Kindle surprise!

Tuesday 10 February

Okay, so you already know about the Amazon Kindle 2, but why should you care? It’s just another e-reader, isn’t it? Hardly, Charlie! We absolutely love the Sony PRS-5050 e-reader, but this will blow it out the water. So, why’s it so good? Read on and find out…

Book stores The Kindle 2 can store 1,500 e-books, that’s almost ten times as many as the Sony PRS-5050 e-reader. All told it has 2GB of storage inside, with 1.4GB of that available to the user as a digital library for their digi-books. There’s no SD card slot anymore either.

Can you hear voices? The Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function is a pretty nifty trick, turning your e-book into an audio book at the press of a button. Next step? Getting famous voices. Can you imagine Stephen Fry reading you a bed-time story? Or even better – Kylie Minogue! Awesome!

No more paper Because the Kindle 2 will wirelessly collect newspapers daily, there’s no need to go old-skool and pick up your daily broadsheet. Unles you want to ogle the young cashier at the newsagents that is. Also, because it eliminates the need for paper, as the headline suggests, it’s pretty eco-friendly as well.

Web slinger It’s got a web-browser! Granted it’s a bit basic, allowing you only to look at basic websites on the e-ink screen, but Webmail, Wikipedia and Google Maps work fine.

Better battery habits The battery has also been improved from the original, extended by 25 per cent. That means it’ll now last a whopping four days with Wi-Fi enabled and a fortnight with it off! Enough time to get through Dumas’ entire back catalogue of novels. Well, nearly.

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