Would you KINDLEy read that back to me again?
How much? That’s what was running through my mind when I read about the new Kindle 2 release by Amazon. I absolutely love books and actually, ever since I saw that iriver e-notebook showcased at CES 2009, I was contemplating about getting some kind of e-book reader. I think the new Kindle looks much nicer than Amazon’s first try. As the other half put it, the original Kindle looked a bit odd, while this time it looks much more symmetrical and evenly proportioned. However, it is still priced at $359 and I can bet money that it will not be a straightforward currency conversion if it reaches our shores. In fact, in some cases as demonstrated by some games consoles, all they do is flip the currency symbol but keep the number the same. Not exactly fair for us consumers across the pond, but we shall see.
The thing is, I am looking at the specs and I’m not all that impressed. This is an excerpt of the tech specs from the Amazon website:
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.
I am sitting here asking myself, why it cannot support those standard document formats natively instead of via software conversion. I cannot see it being that difficult to implement, moreover for that price I would want it to read the Dead Sea Scrolls let alone something as simple as that. Another consideration I would have to contemplate is that 70% of my e-book collection is in Microsoft’s .lit format. This is because I used to own a PDA and now with my phone being Windows Mobile I will continue to use this format on a regular basis. I would have to convert them twice, firstly from .lit to say .doc and then once more so that it can be read with Kindle 2. Ummm, no thanks.
The other specs look good though, 2GB memory (1.4 useable), wireless and hopefully a nice screen to boot. If you can browse the internet on there, maybe an installation of Opera etc. would be useful.
No doubt this will sell by the bucket load, but I am really wanting the iriver one right now. They are more likely to support a variety of formats from the off, judging by their mp3 players as an example. For all I know if I really wanted a Kindle 2, it may not even reach these waters and I would have to import one from the US site. I’ll have to wait and see some proper consumer reviews on Amazon to get a taste of how well this will do.
Kindle 2 e-book reader
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