The Kindle

I've had my Kindle for about 3 hours now. First impression: It pretty much lives up to the hype. It seems to be exactly what I need for reading. It's legible, light, and can download books from Amazon in 1-2 minutes via wireless (no extra charge for the wireless connection). I bought the entire Sherlock Holmes collection for something like $3.50. You can get all of Shakespeare's works for around $4.50. Same for all of Mark Twain's works. New best-seller hardcover can be purchased and downloaded for $9.99, about a third of the hardcover price from a bookstore.

This thing holds 200 books (with an option for increasing memory with an SD card). And all of them are searchable. And bookmarkable. And it has a built-in dictionary. And web browser. And it can display Google maps of your location (not tried yet).

What's not to like? Well, it's $360, but I calculate the payback is around 2 years for me. And I don't have to worry about paper dust from old books making me sneeze.

I downloaded around 90 books from Project Gutenberg and the like, all in Kindle format. I think it's a winner. It may not make sense for many, but I think it does for me.