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Old 02-25-2009, 02:11 PM   #1
sirbruce
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Posts: 1,859
Karma: 505847
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Columbus, OH
Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS
A critical review of Kindle 2's shortcomings

I won't extoll the many virtues of Kindle 2; you can read about those in other reviews. Suffice it to say I'm 100% pleased with my Kindle 2 and love reading books on it. That said, there are a *few* drawbacks that some purchasers might want to be aware of:

1. The screen could be bigger. Mind you, it's the same size as the Kindle 1, and that of most book pages, but I for one dream of something larger without a larger price tag.

2. The volume doesn't quite go up high enough. On its max setting, it can be hard to hear the book over the din of background noise like nearby traffic, a treadmill, or even the inside of a noisy vehicle. The speakers are on the back, so flipping it over helps, but the bottom line is earphones are almost essential, and yet they are not included in your purchase.

3. The text-to-speech isn't all that great. Windows 7 has a better text-to-speech voice. Also, text-to-speech does not work inside the dictionary, so you can't hear how to pronounce words. Hopefully this feature can be improved for free in the future via software upgrades.

4. It's a little slow, especially when searching lots of books, or when accessing the Internet. The five-way controller is great, but don't expect the cursor to respond "instantly" to your input; it lags noticeably. You'll get used to it, but don't expect the responsiveness of your home computer.

5. There can be occassional minor "ghosting" problems where the screen does not completely update on a page turn or when navigating. Usually refreshing the screen clears it right up. This is NOT a major problem unless you're an obsessive-compulsive who will be unable to read a book if there's anything but a uniform grey background.

6. The lack of folders or tagging capability makes it problematic to maintain a collection of hundreds of books. It's great if you're only reading a few books of a time, but trying to find a particular book in your library can be tedious either searching or page turning through your list of titles.

7. The lack of native support for formats like PDF, DOC, and LIT make the device less convenient than it could be. I think it's understandable that the conversion of such documents may not be "perfect", but I would still much rather that the Kindle did it invisibly on the fly, rather than requiring a manual conversion step on the part of the user. Amazon's email conversion is a half-measure at best, and not all that great. I recommend getting a third-party program for your computer like Calibre or Mobipocket Creator, and using it to convert any such files into MOBI format and then transferring them to your Kindle via the USB cable.
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