Forests throughout the country celebrated the arrival of the new Kindle v2. Several trees were interviewed. One maple tree remarked, "I celebrated when the first Kindle shipped. But this new Kindle is gonna save a lot of us trees." An oak said, "We can all breathe a little easier knowing less printed books are going to be made..."

The pine trees had a different attitude. "Sure, there'll be less books but we've got christmas to worry about... I lost my cousin Spruce last christmas... They killed him and hung decorations on his dead corpse... It was awful.."

Shelf makers are worried that less people are going to need shelves. Less printed books means less clutter and less need for shelves.

It's Here

My new Kindle has arrived in my mailbox today. My wife has been enjoying her classic Kindle v1 since Christmas(we have an artificial tree). Actually she enjoys the Kindle so much that she won't let me touch it. The Kindle has been great for her. We have three children and she's pregnant with our fourth. So the Kindle has let her shop for new books without having to pack up the (monsters..) I mean, children into the mini-van to go to the book store and try to find something interesting to read while telling the kids not to touch everything they see.

So I decided it was time for me to order one of my very own. It was slipped into my mailbox with it's new sleeker, slimmer packaging. They even saved trees with their smaller packaging. I had to unwrap several layers of packaging to get to the Kindle. There was even a nice letter from Jeff Bezos on there just for me. Had to plug it in and see

One nice feature is when you stop reading, it holds the last page you were on. No more worrying about losing your place in the book. Very helpful when you have children running around knocking books on the floor and losing your place. My parents enjoy watching their grand kids testing our patience. Apparently I wasn't the perfect kid when I was 3 years old... Go figure :)

Text To Speech

The feature I was most interested in hearing was the TTS capability. The new Kindle will read any book that you have loaded onto it. Just press the menu button and select Start TTS. It's just that easy and the voice isn't too bad. The downside is that it still needs work on some of the words and there is only a male's voice. I would like to have a female's voice to read sci fi to me, preferrably sultry and sexy. Watch the video and see what you think.

Do I save money buying electronic books versus printed books?

I did my own checking on printed books versus electronc books. I ordered the Kindle version of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (highly recommend it). A new printed version is $10.20. An electronic version is $9.99. A wopping $0.21 saved. Granted I could have ordered a used version and payed $4.50 however I would have had to pay for shipping which is usually $3 to $4. So there's a minimal savings with new books but not as often with used books. We're paying for the incredible convenience of getting books where ever you are.

A friend of mine gave me a link to the Gutenberg Project that has free electronic books for lots of classic novels. So that's a great way to save money and read plenty of books.

Kindle Reduces Greenhouse Gases

Well, let's think about it. If we read more content electronically, then we don't need as many printed books. Which means that, we don't need as many trees to make paper. If we kill less trees, then we should have more trees for breathing carbon dioxide. Granted, I live in Wisconsin so having it a little warmer in the winter time would be nice. Can I get a carbon credit for reading my Kindle?

I found some interesting calculations on this site for how many trees it takes to make a ton of paper.

Conclusion

For now, I'm not going to stop buying printed books but I'm definitely not going to be buying as many. I'll check if a book is available in electronic format first. I think it was worth the money($359) buying the Kindle. So far my wife has read at least 10 books since Christmas.

Another comment is my wife likes her Kindle classic because it is thicker than the new one. It feels more like the size of a regular printed book. We've been used to reading printed books for our entire lives so that it's no surprise that something new is expected to be somewhat similar.

I'm going to be real curious how well it holds up over time and how easy it is to clean.