I’m not a big book reader, nor was I impressed with the form factor of the original Amazon Kindle E-Book Reader, which is why, despite my raging gadget-geek hormones, I never bought a Kindle. Oh that – and it was expensive.

I did however forsee a day when a new, better version would come out, or the price would come down, or both, and I would finally take the plunge. This Valentine’s Day I did, by getting a Kindle 2 for my wife, who both reads a lot AND commutes on the train. She still seems a bit standoffish on the Kindle , but she has yet to start commuting with it so we’ll see if it was a good gift or just another male Valentine’s Day blunder.

Here’s my first impressions of the device after playing with it for a few hours.

There are two things I noticed immediately about the Kindle 2. The first is that when I went to peel off the protective plastic sheet over the screen, I expected the display advertising text and graphics on the screen to peel off as well, which they didn’t. E-ink displays can display the last page viewed forever without using any battery power, so Amazon used this in the packaging of the unit – cool.

The second thing I noticed is how thin the Kindle 2 is – its about as thin as my iPhone. As for the rest of the form factor, nothing really stood out at me that I didn’t expect from seeing photos and videos of the unit online. One gripe I did have is that the page turn buttons make a fairly audible click when pressed, which I feel is undesirable when reading in bed with a sleeping spouse.

An ebook reader is a very simple device, and as such the Kindle 2 performs fine for that purpose. The screen, which has been upgraded to 16 levels of grayscale from the previous 4, is very easy to read and very easy on the eyes compared to an LCD screen.

Page turning is surprisingly abrupt, however, as it takes a second and the screen flashes in between pages, but it gets the job done – its one of those annoyances you notice only because you are used to the speed of an LCD screen on a laptop or iPhone. The advantages of the eink display are readability, low eye fatigue, and outstanding battery life.

By far I feel that the real value of the Kindle 2 and Kindle 2 is in the subscription-free 3G Whispernet service. It worked perfectly out of the box with absolutely no configuration whatsoever, and seemed just as fast as my 3G iPhone from the same location.

With the Whispernet service, you can browse, buy, and download ebooks in seconds (for about $10 a pop), as well as Kindle-formatted blogs, magazines, and newspapers. It also has an ‘experimental’ web browser, which seems to be fairly decent. This makes the unit a godsend for commuters, as they can get access to most information just as easily – if not more easily – than their mobile phone or laptop without draining the battery on either device, or worrying about the battery running out on the Kindle either. Again, as a free service, Whispernet is an outstanding value.