Amazon's Kindle 2 goes on sale

Amazon has started shipping the new version of its electronic book reader, the Kindle, a day earlier than expected in the US. The Kindle 2 was announced on 6 February and has been available for pre-order for the past two weeks. Although Amazon intends to introduce the hugely popular e-reader in the UK, it has still not hinted at a release date. The original Kindle proved to be a huge success and has been sold out since last November. Kindle 2 is selling for $359 (about £250), the same price as the first version. But Amazon has introduced several subtle changes to its second-generation book reader designed to make it more user-friendly. Read Web User's review of the Sony Reader Slimmer than its predecessor, Kindle 2 features 3G wireless for faster downloads as well as a 2GB of memory, allowing it to store more than 1,500 books, whereas the original Kindle could store only 200 books. The battery life also is 25 per cent longer than the previous version, Amazon said. The Kindle 2 also features a text-to-speech service that lets the device read aloud to users, as well as a built-in 250,000-word dictionary.