Kindle2 – My new must have travel gadget

I travel a lot but normally only for two or three days so I can usually toss a paperback in my bag for that period during take-off and landing where they tell you to turn off all electronic gadgets and cell phones (but of course no one actually does). For this trip I was trying to figure out how to bring enough reading material to cover me through two 30 hour plan trips and three weeks in Kazakhstan.

Given the 50 lb weight limit on most airlines I didn’t really want to be hauling books so I sucked it up and bought myself a Kindle2. Actually, I took the coin jar that we’d neglected to empty for the last two years to the local grocery store and fed a mountain of change into a CoinStar machine. They have a deal with Amazon where you can get an Amazon gift certificate and avoid the approximately 8% coin counting charge that they normally levy.

So with all my coins counted I could nearly cover the cost of a brand spanking (just released) Kindle2 ($349).

I must admit I love this device. I had tried the Kindle reader on my iPhone and while it is nice, the backlit screen really wears on you after awhile. Once you get used to the screen flickering when you turn pages, the Kindle2 is even better than reading a book as it is much lighter and you don’t have to hold the pages open. I quickly downloaded a couple of dozen books to my reader and have worked through about seven on this trip so far. Plus they are quite a bit cheaper than the ones printed on dead trees.

I’ve converted. I won’t say every book I buy will be electronic as I still like to add to my ever growing library at home but for most I’m going to be grabbing them wirelessly in a single click to my Kindle2.