Amazon Brings Kindle 2 to Europe

All along the Kindle 2 reading device was available only in the U.S. at around $299, which has since been reduced by $40. Interesting for the international market, however, is the version priced at $279 that can be used on wireless networks outside the U.S. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos promises worldwide applicability: "We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books. Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it in less than 60 seconds."

Kindle 2, with its 6" look and feel of the printed page, and its source code have been available since March 2009. Data transfer is over the mobile network, a hotspot is not required. Wireless transfer should not require any additional charges. The ebook reader contains 32 MBytes of RAM and 2 GBytes memory, of which 1.4 GBytes are available to the user. Amazon claims that there is enough space for 1,500 books, with Amazon's own data security an option. The battery should last up to five days when online, up to two weeks offline.

The online repertoire constitutes about 350,000 book titles, 75,000 of which were added just in the last five months. Newspapers are also included. In July, the Free Software Foundation had started a campaign to free the Kindle code, leading to Amazon's retracting a few titles, among them, ironically, George Orwell's 1984 and all of Ayn Rand's books.

European consumers can pre-order the device, which should begin shipping October 19 out of the U.S., requiring about $80 for shipping charges and duties. Therefore the cost for Kindle 2 amounts to about $359, which translates to about 244 euros or 226 British pounds.