Today Amazon announced a new sleeker, lighter and less expensive version of their popular eBook Reader. The new Kindle is priced at a very affordable $139 and is available in White or Graphite. Besides the obvious physical changes, the display is supposed to have 50% better contrast that previous versions, battery life is supposed to last an impressive length of time – one month! What’s missing to make the price so cheap? 3G connectivity. This new $139 version only offers WiFi. No word on availability yet. I don’t even see this new model posted on Amazon’s site.
[Via msnbs.com]
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phew…lucky for me I didn’t order the old one last week. Now I get to use the newer one…yay!
Damn!
I did order one yesterday!
But since it is backordered, I’ll try to cancel the order.
You guys! Just wait a few weeks, prices will drop, just like the original Kindle. Same as when the iphone came out and everyone went mad for them. I waited a while and then got some protection for is as I’m a clumsy so and so with one of thosecontour iphone cases. I hope that when I get a Kindle (in a few weeks 🙂 they do a protective case….waaaay too much money to be spending on something I’ll rest my coffee on haha
not to sound like a grumpy old man, but don’t people like to pick up actual books anymore? i don’t think i could get used to reading on an electronic device. i would also think it would give eye strain similar what people encounter when staring at a computer all day. would like to see a gadget review from an eye doctor on this one.
They use what they call “eInk Technology”, which is just a fancy name for a non-glossy screen and no backlight. The reason people don’t like reading for extended periods of time on computer screens is the backlight.
The kindle has been designed so it reads like a book. I’ve never used one so I don’t know, but that’s what they say.
@dzad: I still like paper book, especially technical books. EBook readers are good for those books that you read in a sequential fashion: from page to page. Novels are the most obvious in this category. For technical books, I often found myself going back to the table of contents or index, look up, then jump to a specific page number; i.e. reading them out of order. This is where the eBooks fall short: I can flip the paper pages much faster than electronic pages.
I’ve had a Kindle 2 for over a year and love it! Paper books are still around my home, but reading is a pleasure with this screen. The iPad is only for brief reading sessions, this is for hours of reading! I don’t use the 3G that much, would definitely go with the WiFi model and if you can – recommend a case. This also has 4GB of storage and mine is half that, so go for it!