The text to speech feature on the Kindle 2 could use some improvements. There are a lot of mispronounced words but for someone like me, who is just trying to read along with the speech, it’s quite acceptable. However, if you were vision-impaired or wanted to listen to it while you were doing something else, you might not like it. To all the publishers who have not allowed Amazon to enable the text to speech feature because you fear it might affect your Books on Tape sales, you have nothing to worry about. I have listened, over the years, to many books on tape and believe me, there is no comparison between a computer that pronounces the year “1910″ as “I go” and the performance of a Frank Mueller! But, rest assured, I will never buy a Kindle book that is not text to speech enabled. I wouldn’t be able to read it.

We live in a very rural area with spotty cell phone coverage. In fact we have no coverage on our farm. However, my Kindle is able to download books at my home.

I find the electronic ink display wonderful. It looks very much like a book and is easy on the eyes. I’m glad it doesn’t have backlighting. If it did, it would look like a computer screen instead of a book.

As for the Kindle’s durability, it is a sensitive instrument, just like a camera or a pair of binoculars so it should be treated with care. So far, I’ve dropped mine twice onto a stone floor from the sofa and haven’t broken it, amazingly, but that’s not adviseable!

All in all, I love my Kindle 2.