8.5 by 11 inches? inches. is this some sort of dickensian throwback? will they be providing a quill and a dynamo driven by overhead belting to power it? And surely too goodness they aren't going to try and sustain that letter-sized none-sense that the rest of the A4 using world has got heartily sick of years ago?

Apart from all that, I'm still not sure why anyone would possibly want one of the things when it does a lot less than a laptop and a copy of some random PDF viewer ...

I'll get my coat, its the one with a metric tape measure for a belt ...

At $300, it's cheaper than most college textbooks!

... but only IF they didn't require me to pay more for an electronic copy of a book than for a paper copy, if they allow me to share my copy with others, if they allow me to sell my copy to others, and if they allow me to annotate my copy of whatever books and texts I have on the system.

Since that's unlikely to happen, I'll pass on the Kindle thanks. As it stands, as far as I can tell, it's just a damn DRM infested ripoff.

With DRM? No way!

For 10 years the technology has been existent to make a useful handheld for students, and no one has done it. Make a handheld computer using a b&w screen (truely black and white, not black on dark grey like Palm, Handspring, etc has always pushed on everyone) , with the almost nil power use of the b&w screen it will be able to stay on for a month. Make it a mini-laptop form factor, something easy to type stuff out in and throw in the backback. No frills, just the ability to use popular text formats, students cellphones can already handle the mp3's, videos, games and other junk not necessary for this device. I'll bet they will sell this dirt cheap, say $100 or less and that it will sell like hotcakes. After 10 years of waiting, finally a useful PDA is going to be made. I'll bet this will also sell well in third world nations for people with no telephone for a cheap communication device.

surely cheaper than shopping at ikea.

laptop screen sitting under a tree in the park? In a train with sun pouring through the windows? Forget it.

I would really like an e-paper device, the thing that has stopped me until now is the slow page turn speed. When they get that fixed (hope they do) I'll pay $300.

Nope, Kindle not available on amazon.co.uk

Oh well, back to slate & chalk then, now that's what I call black & white!

What's that Lassie? A company has one or more improved versions of a successful product in the works for release at some future date? I'd never have guessed it! That's amazing Lassie!

Doesn't 'kindle' mean 'start a fire'?

Is there something about the batteries we need to be aware of?

$300 not $100

and them you have to buy the ebooks to and i bet you won't be able to draw on erm. i mean make notes in the book either. just make notes on a seprate notepad style program that won't be able to read your writing.

suppose it'll be lighter than carring the real books though so these a plus

Amazon won't release the sales figures because only amazon execs have actually bought the stupid things.

Given the old joke of a lecture being a way to pass information from the lecturer to the student without it going through he conciousness of either then beaming Kindle files admirably serves the purpose.