Kindle 2 kind of a bummer

[catsittingstill]

Been moving all day, but just glanced over a few things about the new version of the Kindle.  Shape is different, screen is supposedly whiter (which would be nice); pages supposedly turn 20% faster (okay...); now has text-to-speech (great for the disabled; I'm happy it's there, but it doesn't affect my life); cell phone chip now 3G (I think, except in other spots it says EVDO and I thought they were different, but whatever).

But it seems to no longer take SD cards, to no longer have a user-replaceable battery, to take twice as long to charge, and to still not have any way of organizing your books using folders or tags.

I don't know what these folks were thinking.  But I'm sticking with my dinosaur with the SD card slot and the user replaceable battery, that charges in half the time.

Speaking of which, maybe I'd better order a new battery while I still can.

Comments

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

No SD card is going to be a problem. My wife was mentioning something about email improvements, but I'm not sure what.

I sure could take a way to organize the contents.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, it's possible to sort by author or title, if the file is formatted properly for that.

But really--it holds something like 1500 books. How are you going to find *anything* without folders?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*sigh* color me... unsurprised.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of surprised. I really expected folders by now.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

It looks like a textbook case of style-over-substance marketing-over-engineering product design.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look so bad. The new battery has a longer life, and it has seven times the memory. Me, I'm more concerned with the Amazon network lock-in.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

There isn't an Amazon lock-in per se. You can buy DRM-free mobipocket ebooks anywhere you like and use them on your Kindle. You can even use Whispernet to load some of them on your Kindle wirelessly (you need an index document with links in order to do this and only a few sites have made such a document, but many free public domain books are available in this way).

It's true that the bookstore that is mindlessly convenient to reach is Amazon's. But a Kindle owner is only "limited to Amazon" if you want to read e-books with DRM.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

As with iTunes, Amazon doesn't own all content, but they own the network, and I expect their network to get more and more closed, and more and higher fees be charged. Did you know they charge full print price for many textbooks? No, I don't trust Amazon.