What’s New With The Kindle 2

I'm sure there will be a lot of reviews of the new Amazon Kindle 2, with plenty of video. Here's a quick summary of what's new from TechCrunch What’s New With The Kindle 2:

So just what’s new and different? We’ll take you through the highlights below.

• The new Kindle is slightly lighter. The first generation weighed 10.3 ounces while the second weighs only 10.2 ounces
  
• It’s much less ugly. Gone is the retro look of the first generation for a curvier and more symmetrical design that (like every other mobile device hitting the market these days) borrows elements from the iPhone
  
• The screen has a higher wow factor At six inches tall, it can display 16 shades of gray, and it can turn pages 20 times 20% faster (or so Amazon claims)
  
• It can actually speak to you Amazon’s new Text-to-Speech feature will use a computerized voice to read any book to you in one of three speech rates, and in either a male or female voice
  
• The new controls are better designed. Instead of a weird slider on the right-hand side that’s used to move from line to line, there’s a new 5-way joystick. The keyboard is also no longer split into two regions like those funky desktop keyboards you see at Fry’s but never buy.
  
• There’s been no price drop It still costs roughly the same amount ($359) but at least there’s still no monthly wireless fee for downloading books, magazines, etc.
  
• It can hold a much bigger library Storage has been boosted to 7x the original size, allowing the device to carry over 1,500 titles at a time
  
• It downloads content just as fast. Amazon is touting 60 second downloads for books, etc. — the same rate it gave for the first Kindle
  
• You can pick up your reading on a separate Kindle. I’m not sure how useful this will actually be for people, but a new feature called ‘Whispersync bookmarking’ makes it possible to start reading a book on one Kindle then continue reading it on another, just where you left off
  
• It still comes in only one color. White