{update}

Ok so now that I have had the Kindle 2.0 for a few days, It turns out all my original excitement about it was well founded. The Kindle 2.0 is awesome to read on, its just like reading paper. The unit it self has a good quality feel to it, it doesn’t feel cheap, and lets face it for $360 it better not feel cheap.

Which brings me to my only negatives (if you could call them that) to the Kindle 2.0. I think the main barrier to entry in the ebook marketplace is the cost of the reader itself, while its a beautiful device $360 is a big bite out of your wallet. But what you have to keep in mind is that you are getting FREE access to Amazons 3g Whispernet. To put that into perspective, to get the same 3g network connection on your phone to access emails ect. AT&T would charge you $40 a month! So if you figure the actual cost of the Kindle to be around $150 – $200, that means you paying a little extra premium to get the free 3g. While while you may not get the same wireless experience with your Kindle as you would with your smart phone, it still allows you to do basic web surfing and emailing ect. Just be sure to use the Mobile versions of websites when browsing with the Kindle.

My 2nd gripe about the Kindle isn’t really a gripe aimed souly at the Kindle but the publishing industry in general. While the Amazon marketplace is probably one of the if not the biggest marketplace for ebooks there are still books that aren’t available. The Harry Potter series one of the biggest and most lucrative book franchises out there but you can’t buy a Harry Potter book for the Kindle. It doesn’t make much sense to me, people are spending allot of money buying and re-buying these books but when they get there shiny new Kindles and want to but them again they can’t. This is the same old thing we see all over the place when it comes to new technology industry’s are afraid of embracing new technology that in the end its the consumer who ends up losing. Mind you this is a consumer who is willing to pay money for these things, weather it be an ebook, a movie or a music file, but apparently the industry doesn’t want our money so we are forced to turn to other unofficial avenues for the things that should be readily available.
Well thats enough rantiness for now…bottom line the Kindle 2 is Seriously Cool.
{end update}

Ok Seriously if you haven’t seen an e-ink product before you really should check one out they are pretty cool, and one of the coolest e-ink products out there today is the Kindle from Amazon. More specifically the new Kindle 2.0, which I should be getting in a few hours, So I’ll have more specifics about it after I’ve had a chance to “kick the tires” and play with it for a while, either latter today or tomorrow.

Amazons Kindle 2.0 is one of the newest gadgets to utilize the e ink technology. E ink displays use positive and negatively charged particles to display text or images just like a printed page. The cool thing about this is that once the device “draws” the page it doesn’t use up any more power and can keep that page displayed indefinitely with no additional power usage until you want to change what is being displayed. Which means battery life on e-ink devices are usually really good. Also since there is no type of back lighting used like traditional electronic displays e ink pages are much easier on the eye giving the visual effect of real paper. Bundle these things together with a nice small form factor and ‘free’ 3g access to one of the largest ebook marketplaces in the world makes the Kindle and ebooks in general a really cool idea.