Kindle 2 vrs Kindle 1

Apple 2.0 over at Fortune compared the Kindle 2 against its bigger older sister, the Kindle 1. I say the older sister is bigger, but, despite its bulk, its less able to carry more books. Less of a lush, the Kindle 2 has a sharper brain enabling it to recall up to 1,500 books; its fingers are less like pork sausages – it can turn pages 20% quicker. The younger sister has better dress sense, is better turned out: she can wear 16 shades of grey with panache as against a rather dowdy 4; and is less of a klutz: the page-turn buttons are smaller and harder to hit by mistake.  Also, lil’ sis has a 5-way joystick. Make your own jokes.

• Thinner: 0.36 inches thick, 25% thinner than an iPhone
• Quicker: Turns pages 20% faster
• Longer lasting: 25% increase in battery life
• Better display: 16 shades of gray (was 4)
• Bigger memory: Stores up to 1,500 books
• Bigger vocabulary: Built-in 250,000 dictionary
• Better navigation: With a 5-way joystick
• More vocal: Able to read text aloud in a semi-robotic voice
• Less accident prone: The page-turn buttons are smaller and harder to hit by mistake
• More wired: New Whispersync technology

 

Kindle 2 launch: After the hubbub, a time for reflection.

The launch of Kindle 2 in the US certainly caused a stir. At only 0.36 inches wide – that makes it (rather impressively) a huge 25% more slim than an iphone, and only 10.2 ounces, it is the look and feel of the thing that really got the media gagglers gaggling. Reuters for example, described it as   “Resembling a larger, whiter, thinner, but not-as-sexy iPhone” and, even though the device is bigger than your average electronic portable devices, that is perhaps the point.  Jeff Bezos over there at Amazon.com wants the e-reader to be “the new book”; and,  to paraphrase Einstein: an e-reading device is required to be just big enough to read, and no bigger.

holding kindle 2

 

Kindle 2 official US launch.

Today, 9 February 2009, in a small auditorium in New York City, Amazon introduced the world to its second generation portable e-book, the Kindle 2.

In this blog, we’ll follow the progress of the Kindle 2 from today’s US launch to its UK launch later this year; all the time keeping an eye on what our friends over the pond are saying about Amazon’s much feted, much anticipated e-book, while discussing the more general question: do we really want e-books – be it a Kindle 2, a Sony e-book reader, or even a bloated iphone? Or, can we really leave the treasured, sand-riddled, coffee-stained, porridge paged, paperback behind?

I was entertained by Techcrunch’s John Biggs who blogged live from the event.