Only a short wait after the announcement in February, Amazon released the Kindle 2 e-book reader.

The form factor has been improved immensely. It's rounder, smaller and more organized, with a faux metallic back panel. The screen size is the same, but the smaller body makes it look like a better use of space. The greatest complaint of the first version was the oversized "Next" button that hinged on the inside and depressed on the outside, making it easy to trigger when holding it by the edge. This time, they reversed the hinge and increased the resistance to the button, ensuring only intended page turning. Instead of an "ergonomic" split keyboard, the keyboard is now a tight grid of circle buttons. More organized, but perhaps too small for everyone. The power switch is on the top edge instead of the back, making me wonder how Amazon intended people to activate it when using a case. The body is nice, but perhaps too fragile for everyone. The optional $65 2-year warrantee covers accidental damage not caused by manufacturer defect, but you only get one fix for every paid warrantee. Lesson: Don't read in bed if you're prone to falling asleep on your book and buy a really nice case.

For all its improvements, I'm not convinced that the battery life lives up to the claim. Remember that the Kindle doesn't use any power while running, only when turning pages, running the EVDO and playing audio. However, after a full charge, I'll notice the indicator showing half charge after a few hours of (silent) reading, only a fraction of the claimed 4 days (2 weeks with EVDO disabled). Ironically, the Kindle sports a sort of screensaver, displaying a random book cover/author when idle for approximately 10 minutes. Unless this is a technique to prevent ghosting, it's a waste of energy when it could have just stayed on the current page and a serious pain for people who are reading slowly (or multitasking). The smallest font size offers enough text at once to require some time to read. Sometimes, when I'm distracted, I feel the need to trigger the cursor just to keep it awake. If anything, Amazon should just have included a motion sensor to dictate if the book itself is idle.

The controversy that no one saw coming was the Authors Guild fury over the Kindle's "read to me" text-to-speech feature, which essentially reads text to you. Granted, it's in a mechanical, synthesized voice, but there are certainly uses for it. Ever since the computer revolution started replacing traditional mediums (print, telephones, TV and radio), it has posed a great hurdle for the disabled. New technologies are always being produced to accommodate for disabled needs, but in such a difficult market of e-books, what can you do for those that can't see? The voice synth ability can certainly be used as a disability resource, but the Authors Guild sees it as something else. They see it as a threat to audiobooks, the performance reading of printed material by professional voice actors. Audiobooks have never been competition to actual print, but combining print with audio is apparently a frightening thought to the old world. Although it never went to court, Amazon quickly responded by allowing publishers to tag their e-book files to block the voice synth, but it's speculated that this will hurt sales knowing that the publisher has restricted functionality of their device (a kind of RIAA DRM effect). Is the voice synth really usable? For short articles, but not actual literature, where readers like me need to provide unique voices in my head to keep people straight and make it more fun.

Of course, with the prohibitive $359 price tag, the question on everyone's mind is, "Is it really cost effective or just expensive convenience?" The most valid of concerns, but unfortunately, it doesn't look good for the most avid readers. For anyone that buys only hardcover books, the Kindle begins to pay for itself at almost 30 books after spending almost $600 (including the Kindle). Now, for the budget readers who buy mass market paperbacks, arguably the most frequent readers who buy the paperbacks for cost effectiveness, will most likely never benefit. When paperbacks are about the same price as e-books, the cost of the Kindle still looms over your expenditures. Before you give up on ever owning it, the convenience factor weighs in when you calculate the space necessary for your large book collection. Face it, books are heavy, space eating, mold nurseries. Go to an English professor's office and you'll see mountains of books that are only there because it's "convenient". With 1.4GB of useable space, you can carry with you almost 2,500 copies of Twilight or 250 copies of The Bible, plus have access to your entire Amazon-purchased e-book library at all times. My straining bookshelves that no one ever sees thank you, Amazon, but they don't thank you for excluding a protective case like the first Kindle came with, essentially forcing people to spend upwards of $400 on the package deal.

I can't help but tell you what the major downfall is. While the Kindle can store and display common document files (.doc, .pdf), Amazon requires that you convert it to a .mobi file that the mobile books are in. To do this, they want you to e-mail files to your exclusive Kindle e-mail address (from a pre-approved address) and pay 10 cents for each file. Good news: the company that provides Amazon with the .mobi format, Mobipocket, provides a FREE program to convert common file formats to .mobi format, again for FREE. Just transfer the files over USB and you're set.