The Amazon Kindle: The Book of the Future

       The book is probably one the first inventions taht is still used today. It started out as writings on clay and stone tablets; and later wood was used along with scrolls. Wax tablets became the standard material in Ancient Times and were largely used in Ancient Rome where they became the standard material for writing. In the 8th century though, books were being printed on paper and soon became the main way of making a book. In th early 1880s the steam-powered printing press was invented and helped to speed up the production of books. There have only been a few changes to the way that books are made in the past 200 years, but in 2007 a new form of the book was released to the public; it was the Amazon Kindle and introduced to the world a whole new way to read a book.

       The Kindle is not the first form of electronic book available to the general public. The first developed one was in 1971 when Michael S. Hart launched the Gutenberg Project. Hart's goal was to have 10,000 copies of the most consulted books available to the public for a small amount of money by the end of the 20th century. The first piece of text available on the device was a digitalized copy of the Declaration of Independence and thus by doing so, Hart was given unlimited access to a Zerox Sigma V mainframe computer at the University of Illinois in the Material Research Library. He named th eprgram after Johannes Gutenberg, who was a German fifteenth century printer who propelled the moveable type printing press revolution.

        Over the next 35 yeras, the electronic book, or e-book as it is sometimes called, developed and greatly improved. For many years books were available on CD-ROM discs and were largely used by schools to help teach kids to read and write. These were sometimes convenient because you could just put the disc into the computer and you were able to just load the page, however they were not easy to use whne traveling because you had to pull your lab top out and it could sometimes become a real pain just to read to a book, when you could buy a hard copy of the same book. Over the next few years Amazon.com strated to work on a new type of electronic book, one that you could take with you whenever you went out, without having to bring a computer along and one that would have an unlimited about of books available.

         Amazon set up a subsidiary company called Lab 126, based out of Cupertino, California. It was the company's firt project and they started working on developing the Kindle in early 2004. The whole idea of the Kindle was to have over a thousand books available for electronic download and for a low price. Lab 126 continued to work on this new form of reading, and in 2007 the Knidle was finally completed. The first genertaion of the device was released on November 19, 2007. When Amazon first presented the Kindle on their website the product was sold out in five and a hlf hours. The demand for the device was so high, that it was not avilable until April of 2008. All of this happended considering it cost $399 when first released.

       The first generation of the Kindle had a 6 inch 4-level grayscale display screen and 250 MB of internal memory. With this much memory, it was able to hold 200non-illustrated book titles and the memory was expandable with a Secure Digital (SD) memory card. The Kindle was was only available in the United States, not worldwide, however they are currently working on having it available to the rest of the world. It has since been discontinued and has been replaced by the newest edition of the KIndle.

        Amazon began to modify the Kindle in early 2008. They kept the whole thing secert until February 9, 2009 when they announced the Kindle 2 and became available for purchase on Februaury 23, 2009 and was priced at $350, which was almost $50 less than the first generation. The Kindle 2 was considered more advanced and much better than the first generation Kindle. It had a sixteen level grayuscale display, an improved battery life; the page refreshing was 20 percent fatser and a text-to-speech option so that the text could be aloud to you. It has 2 GB of internal memory and about 1.4 GB of the memory is user accessible. It does not hold a slot to place a SD memory card. Amazon has estimated that the second generation of the Kindle will be able to hold up to 1500 non-illustrated books. The KIndle 2 sold fairly well, but the price was reduced to $299 on July 8, 2009. On October 6, 2009 the price was once again dropped this time to the price of $259. On October 22, 2009 an international version of the Kindle was made available and was avaiable in over 100 countries. The United States version was available on the AT&T network while the international version was avaiable on the Sprint netwrok. Also, on October 22, Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle international version from $279 to $259 and stopped sellingthe U.S. modle of the device. The international version of the Kindle has received some critism becasue in some wireless countries, the wireless option only works for browsing the Kindle's online store and accessing Wikipedia.

       On May 6, 2009, Amazon once again introduced a new version of the Kindle with the Kindle DX. It was the first model to have an accelerometer, which gave the option of being able to automatically rotate the pages between landscape and portrait orientations if the device is turned on its side. This model has a 4GB of storage room and can hold approximatley 3500 non-illustarted books. It had a significantly larger battery life of up to 4 days wirelessly and up to 2 weeks ofline. The DX model of teh Kindle adds support for PDF files natively, built in speakers for audio,and has 1xRTT wirelewss technology as a fallback option for whenever EVDO connectivity is not available. This device was released on JUne 10, 2009 and was retailed for $489. Just like the Kindle 2, it did not have an SD memory card slot. And once again the model sold fairly well.

       The Kindle has diiferent applications that come with it. One of teh features is it includes The New Oxford American Dictionary which holds up to 250,000 entries and definitions, so while the reader is reading their book, and does not know the definition of a word, the readrer is able to search for the word and have instant access to the definition. It also features a bookmark and annotation so if you are reading and want to make a side note, the reader can do so very easily by uing the keyboards attached to the device. And the side notes will not be permanent therefore the reader can add and remove as many notes as they want. The Amazon Kindle is also able to download newspapers from all around the world, and has wireless access to Wikipedia so finding information on the author, the book, or anything for that matter is always avaibale to access and is easy to use. You are able to save a page from the book, which is called "clipping" and are sent to a single file installed in the Kindle and are able to download over a USB cable. The device also rememebers and saves the last page you left off on and changes each time you read.

Despite all the positive reviews received for the Amazon Kindle, it has also received its fair share or critism. One of the main complaintes is the hardware. It was noted taht the Kindle 2 lacks a memory expansion slot, which was available on the first geneartion of the Kindle. This is a mian problem for two reasons, one being tht it is the next model and should be better than that of the one before it. The reason being, taht due to this lack of memory, you are not ablt to hold as many e-books as you should be able to hold. Another complaint is the contrast and over all dispaly on the Kindle 2. Many Popel who have purchased the Kindle 2 were so dissatisfied with the bad contrast and the small print that can cause eyestrain, have downgraded to the original Kindle. One main complaint is that on any of the devices, the reader is not able to put their books into folders. There are two options avaibale for storing your files. The first is to have all of your documents appear on the main home page of the dvice. The other is to have the books tagged by certain keywords attached to the book and can then search by the keywod. The most critsim that the Kindle receives from everyone is the price for all three devices. MAny people feel that the price is too high for something that only costs about $185.49 to manufacture. Many customers are also upset Amazon keeps lowering the price a few days or weeks whenever a new device is released. Many say that the set price should cost about $150 to $200 and not keep changing.

Many have criticized the amount of books avaiable fo rdownload. Many authors or thier estates do not wnat their works avaiable in an electronic form becuase they feel taht it is taking away from the true original idea behind the book. But there are many authors taht like the idea and strongly encourage the idea of ahving their books in an electronic form avaiable for download.

       Despite all the critism it has received, Kindle has sold very well and continues to so on a daily basis. There has been no word yet as to wheter or not Amazon is developing a new edition of the Kindle, but there is hope among many people who are looking forward to the next generation of this device, Since it was first introduced in 2007, other companies, mainly bookstores, have copied the Kindle. Borders has released an electronic book called the Sony Reader. It is very similar to the Kinsle and sells just around th esame rpice. And On October 20,2009 the bookstore chain of the same name introduced the Barnes and Noble nook. It was released on November 30, 2009. The nook is to  the Kindle's competition and is to be better because it has a touch screen. On the day of it's release, the nook received rave reviews and was said to be better than the Kindle. But whichever one is better, it is clear that the book has come a long way since its first incarnation as writings on stones over two thousand years ago.