The main new feature is the ability for the second-gen Kindle to read PDF files natively, just like the larger DX reader. You can still convert PDF files to Amazon’s .aws format if you wish – and in some cases that’s the better way to go. Native PDFs are not zoomable on Kindle, so can be hard to read when smaller fonts and detailed diagrams are used.

The second-gen Kindle can now be flipped sideways to read documents with the player held horizontally. You activate the flip using menu controls – unlike the DX which flips automatically thanks to its internal accelerometer.

Another feature that has Kindle owners buzzing is greatly-improved battery life. Amazon indicates that the update dramatically improves battery performance. That translates to about a week of reading, with wireless turned on, from a single charge.

Our forum thread on the update is rich with tips on getting the update and reactions to the improvements.

To receive the update, you’ll have to turn wireless on (you knew that) and it may take some time for the update to find you. If you don’t have it by now, you may need to leave wireless on overnight.

There is also a procedure for manually installing the update, explained in the thread.

If you’ve installed the screensaver or font hacks, you’ll have to uninstall those hacks in order to receive the update. KindleBoards member NogDog has provided the hacks and some instructions on this webpage.

For any other questions you may have related to the 2.3 update, I’d recommend browsing through our update thread.

Comments

Before leaving, I had received by e-mail various documents from the Program Coordinator and some of the presenters.  I was able to format them for reproduction and distribution and convert them to PDF format and load onto my Kindle.

Accordingly, I already had many of the ‘handouts’ as well as having the schedule for the week readily accessible.  In addition, I had downloaded a trip planner and had that available for our trip from Arlington, Virginia to Erlanger, Kentucky.  And I had copies of our auto insurance cards on the Kindle as well; fortunately, that wasn’t needed!

I also had some music that I was able to put into PDF format.  I already knew it would display just fine, but I wanted to find out if it was practical to use in a ‘real world’ situation.  What I found is that, for me at least, it’s not great if you are learning a piece, because you usually need to go back and forth to work on specific passages.  But once you have learned the piece and just need the music there to remind you of what’s coming up it works okay.

I also tried a piece  in guitar tablature.  That was also very readable though the landscape mode did not work as well just because of the layout of the piece.  I did get asked if there was a remote system for page turns using a foot pedal or something;  guitarists tend to have both hands on their instruments and page turns can be problematic.

In addition to actual music, I also downloaded a number of free chord charts for guitar as well as some fingering charts for flute.  They were very readable and it was nice to have them readily available.  I even found some ukulele chord charts on line, which I went ahead and included although I wasn’t bringing my ukulele with me.

While there, my daily Washington Post downloaded automatically so I could keep up with what was going on in the world.  I generally had several interested observers when I was reading it.  I found out that I’d been the catalyst for one of the folks to have purchased a Kindle for his wife after he saw my K1 last year – I  think I’ve convinced him he needs to get her an Oberon cover this year!  And one of the presenters was very interested in the DX for his 92 year old mother who finds it hard to read regular books.  Of course I told him also about the font enhancements available, if needed.

In short, I put it to good use for the week.  I found it worked better than paper for working through the handouts for the various sessions.  Next year I’ll absolutely encourage the presenters to send me e-copies ahead of time:  maybe I won’t have to carry around any paper at all!

Our members continue to post insightful reviews of their new Kindle DX readers – you can see dozens of posts and reviews here and in our Reviews board.

Several people have commented on how useful the DX would be for displaying sheet music. KindleBoards member Forster has posted pictures showing the DX displaying sheet music in portrait and in landscape mode.

As someone who participated in piano recitals for many years, I was always slightly stressed at the mechanics of page-turning: having to deal with pages flipping backwards, or with a page persistently lifting at awkward times by the natural tension of the manuscript binding.

I’ve been dying for my DX to arrive in the next few days, and to start loading some of my novels and IT reference manuals on it. And now, I’m also looking forward to downloading sheet music PDFs and propping my DX on the old piano.

The Kindle DX is available now from Amazon, for $489.

Comments

“Here’s another one of my lists in no particular order of reasons I like my Kindle for college courses.  Keep in mind I am a History major and English minor, so your mileage may vary.  I’m lucky in that a lot of the things I have to read are not only available novels, but also in the public domain.

1. Searchability – This is hands down my favorite part of using a Kindle for Kollege (see what I did there?).  This past semester I was writing my Senior Seminar in History final paper on Fashion and its effects on the Black Plague and vice versa.  I was able to find so many resources just through the amazon site that I did the entire paper using nothing but my Kindle and JSTOR (I’d love the DX for the latter!).  But since I could search through the books I got, I could download something like “A Journal of the Plague Year” and immediately find any and all passages mentioning cloth or fashion.

2. Portability – I had about 22 books over 3 classes this semester, and that’s not counting Spanish.  It was so bad that I had books literally falling out of the floorboard of my car.  I got my Kindle about 3 weeks into the semester and was able to replace over half of those with ebooks.  This was especially useful in my Craft of Fiction class where the professor kept alluding to texts we weren’t discussing that week.  I always had them with me.  The downside was that my huge British Literature and Granta short story texts weren’t available.  They were those ridiculously thick books with the really thin pages that are so awkward to read and carry.  But at least I got rid of some of the others.

