Customer Reviews

Kindle 2 : First Impressions from a Kindle 1 owner

On the one hand I love my Kindle 1... I use it everyday, I
subscribe to my favorite newspaper, I mark up my books with
annotations, highlights and bookmarks.



On the other hand my Kindle 1 annoys me... unintended page changes,
the awkward way I sometimes have to hold it to keep from hitting
buttons, the sometimes slow page refresh, and the screen freezes that
now has me traveling with a paper clip lest I need to do a reset while
commuting on the train.



I've had the Kindle 2 in my hands for almost a day and have carried
it on one commute. What follows is my "first impressions" review of the
Kindle 2 from the perspective of an owner of the original K1. What's
different, what's better and what's worse?



5 big things I immediately noticed as different:



First, when taking the K2 out of the box I immediately noted that
the back cover is not easily removable (if at all) and won't slip off
in my hands - as was frequent with the K1. The keyboard is also much
much smaller and less obtrusive.


The second thing I noticed is power management. No longer do I have
to press and hold two buttons to put the device to sleep. The switches
for On/Off and Wireless On/Off are gone. There's a single small switch
at the top of the K2 that handles Sleep.



The third thing I noticed - where's the silver strip? In fact, the
entire navigation structure has been completely revised - I'm still
getting used to it but it's a huge step forward. The silver strip has
been replaced by a 4-way rocker that can also be pressed for "OK"
commands, creating bookmarks, and doing highlighting.



The fourth thing I noticed - while page changing doesn't seem to me
to be particularly faster - almost every other interaction on the
screen is vastly accelerated... scrolling the cursor, looking up words,
highlighting text, and typing text.



The fifth thing I noticed - a new power cable. This unit uses USB
cables that are not compatible with K1. It's a bit of a bummer since I
was hoping my wife and I could share power cables (she's taking over my
K1).



What's better:



Navigation is a huge improvement. Moving the cursor to a word and
having the definition of the word immediately pop up on the bottom of
the screen is terrific. Using the rocker to move between articles in a
newspaper makes scanning the paper much faster and enjoyable. Calling
up the Menu strip is much faster and interactive. Clearly, Amazon was
hard at work to make navigation quicker and easier. The hard work is
apparent.



Buttons: The K1 was a constant struggle with inadvertent page
changes. The design was flawed from the beginning. The single best
improvement in the K2 took a few minutes of concentrated reading to
realize... the button hinges are on the outside - at the edge - of the
K2. You need to press on the interior of the button to get it to click.
This change alone has saved me from several inadvertent page changes.
Combine that with the smaller button sizes and one major source of
frustration has been instantly eliminated!


Size: The K2 is thinner than the iPhone. It feels denser and maybe
a tad heavier - although I did buy the premium cover which snaps into
the K2 and adds to the weight (btw, I love the premium cover and think
it's worth the investment).



Network Speed: The K2 can use G3 cellphone connections and when
it's activated it makes a considerable difference in interactivity to
the Kindle Store and when downloading Archived content.



Power Management: The little power button at the top of the Kindle
is really a power slide. That is, slide it to toggle Sleep mode on and
off. Slide and hold to do a full power down. And the K1's wireless
on-off switch has been replaced by a menu choice in software. Works for
me. Also, compared to the K1 waking from sleep is super-fast.



What's worse...



There isn't much I liked better in the K1 than the K2. One thing:
calling up clippings and notes. In the K2 these items only list the
first sentence or two of my highlights. In the K1 it displays the
entire highlight - which makes reading through them much easier and
more like reading Cliff Notes. The new interface in K2 is annoying and
makes the feature much less useful. I'll be writing to Amazon to see if
we can get that changed.



Closing thoughts...



The K2 is a big refinement over the K1. It feels as easy to read as
the K1 but doesn't seem any crisper to my eyes (I usually read at point
sizes 3 & 4). In this regard, as a book, the K1 and K2 are
comparable. I wouldn't run up my credit card to buy the K2 from a
belief that it's fundamentally easier to read. However, in my short
time with the K2 it's a more enjoyable device to use. The change in the
hinging and size of the buttons is major plus and would make it hard to
go back to the K1. Amazon broke a few paradigms that K1 users are
accustomed to and I found myself going to the K2 User Guide to figure
out some content management issues that have been changed in this
release.



Why 4 stars and not 5? The Kindle will never get 5 stars from me
until Amazon implements the notion of a lending library where I can
lend another Kindle user a book; which would have the book would
disappear from my Kindle and appear on theirs. After x number of days
the book would automatically be returned to me and taken off the other
person's Kindle. Amazon says they want the device to disappear and
content to stand out. I say: Until I can lend a friend a book the
Kindle will never quite live up to that standard and will be, in my
book, stuck at 4 stars.

BEWARE of the SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES between Kindle 1 and Kindle 2!

