Amazon Kindle
Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader is a thin tablet that can display ebooks (books that are not in physical paper form but electronic and can be read straight from a computer’s monitor) for the reader to read.
Basically, it takes away the physical paper or hardback book as we know it and replaces that contents of that book on a An amazon reader screen (which can be either 6″ or 9.7″ depending on the model you buy). It is an ebook reader and you hold the tablet in your hands and can read books, magazines and newspapers as well as various blogs, on the Kindle.
It is a sophisticated gadget that often causes a lot of confusion because there are a few different versions of the Kindle.
Briefly, the first ebook reader device from Amazon was called the Kindle First Generation and was released in November 2007 in the United States only and was not available for sale outside of here.
This was commonly referred to as “Kindle” but since then there have been 3 other newer models available. They are:
Kindle 2
Kindle DX
Kindle 3
The 2nd generation of Kindle devices was launched in the US in February 2009. This was known as Kindle 2. In October 2009, the international model of Kindle 2 was available and worked in over 100 countries. The US Kindle 2 and international Kindle 2 were similar looking models and differed only in the mobile network standards that each of them used.
The Kindle DX was announced by Amazon in May 2009 and this was the first generation of Kindle DX. At 9.7″, it has a larger screen than the 6″ display of its predecessors, is much thinner and can support PDF files. It is purported to be better suited to displaying newspaper content and has the ability to display pages in landscape or portrait views depending on how the user is holding the Kindle (this is done through the accelerometer which the Kindle DX has).
Kindle 3 is the term given to the newest model of the Kindle that was released on 28 July 2010 and is the 3rd Generation Kindle and has 3G support. This latest generation product is simply referred to as “Kindle 3″.
To add further confusion, there are 2 versions of the Kindle 3: the Kindle Wi-Fi and the second version is a replacement to Kindle 2 and is slightly more expensive than the Kindle 3 Wi-Fi version.
Being the latest generation of Kindle, this newer product naturally has some extra features such as an extremely long-lasting battery that can last for up to 1 month of reading if the wireless radio is turned off. It has text-to-speech navigation, internal memory expanded to 4 GB, support for extra fonts and Unicode (international) characters.
The Kindle DX Latest Generation was released in July 2010.
The beauty and appeal of using the Kindle (as opposed to a lightweight laptop) is that it can be used without any computer connections. Therefore, unlike a computer which has to be plugged into a mains socket (if the battery is low) and will need to be plugged into a socket for an internet connection (if there is no wireless connectivity), the Kindle has free access to the Internet over the cellular networks in the United States.
