Kindle 2 Speech Really Works

Posted by: Gadgetman at 8:08 am, March 2nd, 2009

You may have noticed that I'm a big fan of the Kindle "book" reader. If you travel, it is pretty much a must-have device. But even if you don't, it is a better way to read books and some kinds of newspapers and magazines. That's because it is lighter and easier to hold than paper versions. I don't deny that paper has its enchantments, so this view is not coming from the "digital will take over the world" part of my brain. I've simply noticed that if I have a book in both Kindle and hard copy format, I read it on the Kindle -- even at home.

In any event, the point above was based on the now out of production Kindle 1. I'll be reporting on the new Kindle 2 in more detail later, but I wanted to point to one of the few big new features of the Kindle 2: text to audio conversion. Said in less geeky form, the Kindle 2 will read any book, newspaper or magazine you have in Kindle form to you. You open to a page, press a button, and the Kindle begins talking fromt the top of the page and keeps going. Yes, the speech is obviously computer generated, but the words are clear and the flow of the speech seems just natural enough to be completely usable. Those of you who are fans of audio books know how useful this can be in a car or while on the Stairmaster.
 
I said the Kindle 2 would read any book, newspaper, or magazine. That's true in principle, but the book publishers have complained, and now Amazon will let them decide if text to speech is allowed, book by book. Fair enough, the content is theirs. But I hope they either make the audio feature a small additional cost or just leave it as part of the reason to buy a Kindle edition in the first place.

 
In any event, this text to speech feature will be very useful to some. More later on whether the other "improvements" to the Kindle are really improvements.
 
To read about our "unboxing" of the Kindle 2, click here:
 
http://www.avguide.com/blog/the-kindle-2-arrives-part-1