• The Kindle is an electronic reading device that lets users buy and read books, newspapers and magazines. The Kindle displays text using E Ink technology, which minimizes eye strain and reduces battery usage. Amazon launched the original Kindle in November 2007; the company released the Kindle2 in February 2009.
  
  

Keyboard

• The original Kindle has a column of empty space in the middle of its keyboard, dividing it into left and right sections. Its keys are rectangular and are angled so that the inside edge of each key is slightly lower than the outside edge. The Kindle2 has round, smaller keys arranged in even rows, without the empty column down the middle. The Kindle2's keyboard layout is similar to that of a cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard.
  
  

Navigation

• The original Kindle uses a roller ball for navigation. It has outward-rocking page-turning buttons, which may cause the user to accidentally flip pages. The Kindle2 uses a five-way joystick bracketed by "Menu" and "Back" buttons. To avoid accidental page-turning, the Kindle2's buttons are smaller and have to be pressed in.
  
  

Hardware Specifications

• The Kindle2 has 25 percent more battery life than its predecessor and turns pages 20 percent faster. The Kindle2's display supports 16 shades of gray, while the original Kindle only supports four shades. These additional gray-scale capabilities improve the user's visual experience with the Kindle2. The Kindle2 has 1.5GB of built-in memory, which is seven times that of the original Kindle and enough to store 1,500 books.
  
  

Third-Party Documents

• The document conversion service for the original Kindle can convert DOC, HTML and image files to a native Kindle format. The conversion service for the Kindle2 adds support for PDF, RTF and DOCX files.
  
  

Additional Features

• The original Kindle uses its built-in antenna to download books over the Sprint cellular network, but it can not browse the Web. The Kindle2, however, does include a Web browser. The Kindle2 can also read a book to you using its text-to-speech function; this gives you the ability to listen to a book while walking or driving.