Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, U.S. Wireless)

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, U.S. Wireless)I've owned the first Kindle since it started shipping over a year ago. Despite it is quirks, I loved it... so when Amazon announced the Kindle two, I pre-ordered right away. I received my shiny new Kindle two this past Friday (2/27/09) & began putting it through it is paces. Functionally, it is a sizable step up from the earlier Kindle - but when I went to do of my favourite activities this weekend, lounge around in the yard reading, I discovered a major issue. When exposed to sunlight, my Kindle 2's screen didn't render properly. It was badly faded, streaked, & blotched like an terrible Xerox copy... utterly unreadable. Strangely, if I shaded even a portion of the screen with my hand or a piece of paper, the shaded portion rendered clear as a bell... while the portion exposed to the light remained so faded it was unrecognizable.

Update: After contacting Amazon's customer support I was one time sent a replacement Kindle right away. This does NOT have the weird sensitivity to sunlight that my earlier had & now I could not be happier. As a user of the original Kindle, I do must stress how much better the user experience is in this tool than the earlier. Amazon claim's it is only 20% faster, but it FEELS  two times as quick - & the menus are much better organized & simpler to navigate. Regrettably Amazon won't let me change the rating of this review, but I'd otherwise officially give it four stars. The only thing holding Kindle back from utter perfection (ie: five stars) is the dearth of native PDF support (still!). Sony recently patched in full native PDF support for their own reader - so they know it IS feasible, even in the event you lose a number of the devices inherent scaling expertise. But since PDF is a lossy format, that is the trade off you need to make in the event you need to read native PDF files. Still, now that there is a competing reader on the market with that ( important) feature, that is the only area that Kindle needs to improve in order to catch up. On the other hand, Kindle DOES give you wireless access to Amazon's library anywhere, any time... & that is the clincher. At least for me it is.