Most negative comments are from people who have never used a Kindle. For owners, it is an indispensible tool and a litterary companion. I read a lot more now because I carry my Kindle around and can read in short down-times. I carry a number of different books around on my Kindle. Sometimes I want to read literature, sometimes fluff, and sometimes I need to look something up in a reference books. They're all there in a compact, lightweight device that comes in a book-like binder. The screen is incomparably better for reading than an backlit LCD on any phone or laptop. I have an iPhone and it cannot come close to being as good for reading.

A lot of people are saying things that are not really true. You can read and documents that are not from Amazon, including your own documents. The battery's charge lasts for day and as much as a week with the wireless turned off. Very few people have had trouble with the battery failing (its basically the same as a large cell phone battery). You can read PDF documents on it, though they must be converted to a format that can be reflowed to fit the screen. There are currently about 160K kindle books available on Amazon and they add about 10K per month.

The Kindle is an "early adoptor" device at this point and the price reflects that. As manufacturing improves they wil be able to reduce the price. As it is, it is no more expensive than a video game console and much more useful to me. The book prices start around 99 cents and many are in the 5 - 10 dollar range. The publishers control most of the prices and what gets published. Price savings are not the main reason for ebooks, though. The convenience of carrying multiple books at lunch or on a trip is a better reason. So is being able to buy another book wirelessly when you need one (stuck in an airport terminal!). Finally, it has freed up a lot of space in my apartment that was threatening to be overrun by wood pulp books.

I'm not suprised if newspapers have not been a rousing success on the Kindle. The subscription prices are high and the screen size is not expansive enough to capture the newspaper experience. I get most of my news from radio and the web.

As a true book reader, I love reading on the kindle. It can be just as engrossing and enjoyable as reading a paper book.

I've got one of these and they are brilliant. Until you've seen a good (the PRS-505 features a much improved screen over the previous years PRS-500 screen) eInk screen, it's hard to imagine. It just looks like actual ink on paper... not backlit LCD/TFT or CRT! Perfectly visible in sunlight, unlike laptop/mobile screens. And the Sony Readers actually look slender and cool too :)

I thought the Kindle looked rather crap to be honest.

“With a standard book, there's absolutely no DRM. It's yours to do with as you wish (aside from plagarise it that is) - you can resell it or lend it to anyone you like.”

Yes, but crucially it would cost you more to replicate a paper book than to buy another copy. If e-books were sold on the same principle they might make sense.

The other thing is why do you have to turn pages on e-books? This is just imposing the disadvantage of one medium on another. I just want the text to scroll up as I read it. Newsreaders don't have to turn pages on their autocues.

I can't believe how many books I've read on my iPhone -- more in the last six months than I'd probably read in the previous five years. It's smaller and lighter than a paperback (and zero *extra* weight given that I already have it), but the screen is still quite large and works in any lighting condition.

I find myself pulling it out of my pocket and reading any time I have two minutes to kill in a line in a shop and it really adds up.

As for scrolling ... the program I'm using gives a choice between continuous scrolling at a user-settable speed, smooth scrolling by dragging on the screen (as with anything else iPhone), or tapping on the screen for the next screenful.

http://mybebook.com/This site also sells an eBook reader.claims to also have 20,000 free eBooks and it is open software probibly some sort of linux.