Amazon: Free upgrade improves text clarity on $79 Kindle

Owners of the $79 Kindle take note: Amazon has started rolling out a new software update.

According to Amazon, here are the improvements and feature additions the new firmware (4.1.0) brings:

• Improved reading font that is higher contrast and crisper.
• Parental Controls now allow you to restrict access to the Experimental Web Browser, Archived Items, and the Kindle Store.
• Support for books with complex layouts and formats with Kindle Format 8.
• Support for children's books with Kindle Text Pop-Up and comic books with Kindle Panel View (which allows you to read a comic book panel by panel). Books that support these features will be available from the Kindle store over the next few weeks.
• Dictionaries grouped into a collection in Home and Archived Items called "Dictionaries" for better organization
• Improved table and image viewing (panning and zooming) on supported titles.

You can wait for the update to be delivered automatically to your Kindle over Wi-Fi or manually download the update to your device by following the instructions at this link.

If you get the update, let us know if you can see a difference in look of the text. We've got one $79 Kindle in the office here in New York but are working on getting another unit in so we can make a comparison after we do the update.