The New Kindle eReader in Black, and Reduced Price- Updated With My Long-Term Experience

Amazon is soon releasing the new Kindle eReader in graphite, a wi-fi edition that is smaller and more affordable than any other eReader on the market. It not only features a smaller keypad and a full six inch display, but the e-ink contrast has been improved, and it's lighter too.
The battery on this new model lasts an entire month before needing to be recharged, and the best of the old features have been retained.

I was wondering why woot.com recently sold a large amount of Kindles at a reduced rate, and now I realize they were trying to sell out the supply of the older model now that a new, sleaker model is here. The dark graphite color won't show soiling as much, there are new features integrated (you can access facebook and twitter on it, if you want to tweet out a favorite passage, let's say), and it still has the text to words feature that allows it to read to you when you don't feel like reading. Web browsing capabilites have also been improved.

The two models available now are wi-fi only (you can download books at home and all wi-fi hotspots, and read books anywhere) or wi-fi plus 3g (allows you to purchase books when you are at someone else's house, for example). Considering how not important 3G is when you have wi-fi (other eReaders, like the Kobo by Borders, doesn't even have that, it holds much less books, has a shorter battery life, and you have to connect to the computer whenever you want to buy books).

The only drawback on this smaller model is the smaller keypad (many love this, but I like a bigger keypad). It's now almost as small as that of competing eReaders (the small touch pad of the Nook and Sony drove me nuts) but still better.

All these eBooks can be pre-ordered on Amazon for the August 27th release (I'm really excited about it- $139 makes it affordable to everyone! And a big difference from the $289 it was just six months ago!)

***Update 10/31/10 My Kindle (latest generation) keeps dying- the battery life is a bit of a stinker, and the loading of pages is actually slow. A few times the Kindle has frozen or started to "load" even though it was off-line and should not have been accessible by wi-fi or 3G. I'm not sure I'm crazy about this edition after all.