I am a gadget person. I love having gadgety type things, but I also have to justify them. Even if I just rationalize them for myself, I will typically go out and buy the new gadget thing. When the Kindle was released, I looked at it and kind of blew it off because there was no way that I could rationalize it with the amount of reading that I was doing.
But then in February, I moved to Dubai. Since I have been here I have been reading a lot more than I was. On top of that, I am flying a lot and always take a book with me for the trip. Sometimes I would be carrying 800 page books and trying to read them in economy class and that got uncomfortable at times.
A friend of mine had bought one, because he is a bit more gadget loving than I am, and somehow justified it. He has only completed one book on the Kindle in about a year of use. But with the amount that I had been reading and the amount of time I spend in airports and planes and sitting in hotel rooms by myself, I still decided to buy one.
So far I am pleased with its performance. I am pleased with the type face and how easy on the eyes it is. The buttons are all in very comfortable places (less the next page button on the right side, I can't seem to not touch this one when I pick it up). I really like that I can highlight things and take notes as it is giving me some new post material that I can jump to in a flash by looking at "my clippings" which tells me everything that I have highlighted or noted on. The battery lasts forever, unless you mistakenly leave on the the wireless.
Now the bad part is that it runs on the Sprint network. When I was in Midland it did ok, but apparently if you are on the Sprint network, you can't make calls at the George Bush International Airport in Houston. In addition to a few books that I found for free and a few books that I downloaded, I also subscribed to the Denver Post. I wanted to download the last couple of days newspapers to read on the plane, but there is no signal there. I knew that once I got back to Dubai I would have to connect to the computer to download all of my content, but I was hoping that while I was in a major US city that I could use the wireless.
My feelings on it right now are that it is great. The Kindle makes it far more comfortable to read anywhere. It allows you to find a comfortable sitting position anywhere and stick with it because you don't have to adjust yourself depending on if you are on an even/odd page or based on how far through the book you are.
If you are a reader, I would suggest this.