Amazon’s Kindle 2 Will Debut Feb. 9 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon’s Kindle 2 Will Debut Feb. 9

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45 pointsdavatk36 comments

the new device corrects some of the design flaws of the first model, adding round buttons instead of those strange angular ones, and smaller side buttons to avoid accidental page turns.

I received a Kindle as a gift and at first I hated the buttons. Now having read a dozen books or so, I think they are genius. I am sure they are making this change to satisfy the initial-reaction reviewers.

It can be a little to easy to accidentally press the side buttons on the original, something that happens to me a couple of times per book. This is greatly outweighed by the thought that went into them. It is really easy to press the buttons with an elbow, pillow or even your nose when need be. It makes reading a book a one- or no-hand operation.

Behind the screen, I would put the weird and unique buttons on the kindle as a top feature.

All buttons should be eradicated.

I can't wait for the day someone creates an affordable brain-to-computer interface. (And one that doesn't require you to drill holes in your head.)

Man, that was a huge tangent. Anyway...

I would like a 100$ e-book reader with an electronic paper display and pdf support, with no extra features, please.

That's fine, but you'll probably have to wait until the folks who are willing to pay $360 are done buying.

Given that Amazon allowed their hit product to go out of stock over Christmas, methinks the supply of eInk isn't quite enough to meet the demand at $360, let alone $100.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/ebook/

Not the right price, but the PDF support is build right in. alt.binaries.e-book.technical will finally realise its promise.

Not supporting SDHC cards (the 4gb limit) in 2009 is pretty bizzare, and makes the device look quite suspect to me.

Every reader but the Kindle supports PDF and most do it better than the Foxit while actually existing.

Look at the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPLe8TU57U he puts it into landscape mode (the only semi-readable mode on small screened readers) and it doesn't fit to width or even centre.

I've been debating putting in a deposit on the foxit, since it seems to be the simplest and most affordable. But since it is coming from a software company(albeit one with a good reputation) it is a gamble.

Another idea worth considering is making Eink based reader yourself. However, a development kit from E-ink is "only" $3,000, at that price one might as well buy all the Eink based readers on the market and dissasemble them.

Technical pdfs on normal sized readers is pointless (I have one, I've tried it).

First you need a much larger screen. An A4 page at 5 inches is unreadable whereas a quarter size (landscape) is too little text between redraws.

Even if you get an iliad or some larger screened device PDFs are still a bad match. Thats because again the screen redraw. Reading a technical PDF isn't the same as reading a novel, you (or at least I) skip around at lot, skip code sections or want to go back.

Basically e-ink displays until they get the redraw below the perceptible level have only one acceptable use. Reading all the text sequentially where there's no formatting to get in the way of reflowing and resizing the text.

I don't have any issues reading technical stuff (Apple framework docs, random Cocoa/ObjC ebooks, etc) on my Kindle. Its only a minor irritation for code; Its still a fixed width and I have my font size fairly small, so theres not a huge loss in formatting. And hey, how often do you really read code written by others thats exactly how you like it?

Presumably part of the conversion process to the kindle's format is re-flowing the text. Certainly from what you're saying its happening somewhere in the process as otherwise the formatting would be perfect.

Native support for pdf displays the pdf as it requests same as it would appear on your computer. This is basically the point of postscript/pdf. All you can do is zoom in/out and pan you can't reflow it or break lines/pages differently.

I always imagined this thing similar to consoles - you sell it at break-even (or even at a loss) to encourage the purches of books over its service.

Lord knows that if all it took was a quick bit of navigation on the Kindle itself to buy any book at Amazon, I'd have a full Kindle and an empty wallet.

that is actually exactly how the kindle works. not any book, but many books.

Except the Kindle's entry price is still quite high (at least for me).

I just want it to be GSM-friendly and to sell for less than US$ 100.

For the $100 to $500 range, I can use a full-featured entry-level notebook or a cheaper, lighter netbook. The Kindle has a big problem then.

I, for one, hope that "leaked" design isn't the actual redesign since judging by the pictures I liked the original better. The shape, while weird at first, works well for something you can hold easily in one hand. The large buttons allow you to hold it in much more varying positions without having to worry about have a specific finger rested in a specific place on the device to perform an action you are going to be doing quite often.

Plus, the new one looks quite a bit larger.

We haven't even got version 1 in the UK yet!

Hopefully Amazon made changes to their final design based on feedback on the Boy Genius Report 'leak':

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/10/03/amazon-kindle-2-eb...

"...the battery does not look to be user-accessible, and there’s no more SD card slot..."

I'm wondering when Amazon will bundle Audible's digital audiobook tech into the Kindle. Amazon acquired Audible last year and for some markets, like children's books, it's a no-brainer to sync narration with the written word.

Kindle should be software, not hardware. And it should run on as many different devices as possible--including my mobile phone, on which I read the newspaper and HN every day.

There is already such software it's called PDF.

No, it's called a web browser. (I don't think HN publishes an updated PDF every time someone posts a comment)

Years ago, when laptops where over $1000, an ebook reader for under $299 was a good idea.

Netbooks changed the game...

I have a laptop and a kindle and much prefer the kindle for reading. The display is more paper like and can be read in bright day light. Also, battery life is superior. I only need to charge it maybe once a week.

My main problem with the kindle is that it can't read pdfs natively.

Do you regularly read full-length novels on your laptop?

Not infrequently.

There's a lot of "personal taste" involved in this domain. Some people can't seem to stomach reading for a long time on anything short of a Kindle, whereas I used to read Project Gutenberg books on my 160x160px monochrome Palm Pilot with reasonable comfort.

I understand the personal taste in general but have always been surprised by programmer's problems with electronic displays. Reading a novel is way easier than reading code. If you can handle reading code, surely you can deal with a novel... but again, personal taste.

You think widely available eInk displays will bring improvements in code?

That's the exact opposite of what I think. If you can read code on a monitor, surely you can read a novel.

(Personal taste! Personal taste! Don't flame me!)

Yes I see that - but if people who don't want to read a novel on screen, yet who code at the moment, could use a new display that they would read a novel on happily - would that also bring any improvements to their coding?

Clearly you are all missing the insight here: where are our widescreen e-ink displays for writing code? Who needs color? Just give me paper-like readability and bold and italic.

where are our e-ink displays for writing code

They take too long to refresh.

You're so right. I just finally looked at a youtube video of the display tech in the new kindle (the "broadstreet" version of e-ink) and it is indeed far slower than is necessary even for simple text editing.

Ah, I see, you seriously meant that as a question, not a comment. Sorry.

I think I'd have to defer to a scientific study. I tend to doubt it, though; just as "typing speed" is rarely the coding impediment, I doubt "screen quality" is very much anymore. (Though it sure was in the bad old 640x480 days...)

Upped because I am facing this exact perdicament. I like the idea of having a "take anywhere" device that actually performs well as a book substitute. But, I am also tempted by the netbooks because they can perform this same function (albeit, poorly) and do so much more for the same price.

I guess it comes down to where your priorities lie.

This thing is becoming quite powerful... However, I expect the economy will hit their sales hard.

Somehow I trust that Amazon will know how to navigate these waters. They're one of the few retailers that have not seen a major drop in profits.

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