Amazon Keeps It Simple With Kindle 2Amazon Keeps It Simple With Kindle 2

My 67-year-old mother-in-law, who baby-sits my preschooler on Mondays, came bustling into our house this morning flush with excitement. She opened her bag and pulled out her new prize possession, the Kindle 2. She spent the weekend reading books on it, and concluded, "I love it."At that point, I whipped the thing out of her hands. I've been wary of the idea of this little electronic thingy that wants to become the new vessel of my beloved books, replacing that musty, comforting smell of the paper and the feel of it between my fingers; I had to check it out for myself. I had envisioned a buzzing, ticking, robo-book, a soulless imposter in the world of literature. After five minutes of tinkering with the Kindle 2, though, I have to admit it: The thing is pretty cool.

For one thing, there is no buzzing and ticking. It's a quiet little tablet only about a quart-inch thick, about the length and weight of a paperback novel. It owes this subtly, I'm guessing, to limited processing power. This is not a PC tablet or mobile phone; the graphics are in black and white and below-average quality.

It's encouraging to know that Jeff Bezos and crew showed some restraint here. Amazon could have made the Kindle 2 an e-reader/mobile PC Frankenstein with lots of pops and whistles. But by keeping it a simple device, they retained some of the calm simplicity that people appreciate with books. Keeping the electronics simple also means that one can read from it for several days without a recharge (try that with your laptop).

Despite its simplicity there are some lovely features, such as the ability to bounce up the font size. My mother-in-law, the member of two book clubs, sent an e-mail to Amazon with one complaint: If a book club member wanted to discuss a topic on, say, page 142 of the paper book, she can't locate that page on her Kindle 2; the page numbers vary on what font size you choose. Amazon quickly responded that she could find text being discussed using the search feature (there's a small keyboard, too), and assured her that once she got used to her Kindle, she would probably locate sections of the book much faster than the paper-using club members. Another nice feature is a bar along the bottom that shows how much you've read of your book.

But we wanted to know, how does it work with newspapers? So she purchased a copy of today's New York Times, which automatically charged her Amazon account and downloaded in less than a minute. You can browse by section, and click from story to story. Still not as good as spreading the paper open on the kitchen table, but no worse than reading it online on a PC or laptop.

The Kindle 2 can store up to 1,500 books, my mother-in-law informed me. Her one regret is that whenever she uses the Kindle 2, she can't lend the book to a friend. But she loves it from an ergonomic point of view, including the ability to set the tablet on a table and read while she eats.

I have no plans to rush out and buy one, but I have to say, I liked what I saw of the Kindle 2. And I credit Amazon for having the restraint to keep it simple and quiet, but highly functional.