Imagine carrying 1500 books with you at once. Then imagine they weigh only 10.2 ounces - lighter than the average paperback. Impossible, you say? Not with the Amazon Kindle 2.

With the Kindle 2, you are never without something to read. Finish your last book? Pick out a new one from the available catalog of over 265,000 titles (and growing daily). With its own built in Whispernet 3G wireless network, the Kindle can download your selection in under 60 seconds with no additional wireless fees. Or subscribe to your favorite newspaper or magazine via your Kindle device and have it delivered to you wirelessly each day.

You can get sample chapters of many books to try, before you buy the full book. And, if you keep your eyes open, you can find many free books to download, made available to promote the use of the Kindle platform. Another feature I find useful is the ability to translate your own personal documents to Kindle format and transfer them to your device via USB for free or wirelessly for a nominal per document charge.

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When it comes to hardware, Amazon and Sony are battling it out for leadership in the e-book reader market. For now these two models hold the most appeal–for very different reasons. We note the similarities and differences between the Amazon Kindle 2 and the Sony Digital Reader PRS-700, and point out how each does a better job at presenting books digitally. (For more on how the Kindle 2 operates, and how it compares to the first-generation Kindle, see our Kindle visual tour.)

The Amazon Kindle 2 (right) is taller than the Sony Reader. Both have a 6-inch, 800-by-600-pixel E-Ink display, but text on the Kindle 2 appears sharper than on the PRS-700. The Kindle 2 provides a usable QWERTY keyboard, whereas the Sony feels downright incomplete without a physical keyboard of some sort (its on-screen keyboard gets tiresome very quickly). But the Sony has its own advantages: I found that its black metallic chassis, with a gray matte bezel, is easier on the eyes over the long term than the Kindle’s stark off-white case.

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It has taken the online retailer Amazon less than two years to make its Kindle device more or less synonymous with the electronic book reader,

There are, of course, other companies that have built electronic book devices, among them Sony (SNE) and recently Fujitsu. But Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle has come to personify the e-reader in much the same way Apple’s (AAPL) iPod brand of music player is often used generically to mean an MP3 player.

While Amazon has yet to disclose exactly how many of the devices it has sold—analysts have estimated the number at about half a million units—other previously undisclosed details about the latest version of the device, the Kindle 2, are coming to light.

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Amazon’s Kindle 2, which first shipped in late February, is selling at roughly double the rate of the first generation device, says a source close to Amazon. Approximately 300,000 of the Kindle 2s have been shipped to date, suggesting Amazon has made over $100 million in revenue from sales of the $359 device alone this year.

The first generation device sold around 400,000 units total over its lifespan, we’ve heard, although one estimate by Citi analyst Mark Mahaney put it as high as 500,000 based on a surge in sales in Q3 2007. Amazon expects to sell 800,000 or so of the Kindle 2 devices in 2009, or double the volume of the first generation device.

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Amazon began taking preorders of its Kindle 2 e-book reader on February 9, and a month later, it’s still one of the most talked-about tech gadgets. The second-generation Kindle doesn’t disappoint, either: it has an improved screen, a better button layout, a wider selection of e-books, and the (highly debated) text-to-speech capability. There’s even a way to view Kindle books on your iPhone now. And let’s not forget the rumored touch-screen Kindle 3 in the works. Let’s all blame Oprah for the national Kindle hysteria!

If all the excitement has made you reach for your wallet to snag the $359 device, then you’ve probably noticed that Amazon forgot to include a little something in the box: a protective book cover! That’s no mistake, folks. Although Amazon’s first-generation Kindle included a book cover, the retailer decided to ship the next model without one. But don’t fret— most Kindle owners complained about that flimsy book cover anyway, and there are lots of cover options available.

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The slimmer, more stylish Kindle 2—or the “Thindle,” as I immediately dubbed it in a post-announcement tweet—is everything that the first Kindle should have been. In addition to being more svelte, it has a sharper screen, a 25 percent longer battery life and at $359, sells for the same price as Amazon’s original year-old version. While it undeniably takes the e-book genre to a higher level, it remains unclear whether the Thindle can be a mass hit. Millions have taken to digitally downloading music, movies and photographs, but e-books have failed to find a similar following.

Until recently, there were good reasons for that. A few years ago I read parts of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” on my Palm PDA. The novelty wore off quickly. When presented with text on a screen—whether it’s a mobile phone, a handheld or a computer—my eyes dart and wander rather than scan and savor, a tendency that doesn’t lend itself to the patience that book reading requires. I heard a similar story from James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. “I read my first e-Book in 1997 on a Psion series 5,” McQuivey says. “It was a black and white computer. It ran on AA batteries. All it had were public domain books. The low contrast of the device meant that you needed to be in good light.”

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Amazon’s Kindle 2 is sleek, stylish, and has a crisp and easy-on-the eyes “electronic ink” display. But it only does one thing — read books.

After all the relatively hostile things I have said about Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader in the past, I didn’t actually expect that the company’s official PR firm, Outcast, would actually send me one to play with. In Mid-March, they contacted me to inform me that they were going to loan me one for ten days, after which I had to send it back, this due to the extreme demand for review units. Ouch! The first Kindle I looked at, I had 30 days to play with the device.

Of course, I was literally on the bottom of their list to receive one, no doubt due to my less-than-warm opinions of their product that were expressed during the launch and the actual release timeframe. Our gallant Editor-In-Chief, Larry Dignan, got one first at the end of February, along with the other “Tier 1″ consumer electronics writers like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue who had their widely-publicized reviews published weeks ago. I think Larry took one look at it and put it on the shelf and gave it a thorough ZDNet Labs (TM) dust accumulation benchmark before sending it back. Gee, thanks boss.

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Welcome to KrunchGear’s Kindle 2 Dekontainment, a video in which we unbox the Kindle 2 and show off some of its various and sundry features. Here are our initial photos including the Kindle Kover (k) which is konsiderably better than the original cover. This one actually snaps into the Kindle and can’t fall off.

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By now you’ve probably read all of the reviews of the Kindle 2. We also posted our own first look, video unboxing, and commentary on the state of e-books in general.

Now that we’ve had a week with the Kindle 2, we thought it was about time that we weighed in officially on the Kindle 2 as a platform for acquiring, converting, delivering, and reading e-Book type content. Below we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite features, and taken a closer look at some of the most talked about elements of the Kindle 2.

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Amazon’s [AMZN] new Kindle 2, shipping this week, shames the original Kindle with a host of improvements: better enclosure, faster page-turns, a better Web experience and seven times the memory. But the Kindle 2 is put to shame by the someday-Kindle 3, which exists, for now, only in our collective imagination.

Don’t get me wrong; the $360 Kindle 2 is cool. Very cool. But not yet cool enough for the price. In fact, if anything, the Kindle 2 has made me more inclined to buy the original Kindle at its new discounted price of $220.

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