I was DELIGHTED to upgrade my Kindle 1 to K2...until I got down to using it every day.



Having invested HEAVILY in Amazon Kindle content, I looked forward
to the new and improved version! I really wanted to love this device
just as much, if not more, than my original purchase! It was to be my
"backup insurance" and "protect my investment" in Amazon content for
the device. I expected and looked forward to everything Amazon said
this device would be.



Out of the box, and on the surface, big cosmetic changes for the
better. Once I began using it, however, my experience became more and
more frustrating.



1. I have a tremendous volume of Kindle content (public domain and
Amazon). I discovered that I could not directly transfer from my
computer backup for Kindle 1 to the new K2 (why my backup is on the
computer is addressed later in this review). All my content had to be
reformatted by Amazon and re-downloaded from their site specifically
for and to the Kindle 2 (I am NOT in a Whispernet area). Major pain.
Major time-investment. Major inconvenience. Major turn-off. Have you
guys ever heard of "bulk-download" capability, or choose many files at
once for copy to a new device??? Guess not.



2. All of my previous issues of magazines and newspapers were lost
(ie, I could not re-download them specifically for the K2) because
Amazon does not back up subscriptions on their server for more than 6
days. SINCE I PAID FOR THE CONTENT, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE THAT
CONTENT ALWAYS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD. Sorry, but I won't consider
buying any more newspapaers or magazine subscriptions to the Kindle 1
or 2. Several (Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest) are less expensive
online (with print edition also included) and have ALL content (not MIA
content pictures, charts, quotes, etc).



3. Several books I purchased read "Kindle 2" in the title, but were Kindle 1 books with a new title page. OOPS!



4. Although Amazon says it keeps you content on their server, I
found many instances where I could not download my books to my computer
because the item THAT I PAID FOR was not available for download to my
new Kindle2. Amazon said the book had been "pulled." Excuse me, but I
paid for it, pulled or not, it should always be avaiable to me since I
paid for it. When I asked for a refund for the pulled item now
unavailable to me, SINCE I COULD NOT GET THE ITEM REDOWNLOADED, I was
told that a refund was not possible. LESSON LEARNED: I now back up ALL
my Kindle content on my computer. Since Amazon says "Don't worry, your
content is safe with us." I respectfully disagree. Also, some authors
issued new versions of their books for K2. However, then the original
version for K1 "disappeared" from the server so I could not even
download it to K2, nor K1. Same filename, so if I had been in a
Whispernet area, the original would have been completely overwritten
without my realizing it! Imagine, I bought a K2 Users Guide in May
2008, before it come off the engineers drafting table, instead of in
February 2009!



5. The "Jump-ahead" and "Jump-back" feature (so convenient in
Kindle 1, expecially in those instances where a Table of Contents does
not exist and/or does not work--too often, I am afraid, in Kindle
content) is not a feature in the K2 due to publisher formatting issues
for the Kindle 2. Except for the User Guide that comes pre-installed on
the device, it works fine in that document! After you have paged tru a
500-page book one-page-at-a-time to get from Chapter 2 to Chapter 15,
see how excited you are about a low battery and all the time it took to
get there!



6. The "Table of Contents" in many books is non-functional,
frustrating in a 500 page book that you cannot "jump ahead" to Chapter
15 from Chapter 2. I reapeat this because of the level of angst it
created in me for a device that was supposed to be "new and improved."
See the above issue as well!!



7. The Text-to-Speech feature just got put in limbo by the Authors
Guild, so Amazon had to agree to let the publishers decide if this
feature would be "enabled," or not, for a particular book. Leads me to
think they may be forced to forgo this "experimental" feature in the
future...hmmm!!!



8. No way to choose left or right justification in the print of a
book (like in K1). You get what you get. I, for one, find
fully-justified text distracting. I prefer left-justified text.
Publishers control this with their formatting. Please take note that it
is not a negotiable issue in the K2.



9. Content storage: NO SD CARD, NO SD CARD, NO SD CARD!!! With all
my content (re-downloaded) on the Kindle 2, I had used 3/4 of the
"expansive," yet limited (in my case) storage available on K2. Couple
that with the trouble I had downloading my content from Amazon.com
(again, no Whispernet available), and I was more than a little angry.



10. NO USER REPLACEABLE BATTERY--Unless you buy the extended
warranty for $65. After 1 year you pay $80 plus shipping to send the
device to Amazon and have the Kindle REPLACED, not the battery changed
out (per Amazon Kindle Customer Service). I guess you then get the
added "priviledge" of re-downloading all your amazon Kindle content
manually!!



11. The 2-year extended warranty really isn't for 2 years after the
original 1 year warranty ends (like most places offering extended
warranties in addition to the factory warranty). This one REPLACES the
Amazon 1 year warranty, so you get 2 years, period.