Amazon Kindle 2

There's been a lot of anticipation about what Amazon would do for an encore to its much-hyped e-book reader, the kindle, and now that it's finally here we can say that the Kindle 2 is about what we expected it to be. Talk of it being a huge leap forward or going from generation one to generation five in one fell swoop was really, well, just talk. In reality, the Kindle 2 is a nice upgrade over the original Kindle; yes, it leaves off a couple of key items--most importantly removable memory and a protective carrying case--but it makes up for it with a slicker design, improved performance, increased internal memory, built-in speakers, and a new feature, Text-to-Speech audio reading.

Design
The Kindle 2 is thinner--it measures a svelte 0.36 inch at its thickest point--and weighs 10.2 ounces. For the record, it's not the thinnest mainstream e-book reader. That distinction belongs to the Sony PRS-505, which comes in at 0.3 inch thick (the PRS-700 is 0.5 inch thick).

Whispernet: Free cellular data access
One of the key differentiators between the Kindle 2 and other e-book readers is its free, built-in, wireless connection, "Whispernet," which allows you to tap into Amazon's vast online Kindle Store from just about anywhere you can access Sprint's EVDO cellular data network.