Amazon’s aspiring e-book reader Kindle has dawned unseen success since its debut in November 2007 . and as its second generation Kindle 2 is about to be released in a few days you might have a few questions like :

  1. what are the major inprovements on Kindle 2 ?
  2. can I use my own Kindle or the new Kindle 2 in Korea ?
  3. does Korea have a general e-book reader like the Kindle ?

 

[ Improvements on Kindle 2]

  • longer battery life,
  • text-to-speech audio capability,
  • thinner outer design,
  • available memory increased from 160MB to 1.4GB,
  • SD Memory Card slot has been taken out in Kindle 2 (ouch)

 

[ can I use my Kindle or 2 in Korea ? ]

first the good news : yes you can, anywhere in the World .
but instead of purchasing & downloading book titles on-the-fly as States-side, you log-on from your computer onto your account at Amazon and store your purchase into your computer first, then transfer it to your Kindle manually .

the other bad news is that because the potential extra space available on SD Memory Card has been taken out on the new Kindle 2, it might be better to stick to the old model for extensive use abroad .

 

[ is there a widely-used Korean e-book reader like the Kindle ? ]

the quick answer is no . in a myriad of dot.com start-up venture companies have come and gone trying different portable machines and on-line services none have stuck so far . furthermore the most potential on-line service is about to go bankrupt due to lagging sales as well as inner dispute .

but the underlying reason is more with the fact that there are other free options available in *.txt files on shared communities and students are more geared towards visual lessons, or at least audio titles, than pure letters . add to this the multi-tasking, mp3/video/DMB-TV and all you can imagine tasks fit into electronic dictionaries introduced in my previous blog .