satchel, which keeps the Kindle 2 by my side.
Unlike the book store, your Kindle 2 can fetch free samples of books you might want to buy. The ability to get to an extended book sample has saved me time – in wasted reading and travel to the book store – as well as misdirected money. One of my favorite treats is to stop at the supermarket books aisle while doing the (groan) survival shopping. I look at the racks for anything interesting and then download the samples for free right there on to my Kindle! One annoying thing about the Kindle 2 is that it did not automatically come with its own cover like its ancestor. I have the “default” leather cover, which works extremely well. The old Kindle had a nasty habit of leaving its cover at unexpected moments. The new cover is much more intelligently designed with locking clips. When I say I can get whatever book I want in about 10 seconds, I should clarify that Amazon, as of this writing, offers about 250,000 titles for the Kindle. That number grows every day. Stephen King and Dean Koontz, two of my favorite writers, sell their material on the Kindle, and other top-notch authors have taken up residence as well. The new Kindle also passed several out-of-print test searches for books that were not available on my first Kindle. I predict that the Kindle 2 will grow as a venue for out-of-print books that would otherwise be lost to the public. It annoyed me at first that Amazon sold Kindle titles to the I-pod, mostly because for the $259 (as of 12/09/09) + accessories price tag, I believe I should retain “I’m special” rights as a consumer. However, the truth of the matter is that for me, the I-pod will never work as a book substitute because its screen is too small. This brings up another good point about Kindle. It features a text adjustment button that lets me grow the text. When I sit in a chair like a normal reader, I use approximately 12-point text, but when I use the Kindle 2 during exercise, I bump up its text size for the bouncy treadmill. Also, unlike many cell phones, I can read off of the Kindle 2 screen in bright daylight. (It would be nice if you could also read the Kindle 2 screen in the dark!) Vision-impaired users take note: The Kindle 2 can read out loud using its experimental text-to-speech feature. I have published my first novel on the Kindle 2 format to make my writing available in multiple formats. I like saving a few trees and avoiding the astronomical, high-risk costs associated with print-publishing houses. I also like the possibility that a diverse, free-to-roam readership will find me. So, way to go Amazon! Keep up the good work! (And, if you enjoyed this article, please show your support by getting your Kindle 2 here |
also offers
many well-loved newspapers and magazines, which saves me a clogged mailbox or a trip down the driveway to search for the latest newspaper landing site. 
As a Kindle 2 owner, I get great freebies. I have downloaded the novels 
and 
, which were featured for a limited time at no cost in the hope that I would buy other materials by these writers. Blood Engine is a little outside my normal reading tastes and I have not tried Persuader. The point is however, that the digital-reader platform offers diversity and accessibility that print media cannot begin to achieve.