Walt's Corner

Amazon released their 2nd iteration of their self-proclaimed popular eBook reader. I say self-proclaimed because I have yet to see anyone using one. When Apple pronounced their iPods as popular, you could see everyone and their brother with some white earbuds dangling from their heads. I’m still waiting to see someone outside the tech-writing industry or some type of star come up with one.

I’m still not too impressed with it. I suppose if I didn’t listen to audiobooks I would be interested in buying one, but I enjoy being read to, and sharing that experience with someone at the same time. “But Walt,” you say, “the Kindle 2 can play MP3, including audible books!” So it can, so it can. But why would I buy something that I’m already using?

To mix things up a bit, and from listening to their “customer’s” requests, Amazon has added additional features such as wikipedia searching, blog browsing, and even limited web-surfing, for which it now includes a built in keyboard. It’s a very impressive unit, but a unit that I have no need for, and I suspect a majority of us will feel the same way.