Travel Gadget Review

For many travelers, nothing passes the time like reading a good book. Thanks to technology, long gone are the days of buying a few paperback books at the airport gift store in preparation for the long haul. Now, thanks to Amazon’s Kindle 2, you can download hundreds of books into your e-book in minutes. With the Kindle, you’ll be able to save time, money, and the environment.

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The Kindle 2 is the second iteration of Amazon’s e-book reader, and while not a complete redesign, it incorporates many features and improvements that make it a worthy upgrade. Amazon basically completely redid the the layout of the device making it much more user friendly. The keys are arranged in a more familiar keyboard like fashion, with a joystick like device allowing the user to move up, down, left, and right with ease. What’s even better is the new and improved screen – the new Kindle can display 16 shades of grey, vs the 4 supported on the previous iteration. What this means to you is a more newspaper-like look when looking at newspapers, and a more book-like look when looking at books. The new Kindle also boasts 2gb of onboard memory, more than enough for even the most avid readers.

Of course, not all improvements was hardware related – the software was much improved as well. Navigation menus have slimmed down a bit, giving the user less options but making it easier to find needed features, faster. A completely worthless feature on the original Kindle, the dictionary feature is now actually usable. Whereas it used to send you to a new page whenever you looked up a word, now the definition pops up at the bottom of each page. Finally, search has been given a facelift, and it’s now much more powerful and easy to use.

While devices like the Kindle 2 have been popping up here and there over the past year, is the market completely ready for it yet? No, but that’s not to say there are many people who will love the Kindle. Avid readers will love it for it’s ability to store hundreds of books in a footprint the size of a small magazine. Travelers will love it’s compact size and brilliant screen. Geeks will love it for it’s many technological gadgets. But with a price tag of $250, the big question is – is the average consumer ready for it?