By Evan Ackerman
I’m sure all of you, along with Oprah and Jeff Bezos, are reading this on your Kindle e-book reader right now. What? You’re not? Oh, let me guess… It’s because it’s too thick and the pages don’t turn fast enough and it doesn’t have enough memory. Well, today is your lucky day, because Amazon has released the Kindle 2, which is only a third of an inch thick, features 20% faster page turning, and has 2 gigs of memory… Enough for 1,500 books out of the 230,000+ book catalog.
The most interesting new feature of the Kindle 2 is probably the integrated text to speech engine, which will read back any text that the book will display. It’s a synthesized voice, and perhaps not something you’d want to listen to extensively, but it might be nice to have the news or something read to you every morning. Another new feature is WhisperSync, which wirelessly keeps your Kindle up to date. You can still download books over 3G (it takes about 60 seconds per book), the 800 x 600 e-ink screen now has 16 shades of gray, and the battery is good for 4 days straight of reading and downloading, or 2 weeks of reading.
The Kindle 2 launches February 24th, and will cost $349… This item ships for free with Super Saver shipping.
[ Amazon Kindle 2 ]
Find Kindle 2 related news, articles, reviews, pictures, apps and more here.
You can buy it on Amazon for $259.