Posted 10/07/09 at 09:08:27 AM by Paul Lilly

Perhaps in an attempt to stave off the competition in what's shaping up to be a battle royal in the e-book reader market, Amazon has again dropped the price of its Kindle 2, this time from $299 to $259. In addition, Amazon said it will start selling an international version with a built-in AT&T SIM card for $279 on Monday, October 19.

“Kindle is the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items we sell on Amazon, and we’re excited to be able to lower the price," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. "We’re also excited to announce a new addition to the Kindle family–Kindle with global wireless. At home or abroad in over 100 countries, you can think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds."

The U.S. Kindle Store now comes crammed with more than 350,000 books, including 104 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, Amazon says. And most of those sell for $10 or less. But Amazon also faces increasing competition from a number of other players suddenly panning for gold in the e-book market, including Sony, Asus, and others.

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Posted 08/29/09 at 06:13:03 PM by Justin Kerr

Finding new and creative ways to justify a gadget purchase is an important exercise (particularly for those of us with spouses). Most of the time the science is flawed, but we often choose to ignore that, particularly if its something we’ve been lusting after for months. If your one of the many who was holding out for just one more reason in favor of buying a Kindle, we might just have one for you.

According to a new study released by the Cleantech group, even though the Kindle’s environmental impact upfront was significant, the numbers drop dramatically over the devices lifespan. They say the Kindle can produce savings up to a 26,098 kg of CO2 if used to it’s fullest capacity, or 1,074 kg if it replaces a mere three books per month. The break-even point in terms of environmental impact is if your Kindle replaces 22.5 books.

There you have it, does your wife want you to save the world? Guess she needs to let you buy a Kindle.

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Posted 07/17/09 at 04:14:38 PM by Pulkit Chandna

When some Kindle 2 owners informed Amazon about their cracked Kindles, it offered little sympathy despite suggestions that the cracks may have been caused due to the Kindle’s official protective case. Amazon demanded $200 for a replacement. However, Amazon has been forced to abandon its stern stance after it got slapped with a $5 million class-action-law suit. Now, the company has announced it will replace cracked Kindles without the aggrieved customers having to pay anything. 

"We do not comment on active litigation. Nevertheless, we encourage anyone who has an issue with the cover-attachment mechanism to return the cover and device for a free replacement so we can investigate further,” an Amazon spokesman told The Seattle Times.

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Posted 04/17/09 at 03:46:19 PM by Will Smith

Normally, we lead off reviews with the relevant speeds and feeds, but in the case of an eBook reader, like the Kindle, that’s not necessary. The Kindle 2 is about the same thickness as this magazine and the size of a trade paperback, but packs enough internal memory to hold an incredible number of books—between 1,000 and 2,000, depending on the length of the books. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the Kindle 2 is a great way to read and purchase books.

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Posted 04/08/09 at 07:56:43 PM by Pulkit Chandna

A few weeks after Jesse Vincent, an inveterate hacker, yielded to his strong urge to hack another popular gadget, Savory was born. Savory is a Kindle 2 app that converts .pdf and .epub files into the .mobi format supported by the ebook reader. Though similar solutions have been available on the internet for quite sometime, Savory is unique as it executes the conversion on Amazon’s ebook reader itself. But like all great things, Savory has its limitations. It doesn’t support Kindle 1 and won’t convert ebooks protected by DRM. Please note that running unsigned code may void your manufacturer’s warranty.

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Posted 02/19/09 at 02:00:00 PM by Alex Castle

Since Amazon’s announcement on Monday, we’ve had Kindle 2 on the brain. After all, the long-awaited sequel to Amazon’s ambitious eBook reader improves on the original in almost every way: it’s got a better screen, better battery life, more storage, better buttons, and it’s just a hell of a lot nicer looking, to boot. So what’s stopping us from jumping on the preorder list? The price.

Launching at just about 360 U.S. dollars, the Kindle 2 is a pretty hefty investment. But maybe we can justify buying the new Kindle anyway. We’ve heard people bandying about the notion that—based on the discount price for eBooks—the Kindle will actually pay for itself over time. Sounds good, but we wanted to find out just how long it would take to break even, so we went out and did a little research.

Want to know what we found out? Hit the jump.

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Posted 02/09/09 at 12:30:56 PM by Paul Lilly

The latest of many rumors regarding Amazon's next-generation Kindle eBook reader predicted the new device would make an official debut today, and New York Times blogger Brad Stone can now pat himself on the back for getting the release day right. Amazon has finally introduced the long anticipated Kindle 2, the followup to the immensely popular Kindle.

"Kindle 2 is everything customers tell us they love about the original Kindle, only thinner, faster, crisper, with longer battery life, and capable of holding hundreds more books. If you want, Kindle 2 will even read to you—something new we added that a book could never do,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO.

Hit the jump to find out what's new in Kindle 2.

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Posted 01/28/09 at 09:08:22 AM by Paul Lilly

Oft rumored but not yet confirmed, New York Times blogger Brad Stone says Amazon will introduce the Kindle 2 eBook reader in New York City on February 9th. Reaching that conclusion took a little bit of detective work on the part of Stone, who noticed Amazon changed the ship date for its out-of-stock Kindle from 11 to 13 weeks down to 4 to 6 weeks. This would coincide with a news conference Amazon has planned for February 9th at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York.

"The device has been out of stock since November, after Oprah Winfrey touted it on her show," Stone writes. "The announcement seems to confirm our suspicions that the original Kindle has been obsolete since that time and that everyone who purchased the device over the holidays from Amazon.com — or put their name on a waiting list — will receive the newer version."

Back in October 2008, BoyGeniusReport.com posted what it claims were leaked photos of the upcoming Kindle. Among the changes shown were smaller buttons to help avoid inadvertent page turns, and a joystick instead of a scroll wheel. The photos also revealed a miniUSB cable port.

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