Software update for Kindle 2

[Steve Rindsberg]

There's a free software update for Kindle 2. It promises longer battery life, the ability to change page orientation and a native PDF reader.

This last means that you can simply copy PDFs from your computer to the Kindle and read them; no need to go through Amazon's email conversion process.

I just updated mine.

The PDF reader does read PDFs, at least all I've thrown at it so far. It displays a PDF page scaled to the size of the Kindle screen, so any PDF created with printing to letter/A4 in mind is so squinty as to be unreadable. Flipping the display to landscape helps but not nearly enough to make these PDFs usable on the Kindle.

Very. Heavy. Sigh.

Some PDFs will be usable. Most won't.

O well. It does come with some new screensaver pictures. Ralph Ellison. Sea Critters. Not sure what else, as it seems quite partial to the original ones.