Why I have fallen head of heels in the deepest kind of love with the new Kindle:
- It's so little! (Well, thin, anyway, and lightweight. If you've met me offline you know how much stuff I tend to haul around with me. This is important.
- the potential of 4 days of battery life with wireless on, and 2 WEEKS with it turned off.
- FREE WIRELESS ACCESS TO THE KINDLE STORE/DOWNLOADS Browsing and downloading don't create any kind of excess charges.
- There's 2 GB of storage.
- READ-TO-ME I want you to stop and think about this one very carefully. (and I've listened to audio clips, it sounds pretty good) - reading while knitting. Starting your book over breakfast and continuing to enjoy it while you drive to work. Without having to pay exorbitant audiobook prices. (Not to mention how much of a bonus this is for the visually impaired.)
- Amazon keeps a "copy" of the books you buy for the kindle on their server, so you don't have to worry about losing the files and having to buy them all over again. You can just redownload them, no problem.
- You can annotate, etc. The BIG thing here is, it saves your annotations along with your "copy" of the book on the server so if you need to restore your library from the back-up, your notes are there, too.
- SEARCHABILITY of books. Just saying.
- It supports the following formats: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.
DOC and TXT are on there, as well as PDF. You can load knitting patterns onto the kindle. You can LOAD FANFIC onto the Kindle. THE KINDLE CAN READ FANFIC TO YOU WHILE YOU KNIT!
- FREE BUILT IN WIRELESS ACCESS TO WIKIPEDIA
- It is possible though I can't quite tell from the site, that you may have free wireless access via kindle to several text-centered websites (including google)
- It can store music and podcasts to listen to via the kindle. You can play music while you read. Obviously, with only 2G you probably can't store *all* your music along with all your books, but a playlist or two at a time can go on there in case you don't have your mp3 player handy. Besides, I'd rather have my podcasts with my books, anyway.
- You can read the first chapters of books for free to see if you like/want them.
- Newspapers and magazines can be delivered to your kindle. Some of the newspapers (because hey, daily) are around 10-14$ a month, but many of the magazines are around a 1$ or so. Slightly less than a subscription would normally be, and without all those papers and magazines cluttering up the house. There are also blogs available that way, including ones like LifeHacker.
- Books that would cost anywhere from 20 to 50 dollars in print are only 9.99. Paperbacks seem to be slightly less than normal price. But even with coupons, discounts, or "club memberships" I was having to pay around 15-20 dollars for the average new hardcover book. That's a SIGNIFICANT price reduction for me.