Just saw that Amazon announced the Kindle 2 yesterday. For those of you who don't know, the Kindle is Amazon's ebook reader that uses that fancy, awesome e-ink. The original Kindle was met with largely positive reviews. Well--nothing but positive reviews about the service, but wishy-washy reviews regarding the hardware. Most of the complaints had to do with the button layout.
That's why this Kindle 2 announcement is pretty big. From what I've been able to see from pictures, it looks like Amazon has really tried to fix the hardware problems of the first Kindle. That's great, because like I said before, I heard nothing but positive reviews about the actual Kindle service. So now, with the Kindle 2, we have the amazing Amazon Kindle service, combined with a sleek and refined ebook reader--a total win situation.
There are two great things about the Amazon Kindle service that make me really want to get one of these devices. The first thing is that the Kindle is tied to the Amazon bookstore. One of the big pain with ebooks has always been that it is hard to find good ebooks. But Amazon, which is easily one of the largest (if not the largest) bookseller in the US, is working to make as many of its books as possible readable on the Kindle. That's pretty huge. Plus, the store is tied into the Kindle hardware. So you can search and download for a book directly on your ebook reader. To my mind, this is kind of doing for ebooks what Apple and iTunes did for downloading music with the iPod.
The second big thing about the Kindle service is that your purchase of the Kindle hardware includes EVDO always-on internet for free. The Kindle uses Sprint's cellular network to connect to the Amazon store, download blogs and newspapers, and even check your rss feeds. And this isn't some trial-period internet. You have this internet access for as long as Amazon is still a viable company and they're still using EVDO cellular networks. Brilliant.
Anyway...I guess the whole point of this post is that I would love to have one of these devices, but I'm poor. So, instead I'll just praise it on the internet with the hope that one of you will buy one so I can steal it from you. :-)
