I think something coming out at that price point is great news. The more options the better.

I've been using the Kindle app on my iPhone more often since the death of my Kindle, and it's pretty nice (especially with the brightness turned way down and white-text-on-black-font at the second-to-largest size) though I still ended up with a headache after a marathon 5-hour reading session the other day. I hear the iPad screen is even nicer than the iPhones, so I'd be interested in checking it out, but at over twice the price of the Craigslist Kindle I've got lined up, I just can't justify it. I honestly don't think I'd use it for enough "other" stuff - I don't have that niche. Which doesn't stop me from kind of wanting one, but I could get a Mac Mini to use as a media PC for the same price, which would have far greater utility for me if I feel a compulsive need to give Apple another $600.

Yeah. I get heavy use out of all the other stuff so it is worth it for me. I do find the screen better than my iPhone.

The main complaint I've heard about the ipad from former Kindle users is the weight - it's obviously much lighter than a laptop, but heavier than the Kindle for holding like a book.

Very true. It is not the featherweight that a Kindle is. The glass screen probably accounts for a large part of that.

If you don't buy books through Apple, you could get both and use the right device for the right situation. At $150 for an E-ink reader that starts to get practical.

I'd buy any of the e-readers the minute they offered a free (or very, very cheap) version of every physical book that I am buying (or have bought recently). For instance, I'd buy a Kindle if I could get to read the 100 or so books I've bought off of Amazon in the last couple of years. It would be AWESOME to be able to read my physical book up to page whatever, but switch to an e-reader for a trip. Or I'd buy the Barnes and Noble e-reader if they gave me credit for the B&N purchases I've made (of physical books).

When buying my Kindle, I underestimated my reluctance to pay $10 for a book that I could buy for much less in softcover and be totally happy with. There is rarely a book that I just can't wait for the softcover.

I still want to see how the DRM settles out.

Zenkitty, have you compared Kindle prices to actual softcover prices at the same time? Generally, when the paperback comes out, the Kindle price drops to a price point lower than the paperback.

I buy very few books at the $9.99 price point. Mostly books that I'm pretty sure will ALWAYS be hard to find cheaper than that (the kind of literary fiction / chick lit that doesn't come out in anything but trade paperback).

javachick, I'm afraid what you want is never going to happen. Amazon/B&N doesn't own the copyright to those books, remember, they just pass licenses along to you. Publishers are not likely to give you an option like that when they might potentially convince you to buy your favorite books a second time (like when I bought Cryptonomicon for the Kindle because I wanted to re-read but couldn't handle the idea of carrying the 8-pound hardcover around for the weeks it would have required. And at the time, it cost me less than $10.)

That said, I've ahemmed a couple of books that I already own (e.g. Harry Potter, when I wanted to re-read the entire series on vacation and didn't have a separate suitcase to pack them in) and converted them for my Kindle with absolutely no guilt and, arguably, no legal culpability. Not necessarily a recommended path, but a possible one.

Huh. I just checked, and I actually discovered that the Kindle edition of Cryptonomicon is now $2 more expensive than the paperback version. Price "set by the publisher". That really pisses me off. Are they TRYING to kill this industry?