,,,the Kindle 2 delivers an enjoyable experience with noticeable leaps in usability, and big leaps in industrial design.

Despite some rough edges, the Kindle is sure to drive e-books further into the mainstream.

With its stylish design, slim profile (0.36 inch), and faster page-flips, the second coming of the Kindle is not only cooler and more portable, it’s just plain better than anything else in its class.

While it's still short of perfection--and has a price tag that's too high--the Amazon Kindle 2 offers a range of improvements that makes it the best overall e-book reader we've seen to date.

While the new internationalized Kindle looks exactly like the earlier U.S.-only model, this e-reader, which uses AT&T's data network for wireless access, represents an incremental improvement to the Kindle line--just as serious competition is ramping up in the e-book market.

Amazon calls it the Kindle 2, but Kindle 1.1 would be more like it; the changes are fairly minor. Fortunately, they’re exactly what was needed to turn a very good reader into an even better one.

Amazon.com has fixed the worst design flaws in the Kindle, its popular electronic-book reader, while maintaining the excellent book-buying experience that made the first Kindle model tolerable despite those problems.

By fixing so much, and by getting so many of the fixes right, Amazon not only has created a good e-book reader, but it has given consumers reason to think it's listening to them. And if it keeps listening, the company may yet go on to craft a great ebook reader.

So the ultimate question, would we recommend the Kindle 2? If you are an avid reader, we give this a whole-hearted recommendation....Even with some of the flaws we mentioned about, the Kindle 2 is a must-own for fans of books.