5 Reasons Why I Bought a Kindle 2

By Jim on February 28th, 2009

Pages: 1 2

The Kindle 2 was officially announced last week and I finally decided it was time to get one. Here are some of the goodies listed on Amazon’s site about the Kindle 2:

Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines

Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback

Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hot spots

Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required

Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images

Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging

More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books

Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns

Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you

Large Selection: Over 230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available

Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

Until the release of this version of the Kindle, I hadn’t been particularly interested in buying one. Frankly, I thought the first Kindle was ugly and a rather stupid idea. I chuckled and snorted with derision when Amazon first announced it, sure that it would be just another e-book bomb like so many before it. But oddly enough, the Kindle turned out to be a reasonable success with around 500,000 estimated sales last year.

Here are five reasons why I decided to buy one.

#5 Larger Screen Than My iPhone
My iPhone has a few e-book readers that are actually quite good (Stanza being one of the best) but it suffers from a small screen (compared to the Kindle) and can’t match the Kindle’s e-ink technology for readability. I’ve used my iPhone here and there to read on and, for short duration reading, it works quite well.

But I don’t think I could do it day in and day out for very long periods of time. It would probably get annoying having to touch the screen to turn the page every seven or eight seconds since the screen is small enough that you just can’t fit much text on it (never mind if you read with a larger font which means you can fit even less on there).

Don’t get me wrong, there are reports that Amazon is going to allow people on mobile phones to buy and read Kindle books on their non-kindle devices. If there is an iPhone app I will definitely be installing it on my iPhone as I would love to be able to sync my book collection between my Kindle, Amazon, and my iPhone (as well as perhaps my computers). I suspect that I’ll be using the Kindle to read whenever possible but I may be out and about at times so if I can access my books on my iPhone, I’ll be a happy camper.

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