I have a Kindle 1 and it is pretty cool. In case you don't know the Kindle is an electronic book designed by Amazon.com. Their main design goal was to make it so that after using it for a minute you forget you are using a device, and it just seems like you are reading a book. Mission accomplished.

A few other kick ass features include:

- Ability to instantly download books and other content via the built in cellular Internet connection (no monthly service charges either!) You can either browse and buy books right from the device, or as I often do by browsing Amazon.com from my computer and clicking a button to have a book delivered wirelessly to my Kindle.

- Ability to download a “sample” of books (usually the first couple of chapters) before buying a book.

- Because of the electronic ink display, the battery lasts for a really long time, especially if you turn off the wireless. I’ve been reading a book on mine for two weeks without having to charge it (the wireless is off).

- It has a built in dictionary, so when you are reading you use the scroll wheel to click on a line of text from a book, and up pops the dictionary with all of the words on that line along with their definition.

- No back light = no headache even if you read for hours (just like a book).

- Amazon backs it up for you for free. So if you ever lose it or get a new one, they will automatically replace all of your books wirelessly (and even any notes that you stored on it).

- It is awesome going on vacation with that thing. A lot of the time when I’m going on a long trip I like to bring books. Should I bring one, or more than one? What if I finish one early, or if one of them sucks. Inevitably you end up bringing too many or not enough. Not so with a Kindle! In fact, when we were recently in Hawaii we went to see Pearl Harbor. When we were leaving we were sitting on the plane waiting for people to finish boarding and I used the Kindle to download a couple of history books on Pearl Harbor and WWII. Awesome!

Things that it isn’t so great for include…

- Magazines. Real magazines are glossy and full of color and look great. Not so much on the gray scale Kindle screen.

- Random Access Materials (newspapers, magazines, and even some books). There are some materials where you want to be able to quickly skip around, or skim pages, etc. That type of thing doesn’t end up working so well on a Kindle (takes too long).

- Books with pictures / charts. Pictures and charts and other graphics are a much bigger deal in magazines than they are in books, but there are some books that have maps, historical pictures, or other useful illustrations. For the most part those kind of things pretty much suck on the Kindle (at least on my version 1 device). At best they are just difficult to read or unclear, while at other times they are entirely useless.

- Because it is an electronic device, you can’t use it at the very beginning and end of a flight (”Sir, please put that away and put your tray in the up-right position.”)

A few other thoughts…

My Kindle has a user replaceable battery and an expansion slot for a RAM card. The Kindle 2 doesn’t have either, and I especially think that is a problem in terms of the battery (I think that is one of Apple’s biggest mistakes - not allowing users to replace batteries. I heard they even started doing that on their new Mac Book Pro’s - shitty!)

The Kindle2 has a built in text to voice reader, so if you hop in the car or on the tread mill you can have your Kindle read out loud for you. That might be interesting, but from the videos I’ve seen it sounds like Mr. Roboto reading. Also interesting is that Amazon is being sued over this, because some people think that capability infringes on the audio book rights, which are a completely separate deal from regular book rights.

Bottom line.. I love it. I read more with it, and I like the fact that I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to put all of the books that I buy. I’ve got enough of those already.