Kindle 2.0 Unboxing

My Kindle 2.0 shipped on the 23rd of february via US Postal Service. It arrived well packaged and in great shape on the 26th of February. Thin is in! At just 1/3" thick, Kindle 2 is uniformly thin and much more portable than Kindle 1. It slips easily into a briefcase and won't wedge your stack. Is your brief case full of documents, weighing enough to strain your arm when carrying? Imagine every single page now living in your Kindle, and only needing the Kindle with you on a business trip. Sixteen is four times better than four. While the 4 gray shades of the 1st Kindle could show you crude photos and passable artwork if it was limited to linework, the 16 shades of gray supported on the Kindle 2 make photos reasonable, and permit artwork at least some range.

Details: The Kindle comes with a USB cable and an AC USB charger. A very nice touch as it allows charging from a wall socket or via USB from your PC.

New to Kindle 2 is a 5-way toggle. It simplifies getting around in menus and on the screen. Push it up or down or left or right, then push down to select whatever the cursor is on. Page buttons have been simplified and re-engineered to eliminate accidental page turns when picking up or holding the Kindle. The Volume control will be used more on this Kindle as it can now read your book to you via built in text-to-speech. You get a male or female voice to choose from. Along the top edge you'll find a headphone jack and the power slider. The bottom edge houses the proprietary USB jack. The Kindle is not as big as it appears in most online photos. I can slip this one in the chest pocket of my coat. It is 5.25" x 8", and only a hair over 1/3" thick. It weighs 10.2 ounces or 289 grams. For comparison my iPod Touch weighs 4.2 ounces or 120 grams. With the $30 Amazon Kindle leather case it is 9/10th of an ounce heavier than Kindle 1.0 is with the case it came with. Not a tremendous amount, but noticable. I'm guessing there is a larger battery inside. What, me read? I'm not an avid book reader, but do read several blogs, news articles, and magazines. I'm hoping the ones I prefer are available for automatic delivery to my Kindle. I also write some, and may see how well I do at self publishing to the Kindle store.

Where thou goest memory slot? Kindle 1.0 has an SD card slot (limited to 2gb) which although hidden beneath the removeable battery cover gave you the option of changing out the content you kept on your Kindle. Kindle 2.0 has more internal memory (2gb), and as such can natively hold more books, but now there is no potential for increased or variable content without re-syncing Kindle with your PC.

Instant books! Whispernet is the name Amazon has given to the Kindle's ability to download content directly without needing to be hooked up to a PC.

Experimental? The Kindle has more potential than obvious from a first look. With ubiquitous internet connectivity it is natural to think it should come with a web browser. Amazon was gracious to put one there, although since the screen only supports 16 shades of grey at 800x600 pixels your web experience can at best be called "experimental". Only a fraction of the web will render perfectly on the Kindle, but it's there to use when nothing else is available. Audio playback capability is also included, and so MP3 playing is supported. The text-to-speech feature is also considered experimental. I'll chock it up to mean Amazon is still working on these features and we can expect them to improve over time. If I remember right, there should be a game and possible calculator hidden in the software. Hopefully there will be a few more suprises as well.

Should you get a Kindle? $359 and shipping is expensive. I noticed Amazon has some 1st generation Kindles for sale at a much lower price ($220) now. Kindle 2 is a significant improvement over Kindle 1. If you're an avid reader or technology addict (like me) then getting a Kindle 2 is a no-brainer.

I had to buy one. Be careful, or you'll have to buy one too.

4D

Hip Street 8gb Touchscreen Review

I saw this little 8gb touchscreen player on sale at Walgreens.com for $89 and had to have a look. The Hip Street Portable Multimedia Player arrived a few days later, and it turns out to be quite a value for the features it includes. The package included a media convertor on mini CD, manual, AC charger, USB cable, lanyard, earbuds, and the player with stylus.

Feature are abundant. The Hip Street includes:

- Touch Screen Interface

- 8gb internal memory.

- Music: MP3, WMA

-- A to B repeat

-- Lyrics display

- Videos: AVI

- Pictures: JPG

- Text: TXT

- FM radio, FM recording

- (High quality) Voice Recording

- File Browser, with on-board delete option.

- Sleep (power off) timer

- EQ: Normal, 3D, Rock, Pop, Classic, Bass, Jazz, and one USER defined setting.

- Built-in loud Speaker

- Comes with stylus that stores in edge of device, uses finger or stylus.

- Screen 2.8" diagonal, 2.25" x 1.625", 320 x 240 pixels

- Body 3.625" x 2.125" x 3/8" thick.

- Includes earplugs, USB cable, Wall charger, Wrist strap long enough to wear as a necklace, small install CD (with AVIconverter program), instructions in two languages, stylus, player.

- T-flash card slot
- firmware upgradeable, (but not recommeded if product is functioning normally

- No driver needed under win 2000/XP/ME/Vista

My first impressions:

- FM radio sound quality was average.

- Music sounded fine using good headphones. Throw away the included earbuds.

- Interface doesn't take good advantage of direct touch, instead using on-screen arrows to move you up and down in menus. It feels like the interface from a non- touchscreen player was ported over, with little consideration for making the interface more efficient using direct touch input.

- Memory slot takes microSD and will read up to 8gb cards. For $36 you can add an 8gb card to have a 16gb player for $125.

- The included software does a good job of coverting movies to play on the Hip Street. Every major format including DVD VOB files can be converted to the AVI format required by the Hip Street.

- No external volume control, but on-screen controls are always visible.

- Shiny, aluminum alloy, brushed chrome finish is fingerprint magnet.

- Very light weight.

- Very impressed with the features it has.

Not the best sounding, but an amazingly feature-laden device for $90.

Amazingly compact. Here it is next to the Samsung P2. Just as thin. Lighter.

Conclusion? This is an amazing value for a media player with these features and capacity. Although no awards will be won for the interface or the sound quality, both are competent and will match whatever an iPod Nano can produce. This Hip Street player is almost the same size as a Nano, half the price, with more features. The built-in speaker isn't of great quality, but does let you listen without headphones. I don't recommend it for music, but it's perfectly acceptable for spoken podcasts or audiobooks.

4D

EmoDio! Samsung's NEW Software and Website for Media Players!

At this every moment Samsung is putting the finishing touches on it's new push into the portable media business. EmoDio, as best I can tell, stands for Emotional StuDio. The new software will replace Samsung's Media Studio as the desktop interface for their devices. Some great features should be here any minute now including TTS (Text To Speech), a program that will turn text books or blogs or notes into MP3 files. The Samsung P2 gets a User Created Interface (UCI) design tool to allow users to create and share their own icon and background designs. DNSe (equalizer) settings can be associated with each genre, and also shared on the EmoDio web site.

Check it out HERE!