The Kindle 2 exhibits the excellent e-ink technology that made the original Kindle easy to read. The 6" diagonal screen displays at a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels. The Kindle still does not have a color screen, but this Kindle displays 16 shades of gray which ads depth and detail to the graphics. The Kindle has no backlight, making reading it more similar to a book than to reading on a screen. In low light you will need a lamp or external lighting just as you do with a book. Like a book, the Kindle is easy to read in sunlight.

Amazon has upgraded the processor in the Kindle 2, so the screen refreshes faster between page turns. While there is still a slight lag in page turning, most will not find it bothersome.

Amazon has removed the memory card slot that was included in the first Kindle. This Kindle does have a memory card slot. However, the device itself will hold over 1500 books and if you do happen to fill it up, Amazon allows you to download any of your purchases to the Kindle at any time, so you can erase books and re-download them to the Kindle whenever you like.

Getting books, magazines, and newspapers into your Kindle is as slick as ever. You simple access the Menu, shown on the Kindle screen in Figure 10, and turn the wireless on. You can then browse all of the offerings in the Kindle store. Since last year, Amazon’s Kindle store has expanded its scope. There are now more than 240,000 books, plus newspapers, magazines, and blogs.  Most current books sell for $9.99.

click to enlarge
Figure 10: The Kindle 2 main menu.

You can also subscribe to several magazine and newspapers. We felt, however, that the subscriptions were overpriced. And you do not necessarily get the full content of the newspaper and/or magazine in question. For example, the New York Times is USD 13.99 a month and for that price, you don’t get much more than you can get online for free. Although navigation is adequate for books, it takes a little getting used to navigating between the sections of a newspaper and/or magazine and the article themselves.

Text is easily readable on the Kindle. You can increase the size of the text to meet your vision needs. There are six different text sizes available. However, the text in the Kindle store itself is not adjustable.

It is easy to download books to your Kindle. You simply peruse the bookstore, choose a book and click on the Buy button. The book is downloaded to your Kindle using Amazon’s Whispernet which employs Sprint’s EVDO cellular network. So you can download books from almost anywhere and you can begin reading your book within minutes. Although this service is only available in the US, it works seamlessly. One of the best parts is that there are no monthly cellular charges. You can also purchase books on your computer and have them sent wirelessly to your Kindle

While you are reading on the Kindle you can easily look up any word and add bookmarks and notes. The Kindle 2 also includes free built-in access to the Wikipedia.org, a comprehensive online encyclopedia. You can access web pages from your Kindle, but we found that many pages didn’t appear correctly, so we won’t be surfing the web from the Kindle unless they make improvements in the web browser.

We were happy to see some content in different languages, but found no way to adjust the dictionary to a different language. So when we were reading La Monde in French, the dictionary was totally useless because it was in English.

Like the original Kindle, the Kindle 2 can handle Word or PDF documents, but they must be sent to the Kindle through the Amazon service which costs of 10 cents per document.

Book content on the Kindle 2 is still shackled with Digital Rights Management, so you can only read your e-books on the Kindle. However, the Kindle 2 has taken the already good technology yet another step forward with the addition of a Kindle App for the iPhone. You simply download the free app to your iPhone and you can read any of your books on the iPhone. While the iPhone does not yet support newspapers or magazines, these are sure to be added in the future. We found reading books on the iPhone easier than we thought, and again, the Amazon technology was amazingly useful. After reading a few chapters of a book on the iPhone, when we went back to the Kindle, due to Amazon’s Whispersync technology, the Kindle knew right where we left off on the iPhone.

The Kindle 2 also has a text-to-speech feature. Any book that is approved by the author and publisher to do so, will be a part of this technology which reads the text to you through the Kindle. You get to choose a male or female voice. Although the voice is slightly stilted, it is about 80% natural and you can adjust the speed of the reading. We didn’t think that we would use this feature, but found ourselves using it when we had to pick someone up unexpectedly while in the middle of reading a book on the Kindle. We simply grabbed the Kindle, turned on the text-to-speech and let it read to us in the car!