3. Price - Of those 11 or so books I replaced, I managed to get several of them for free or as little as one or two dollars.  These were all books that I had either purchased from the University Bookstore for $15 after waiting weeks for them to be available or online from places like half.com where I still had to pay $4 shipping on top of the low prices and then wait and pray they got delivered on time.  Jane Eyre, Mrs. Dalloway, North and South, The Chronicles of Froissart, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy… I got them all for free or nearly so.  From the Brink of the Apocalypse, What is the What and my Spanish-English Dictionary I had to pay a bit for, but still got them cheaper.

4. Highlights and Notes – I absolutely HATE highlighters.  I never draw straight lines, the colors are always obnoxious and bleed through the pages and I never have the marker handy when I need it.  That or I just flat out lose the thing.  Then the awkwardness of trying to hold the book and highlight the text… being able to do it through my Kindle was enough to bring a tear to my eye.  It was fast and didn’t ruin the text.  I could pull up a list of my highlights without having to flip through the book and hope I didn’t miss it.  I could even clip them all to a text file if I was so inclined for cutting and pasting goodness later.  I NEVER highlight passages in Fiction, but now I always do and it helped immensely during book discussions in my Craft of Fiction class.

5. Book Discussions - A lot of people wonder how easy it’d be to use a Kindle in a reading group or the like, but I found it was even more useful than having the book.  I could easily type in a line to search for to find where they were in the book, and when someone brought up something they saw somewhere else in the text that related but couldn’t remember the page, well I could find it in a few seconds.  Of course the lack of page numbers can make it difficult if that’s all they go by, but if you’ve read the book or someone quotes a passage from the text then it’s easy enough to keep up.

6. Walking to Class - Unfortunately I only learned the trick to this late in the semester because I did try before but I still found it difficult.  At any rate, no matter how windy it is you can have your Kindle out reading stuff for class while trudging across campus.  Just don’t make the same mistake I did and try it on the smallest font setting.  Bump it up a bit even if you have good eyes and it’s really easy not to get lost even while walking.

7. .PDF Files – Again, I wish I had the DX for this because it would be one thousand times better.  Some .pdf files work okay on the Kindle2, but a lot of the ones I need are straight scans from books provided by my professors.  This means they showed as small pictures which were difficult to read.  On the DX I imagine they’d be beautiful and wonderful and well worth my $500 if I wasn’t so strapped.  So having .pdfs is nice sometimes, but having them on a DX would be nicer.

8. Citing Books – Okay, here’s one of the main problems I ran across with using my Kindle for research.  My history professor was also the head of the department and my advisor.  She really didn’t like me citing Kindle Location numbers and asked me to get physical copies to cite.  This is done easily enough through google’s book search, or if you’re lazy and a bit more daring just do some math.  Find out how many pages are in the physical book then take the percentage from your Kindle location and voila, you have a general page number to cite.  To be more exact, though, I’d use google books.

9. Sparksnotes - This saved my butt quite a few times in my British Literature class.  I messed up and did the wrong readings only to look in my syllabus and see we had a quiz that day on Mrs. Dalloway.  I pulled up sparksnotes on my Kindle and read it on the way to class and actually passed after not even cracking open the book.  The internet can be clunky, and it definitely takes some getting use to in order to use a site like sparksnotes, but once you do it’s great.  I also got to use google during class to help with some of our discussion questions so all in all it’s pretty handy.  I could always do this on my cellphone, but it’s so much faster and easier to read on my Kindle.

I have heard from people that you can go to the publisher’s sites for most textbooks and get electronic copies cheaper.  I didn’t try this at all since I had already paid the hundreds of dollars for mine that semester so I can’t say for sure how well this works.  All I know is that for my money the Kindle has helped me -a lot- this semester and will continue to.  The nice thing is, even after graduating I’ll still be using it unlike some of these textbooks <glares at poorly written US History text>.  Hope that helps and gives you some ideas.  I’ll be glad to answer any specific questions you have as well.”

Comments

I own a Kindle 2, and my wife has a Kindle 1. We’re extremely happy with both of them and use them all the time. They have different features, and different costs – a Kindle 2 goes for $349 while used Kindle 1s are still commanding $250 to $300 on Amazon.

So, if you’re looking for a Kindle, which to buy? Some thoughts on this are are neatly summed up by KindleBoards member Scheherazade, who owned the Kindle 1 after having owned the Kindle 2 and gives pros and cons on buying a Kindle 2 vs a used Kindle 1:

PROS…

TTS – Text to Speech is really a non-issue for me so far.  It’s a nice technology and a lot of people swear by it.  It’s definitely usable, if not perfect, but I even have a hard time listening to professional actors read books to me.

