20 years ago, the thought of carrying around hundreds if not thousands of books in your hand would have seemed a little ludicrous and far fetched to the average person. And now, after having released their newest version of the Kindle, Amazon has made another big leap in making sure that reading doesn’t go away as easily as some might think.
Version 1
Amazon’s vision and ambition to create a device that could potentially hold thousands of books at once in digitized form has come to fruition. At least partially for the moment; Giant leaps in progress seldom happen all at once. Rather it takes some time to get things right. I say this because the Kindle is far from perfect, especially in its first incarnation.
Now this isn’t a full out review on the device itself. Seeing as how there’s a new iteration of the product out now, there’s no need for an outdated review. However I can say that after using the Kindle 1 for almost a year now, it’s a very good reliable device. It may not be the iTouch in how sleek and beautiful it is from a design standpoint but it is functional first and foremost.
And it makes sense since the Kindle 1 was more of an experiment in function over form as far as I can tell. The design is not sleek and hardly beautiful, that I blame on their design team. Still the Kindle sold out and was a very hot item apparently. Owning one, I can say I don’t even care much about the look as the whole device seems to disappear due to the “digital ink” technology used. It’s as close as one can get to reading an actual book, so in that regard it really is a success compared to other consumer available devices.
Enter Kindle 2
And while the device has been criticized for some time now due to the lack of design prowess on behalf of Amazon, the device seems to be headed to greater things. Enter Kindle 2.0, a device with very similar functionality but with a much needed makeover. Apparently that’s all it really needs until some of the technology becomes cheaper to produce, lowering the price. Currently priced in at $359.00 US it just isn’t a must have.
The small functional improvements and the major makeover show that Amazon is headed in the right direction. That’s a good thing if they plan put this thing in everyone’s hands. The future looks bright with such technology out there as bendable screens and thinner and more cheaper parts become available. However, they are far from done, seeing as how the consumer technology only allows for black and white images, but I can see this really taking off in schools and other industries if color is added. It’s not a matter of if but rather when this will all happen, as Amazon’s ambition seems to be paying off.
