Was exploring around
Kurzweilai.net , and yet another one of his predictions is coming true with remarkable accuracy in regards to time. It's not cheap or widely used yet, but I think it will be before the decade is over.
The TL;DR version from Newsweek
6 minute introductory video from Amazon
Read some of the 650 reviews posted on Amazon in the past 4 days, and the reviews are all over the place, but I guess that's to be expected when most of the people reviewing don't have the product yet.
Here are what some of the reviews were saying:
Pros: discounts on book, display that's very easy on the eyes, very portable, very comfortable, smooth easy to use features, large memory, purchases automatically backed up online in case something happens to your kindle, access to books, blogs and magazines,
Cons: $400, will probably be obsolete in 5 years and the format won't be transferable to your new device, the service does not work everywhere that cell phones work, not fully compatible with other products (PDA's perhaps?), limited number of books (around 70,000ish right now, more coming), very limited number of magazines (so far), some products (all?) are only available without pictures
I don't have one, but it seems like a great introduction to an up and coming technology that IMO will basically completely replace books (except for their appeal as artifacts).