Amazon Rolls Out Improvements To Kindle 2
Back in August, Nicholson Baker wrote a devastating review of the Kindle 2 in the New Yorker. Noting that everyone from Newsweek to the tech blogs to just-plain-folks was calling the new Kindle “important,” Baker gave Amazon’s latest version of the device a thorough test-read. He was unimpressed, to put it daintily.
“The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; whether it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray,” Baker wrote.
“This was what they were calling e-paper? that four-by-five window onto an overcast afternoon? Where was paper white, or paper cream? Forget RGB or CMYK. Where were sharp black letters laid out like lacquered chopsticks on a clean tablecloth?”
PDF, Rotation Improvements
Since the introduction of the Kindle 2 in February, Amazon has plus released a higher-end product, the Kindle DX, which offered a
Now Amazon has released an improved Kindle 2, with a battery that lasts 85 percent longer than previously, and a software upgrade that supports PDF viewing and rotation.
Owners of older Kindle 2 devices will get an motorized update in the near future, but impatient users will be able to download the update now and transfer the enhancements to their Kindle via USB.
Needed Improvements
The Dvice blog offered some impressions of the upgrade. Unlike the iPhone, Kindle books still don’t automatically change when the user rotates the device. Users have to press a button and soon after choose an orientation and keyboard placement, the site said. Still, “it works well, spreading the text out from edge to edge in either portrait or landscape orientation.”
Dvice plus reported that while the Kindle 2 can now read native PDF files, users still can’t zoom in…
Original post by dhiram
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