I have been using Amazon's Kindle ebook reader for a week now, and am really happy with it.

The main attraction is the e-ink screen, which looks great and is supposedly easy on the eyes as well (I am looking at computer screens the whole day, though, and do not have problems there, either). Because of the e-ink technology, the display cannot show colours or movement, so it (and the whole Kindle) can really only be used for text, and not to view photos or videos. None of this is a problem because this dedication to its single purpose makes the Kindle easy to use, light, thin, and cheap (it also has an excellent battery life, I did not have to recharge it during the whole week). This is not meant to compete with a tablet computer. You want both. One feature Amazon needs to add in the next version, though, is a touch screen. While that is also arguably unnecessary, it has become very confusing to have a device in this form factor and not be able to control it with your finger. Everyone I have shown the Kindle to immediately taps on the screen, and after a week I still catch myself doing the same. No fancy multitouch needed here, but just the ability to select books and tap through dialog boxes would be good.

The one part that does not work right now is WiFi connectivity (and the associated Whispernet, which magically makes books appear on your Kindle): It just won't connect to any WiFi network, and I have tried many. I am not sure if this is a Kindle problem (probably, the forums are full with complaints, but on the other hand the forums always are), a cloud service problem, or a China problem (did not work over VPN either, though). While unfortunate, this is by no means a show stopper, because you can still sync it via USB, buy books from the web site, and Whispernet only works with Amazon content anyway, so that the Kindle already needed to become part of my USB Dance Ritual (Time Machine backup, and updating everyone's iPods) every morning.

The main reason why I wanted an e-ink reader (ever since Sony first came out with them) is to be able to read a certain German newspaper that I have grown fond (and even own a small part) of. When moving to Tokyo eight years ago I had the regular dead-tree subscription for a while, but that was terribly expensive, terribly inefficient transportation-wise, and terribly delayed (you do not really want a daily paper two or three days later). Thus, I have been following their experiments with alternative delivery mechanisms (such as local on-demand printing in cooperation with hotels and bookstores) with great interest. They have very early on offered electronic versions, but I did not want to read a PDF on a laptop. I tried that on the OLPC (which I also got mostly to use as an ebook reader), and it worked okay for documents properly formatted for screens (as opposed to for print), but such a version was not made available. A big break-through came with the iPhone (iPod touch in my case), first with an ill-fated attempt to publish via iBooks (which does not work for periodicals), then with their own app, complete with in-app-purchases, so you did not even have to get the monthly subscription. I was quite happy with that (even though a bigger screen would have been nice), but that iPod is no more (replacement scheduled for Christmas, assuming there is a new model by then). Now with the Kindle the problem is finally solved. I can get the current edition of my newspaper whenever I want, read it comfortably (except for photos, that still needs some work to display them properly, but at least the cartoons are done right, those are probably easier because their layout dimensions are the same every day), and pay either by monthly subscription, or for individual issues (which I'll probably do since I do not read it every day).

Beyond that, the Kindle is obviously great for reading novels. When I ordered it, I was not expecting to be able to buy commercial titles from Amazon, because Kindle was a US-only service. But two days after my order Amazon suddenly opened the German Kindle store (not sure if I can take credit for that, though), so that I now have this option, too, in addition to public domain classics and creative-commons works. My immediate reaction was to try to pick up the Wheel of Time series again (currently being finished by Brandon Sanderson based on material left behind by the late Robert Jordan), but there seems to be a quarrel going on between Amazon and the publisher, so that the novels are sometimes available as ebooks, and sometimes not (at the moment they are not). In general, though, availability seems to be no problem, Amazon claims to have 650.000 titles. The price however is a problem, at least with the traditional publishers: I'd happily buy ebooks for 3 Euro, moan about but can agree to 5 Euro, and for something that I really, really want (say, a brand-new Neal Stephenson) can see myself fork over 10 Euro maybe once a year, but not many titles fit that range. Amazon seems to be unhappy about that as well, and for most of the expensive books there is a remark about how "the price was set by the publisher". For now, I have gotten free sample first chapters (a very nice feature Amazon offers) of the next Dark Tower book, an older Neal Stephenson novel, and my most likely purchase, the four book Game of Thrones bundle.