5-Way Controller – I love this and it would be the biggest reason to purchase the K2 over the K1 for me.  The scroll wheel on the K1 is a bit awkward to use, though I can see getting used to it after a while.  The problem with it is that it can only scroll up and down.  This makes using things like the dictionary, highlighting, clicking links, etc. far more difficult with numerous steps involved in menu selections.  While the 5-Way isn’t perfect, it’s a leap and a jump ahead of the wheel for me personally.

Dictionary – This comes back to the controller for me.  To use the dictionary on the K1 you have to scroll up to the line with the word, open a menu, click look up in dictionary, wait for it to pull up a -new- page with the definition for -every- word on that single line.  Then you scroll to find the word you want and click again for the definition.  With the K2 you just use the control nub to move to the word you want and a short definition appears at the bottom of the page without having to click a thing.  If you want the full definition you just hit enter and it takes you to it.  I am not sure I’d ever use the dictionary on the K1, but on the K2 I always do.

Internet – If this is a priority for you, this again sees major upgrades just from the improved control scheme with the 5-way controller.

Look and Feel – The Kindle 1 just seems kind of flimsy to me.  The Kindle 2 is far more streamlined with better button placement and far superior menu controls.  The more prominent home button is nice, and making it harder to accidentally turn pages (something I’m not sure I’ve even done on the K2) is a bonus.  I find myself using the NEXT PAGE button on the left side of my K2 more than the right, something you I just wouldn’t do on the K1.  It also looks like a current gen device and feels solid.  The K1, while charming, is a bit Atari to me

Menus – As mentioned before, the menus are vastly improved.  No more using the scroll wheel and having to navigate sub menus that pop up for simple things like word lookups and link clicking.  It’s just much more streamlined.

Keyboard – They both kind of suck, but the Kindle 2’s is slightly better in my opinion.  The keys on the K1 feel more solid while they tried to “cushion” them on the K2, but the layout on the 2 is better… minutely.  It’s not made for typing, though, so this is another non-issue.  Just having the ability is nice.  Having the delete button where the enter key usually is, though?  Come on… whose idea was that?

CONS…

Price – The price is a bit higher for the K2, but also keep in mind most K1s you’ll be getting are either used or only about $100 cheaper.  This also brings up warranty concerns.

Bugs – It’s new so they’re still working out a few bugs.  I haven’t had a single problem with mine, but you can see people having sun fading issues or too grey backgrounds.  From what I have heard, though, Amazon is more than happy to help people until they get a Kindle they’re happy with.

External Storage – Some find this a con, but I don’t really.  The internal storage on the Kindle 2 is much larger than the 1, but there is no SD card slot.  I wouldn’t use it anyway, personally, and I think it just adds bulk to the device and it’s just another thing to break or lose.  Amazon will keep copies of all the books you buy even after you delete them and you can back up others to your computer.  I just don’t see where I’d need over 1000 books on my Kindle before purging a few, at least temporarily.  A lot of people say they use the SD cards in order to have a file structure for their books, but this is another non-issue for me.  When I try to make things neat with separate folders I end up losing stuff.

User Replaceable Battery – The Kindle 1 has a user replaceable battery, the one in the Kindle 2 must be sent to Amazon to have it replaced for a fee.  Either way you’re buying a new battery.  I think I prefer letting a professional install it for me over having an easily removed backplate that can be lost and that allows dirt easier access to the insides of the device.  Not to mention this added a lot of bulk that I feel wasn’t necessary.

I have to agree with Scheherazade’s closing comment: “They’re both great devices and when it comes right down to it they both do what they’re supposed to do… and that’s let you get lost in a world painted in text, which both do admirably.”

Comments

Kindleboards member moxy789 has posted a pictorial on creating Kindle screensaver images.

Using Gimp, which is a free graphics software package, Moxy walks through the steps to create a greyscale image in the right proportions for a Kindle screensaver. His screenshots make this an excellent tutorial if you want your own custom screensavers, but are puzzled about how to create them to best fit your Kindle’s display.

(Note: Making custom screensavers work on your Kindle requires a hack. Here’s how to do it.)

Comments

On the Kindle Klassic, to look up a word, move the silver scroll to the line with the unknown word and click. From the menu that appears, choose “Lookup.” A window will open with definitions of all the words in that line. Scroll to the word in question and click again and a more detailed definition will appear. To return to your book, press the BACK key once.

Screenshot of "My Clippings" with definitions from the dictionary

On the K2, the dictionary function has changed quite a bit. No longer are you given definitions for all the words in line; instead, use the 5-way controller to move the cursor up and over to the specific word you are interested in. At the bottom of the screen, a “mini” definition will appear in the search box. To read a more detailed definition, press the ENTER key (the arrow with a tail on the right hand side of the keyboard) and the dictionary entry will open. The BACK key returns you to your place in your book.

A new feature in the K2 is the ability to highlight a definition and save it to your clippings file. Personally, I need to read a word and its definition several times over the course of several days to really learn it and have it stay it my mind. The ability to highlight and save so that I can go back and review the word is a great new feature in the K2.

We have a thread on Kindleboards where people (well, mostly me!) share new words they’ve learned on their Kindles. Come join us and share your disquisition on the topic!