Kindle 2 Turns A New Page

Kindle fans rejoice! The long-promised, much-anticipated Kindle 2.0 was unveiled Monday in New York by none other than Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, with a special guest appearance by Stephen King.







The revamped e-reader has the same price tag as its predecessor -- $359 -- and starts shipping Feb. 24. It weighs in at 10.2 ounces, downloads books in less than a minute and has 25 percent longer battery life than the first version.

Kindle 2.0 lets readers peruse newspapers from around the world, such as The Financial Times, Le Monde, The Shanghai Daily and Frankfurter Allgemeine, in addition to American publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The Washington Post.



In addition, more than 230,000 books can be downloaded, and most New York Times best-sellers and new releases are $9.99. Blogs and 22 magazine titles also are available.



Amazon tells Kindle fans that it is readying for world domination in the electronic reader arena.



"This is just the beginning," the Web site said. "Our vision is to have every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds on Kindle. We won't stop until we get there."



The revamped e-reader also has more storage -- 2 GB internal (approximately 1.4 GB available for user content) -- which lets users store more than 1,500 books.

With an improved display, Amazon promises that Kindle 2.0 reads like real paper and now has 16 shades of gray for clearer text and crisper images. The screen also reflects light like ordinary paper, since it does not use backlighting and eliminates glare. Text size can be adjusted using six different font sizes, and images and photos can be zoomed to the full size of the screen.



If you still have trouble seeing text, Kindle 2.0 has that covered, too. A new "Read-to-Me" feature uses a Text-to-Speech feature, which uses what has been described by some as a robotic voice that can read everything in the Kindle library.

Kindle 2.0 also features improved ergonomics, designed with long-term reading in mind, the company said. Because most people shift positions and usually read with one hand, the new Kindle page-turning buttons are on both sides to let readers turn pages with one hand from any position. Pages also now turn 20 percent faster than the original Kindle.





The page-turn buttons also flex inward to prevent accidental page turns when picking up or handling the device. A new five-way controller also provides better on-screen navigation for selecting text to highlight or look up words. Readers can use the built-in The New Oxford American Dictionary and also can access Wikipedia.

Horror scribe extraordinaire Stephen King showed up at the Kindle 2.0 launch and talked up his new novella he wrote exclusively for Kindle, UR.





According to Amazon.com's description, the book asks the age-old question, "Why can't you just read off the computer like the rest of us?"

After Oprah talked up the wonders of Kindle on her show last October, the first version quickly sold out and had a three-month waiting list.



Although Amazon.com said it has increased its manufacturing capacity, the company advises getting a move on ordering. Customers who previously placed an order for Kindle 1 and haven't yet received it will automatically be upgraded to Kindle 2 without having to reorder.

Other original Kindle owners are first in line to receive Kindle 2, according to Amazon. Those users need to place orders by midnight PST on Feb. 10 to receive first priority.

For everyone else, the site is taking pre-orders, and Kindle 2.0 will begin shipping Feb. 24.