Why bother when a used IPAQ/PDA for sub $100 makes a great ebook reader, plus does other stuff if you really want it?

That thing is UGLY. Really horrible ugly.

It doesn't even come close to the Sony Reader's looks - and the Reader is just runofthemill hehe.

The battery life is very poor - luckily you can turn off the wifi.

No word on if you can make your own books - I do that with the Sony Reader and it is great.

The Reader has a two to four week life between recharges.

Why pay for an E-book with DRM that will make it difficult or impossible to loan out to someone else to read?

The Kindle could be a smaller-than-laptop size Internet browser; so much wasted potential. EVDO, and all they allow is Wikipedia and their bookstore. Surfing with a phone or PDA is frustrating, and laptops, although more fully featured, are a pain to carry and have a shorter battery life. I'd love to have something just to browse with, bigger than a smartphone and with longer battery life. Someone may eventually mod it, though the long-term possibility of free surfing is unlikely.

Can it display musical scores?

"Kindle also includes free built-in access to the world's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org."

This single feature alone is worth $400 to me. I'm still not buying in at $400 - but if I was the kind of person who buys a PS3 without thinking it a great luxury, I'd be sold.

Considering the Asus Eee Notebook costs exactly the same, which would you choose?

What's with this concept of every device having to do everything? I've wanted an electronic book reader thing for ages, but nothing like this. I don't want/need the sound, and I have no interest in wi-fi nor web access. I just want something small that displays project gutenberg text files -- I currently print them out.

Sure it might as well render html, and pdf, and seventeen different book formats, and audio, and have web access, and a keyboard, and a backlight, and magic paper, and five hunderd other things. And every one of them is useful. But not one of them has anything to do with replacing books.

I hate books. They're clunky, flipping pages is as annoying as any rudimentary task requiring two hands for no good reason, they get damaged easily, they take up gobs of space, and the print quality tends to be horrible.

I just want to replace simple recreational books first. Just display text files. It can be old and crappy monochrome LCD, with a controllable backlight, and I'd buy it for $100.

Why do you need a full keyboard to read a book?

What is the headphone jack and volume buttons for? The product overview makes no mention of audio capabilities.

And yeah...$400 is way too much for a product like this. The only way ebooks are ever going to take off is if the reader is near free.

Yea, definitely too expensive, but I really do like it, I'd prefer wifi access over cell access though....the wikipedia touch is nice too...but I want to be able to copy/read my own files as well.

you gotta be kidding me, $400??? I rather buy a laptop.

Awesome, but way too expensive. You'll have me at $99, Amazon, but not 'till then.

Yeah... Cut the price to about 1/3rd, and I'd probably take a serious look at it. But for $400, it's just not quite good enough. But I really like the display they chose for the device, looks good.

I see two advantages over a laptop for many customers: It doesn't have to flip-open == more rugged when rolled-over, and... easier to deal with when laying down, reading in a chair/plane, etc. If I were to spend $400, I would get a laptop for my wife to get her off of my computer.

Price is high, Amazon should almost give it away contingent upon selling a minimum number of books per year, or several subscriptions to the customer. They could sell it for <$100 if you purchase subscription to the Wall Street and a few magazines or something, and then wind up with a much larger customer base that would be "hooked-in" to their services where repeat business would pay for the up-front loss. Much like the X-box.

-LS

To me ebook readers and the like won't become practical until they lower the cost of the books.

Sounds like the Sony Reader, but with automatic online service.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/sony-reader-review.ars

if that's the case (and it likely is), it probably suffers from the same problems, and costs as much for the same reason (eInk).

No PDF support but I guess it supports mobi, if the comments on Amazon are accurate.

What fresh hell is this???

Um...i assume you mean 1.78cm thickness?