Question for Amazon Kindle users

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8
I am looking at getting the Kindle 2. I am very interested in the text-to-speech capabilities as I could absorb a lot of e-books on my commute.

Is this feature pretty good or will I go crazy listening to a really crappy monotone robot voice?
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  • It's not bad - I've used it a few times while getting dressed in the morning - just having it read out to me. For most people, I don't think it's a 'killer feature'. The voice isn't bad, but it's not perfect - still makes rhythmic mistakes.
    • [1] reply
    • The device is cleanly laid out, very much shaped like a large iPhone; a big rectangle with rounded edges. The keyboard has a standard, familiar layout, and the keys are now small and round instead of rectangular pellets.
      Regarding the voice, it's not exactly pleasant....
  • Is it understandable for the most part though? I have literally hundreds of white papers and ebooks to sort through. For the next few weeks I will be driving about 2 or 3 hours per day, so I was thinking I could load my ebooks up on the Kindle, put on the voice and run it through the car stereo.
  • I never use the text to speech feature. I'd rather pay for audiobooks for road trips than listen to the robot voice. Here's a demo video:

    YouTube - Kindle 2 Text-to-speech Demonstration
  • Thanks for that video AmyBrown.
    That clarifies it a lot.

    Also, I agree with you: My vote goes to audio books too. Robot reading far from perfect yet.
  • I agree, audio books obviously provide better quality,... but 99% of all the whitepapers and ebooks I need to catch up on are not available in an audiobook format.
    • [1] reply
    • It might work out for you. The Kindle is my favorite gadget ever and I think everyone should have one I recommend it all the time and have given several as gifts. However, I can read at least 5x faster than the text to speech and it's just painful for me to listen to it.
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    Question for Amazon Kindle users

    I am looking at getting the Kindle 2. I am very interested in the text-to-speech capabilities as I could absorb a lot of e-books on my commute. Is this feature pretty good or will I go crazy listening to a really crappy monotone robot voice?