I received my kindle on Friday, and after using it for the weekend, I have to say that this thing is awesome.
Reading books on the kindle is actually superior to paper books for me. I may be a poor example for most people as I’m used to reading books on my laptop. But what I enjoy is really simple. I added a bunch of my favorite books from Russian authors, sourced by the free service manybooks.net. A virtual library in an object the size of a single paperback, which provides an easy reading source. I have a ton of books in my own bookshelves, but over the years, having to thin it out for more books is quite tiring. Some of the books are heavy and old, and not suitable for travel.
Reading on the kindle is a joy, once you get used to not having an understanding of where you are in the book. It has a little graph on the bottom that show your position, but its even worse then the scroll bar of a PDF on my laptop. But its easy to hold, and easy to read from.
I will say that kindle is pretty useless for newspapers. You do not read newspapers like a book. And those used to reading the New York Times online will pretty much hate it I think. Searching and paging through the paper is simple too slow. I spent an hour on Saturday going through the paper, something I do in about 15 mins online on a normal day. Not to mention that you can’t cut/copy stories segments to send to friends easily. For me, I’ll stick to the laptop for news. (Except for vacation maybe)
The webbrowser is functional, and for text-based sites, easy enough to use. Again, since its using its own cellular service, pretty much universal in locations to use. But its a throw-back to pre-2000 in feel. Google apps work well in it, which is what I intend on using it for.
I leave with this comment. For those really used to reading on the computer, but found it lacking, the kindle could be a bridge between your computer and the paper book format that you need. In my case, it really fit that niche perfectly.