Trying to understand the popularity of the $>400 Kindle/eBook dedicated readers. What's wrong with books? Don't we have too many gadgets?

My wife and myself are voracious readers, and our son is starting to get up to our league. 15 years of book purchases for two adults and one child eats up a LOT of living space. I have a wall with 6 full-size bookshelves crammed with books.

These books get dusty, so they need to get cleaned periodically or they'll turn into insect nests. My Kindle 2 is currently carrying the equivalent of 24 pounds of paper, assuming the average paperback is 8 ounces. That's a lot of paper in just a few months, and I don't have to keep them on a bookshelf, or dust them off every few months.

If I am away from home and I feel like reading any of my books, it is either in my Kindle, or I can re-download it from anywhere that has a Sprint signal (Kindle comes with a prepaid 3G network serviced by Sprint). I am not even limited to buy books off Amazon, there are tons of free books out there, I keep a stash in my personal web server so I can also download from it wherever I am. Back when I was reading 2-3 books a week while commuting, I always had to carry an extra book because if I finished my book in the middle of a commute I'll be bored out of my mind.

With the Kindle, my only problem is I forgot to keep a stash (which weights zero of course) and the train is in a tunnel that doesn't have Sprint 3G. This of course never happens. As for the price, a Kindle 2 is $359.

The reason it costs that much is because it comes with prepaid 3G mobile internet for the life of the device. You pay for the device and you are done. There is no service plan, and if you sell your Kindle 2 to somebody else, they also get this prepaid 3G mobile internet.

The only thing you cannot sell is books that you purchased from Amazon, these are locked to your Amazon ID. A good way to put the $359 into perspective is that the data plan for an iPhone 3G is $360 PER YEAR. Yes, per year.

In one year, iPhone 3G users pay off enough mobile internet fees to pay for a full Kindle 2, which comes with prepaid mobile internet. When you think about it, and even with volume discounts, at least $100 from the price of a new Kindle has to go to pay for that 3G connectivity. In our case, we have two Kindles connected to one Amazon ID, so for example if my wife forgets hers, she can borrow mine and re-download whatever book she was reading.

The awesome part is that it will even remember the last page that she read. If both of us forgot the Kindle at home, we both have iPhone 3Gs, which means we can open the Kindle app for iPhone, re-download whatever we were reading and it remembers the last page. Notice that Amazon will never charge you to re-download things that you purchased from them.

I have two in the house, for us it is a matter of practicality, not cost. My wife and myself are voracious readers, and our son is starting to get up to our league. 15 years of book purchases for two adults and one child eats up a LOT of living space.

I have a wall with 6 full-size bookshelves crammed with books. These books get dusty, so they need to get cleaned periodically or they'll turn into insect nests. My Kindle 2 is currently carrying the equivalent of 24 pounds of paper, assuming the average paperback is 8 ounces.

That's a lot of paper in just a few months, and I don't have to keep them on a bookshelf, or dust them off every few months. If I am away from home and I feel like reading any of my books, it is either in my Kindle, or I can re-download it from anywhere that has a Sprint signal (Kindle comes with a prepaid 3G network serviced by Sprint). I am not even limited to buy books off Amazon, there are tons of free books out there, I keep a stash in my personal web server so I can also download from it wherever I am.

Back when I was reading 2-3 books a week while commuting, I always had to carry an extra book because if I finished my book in the middle of a commute I'll be bored out of my mind. With the Kindle, my only problem is I forgot to keep a stash (which weights zero of course) and the train is in a tunnel that doesn't have Sprint 3G. This of course never happens.

As for the price, a Kindle 2 is $359. The reason it costs that much is because it comes with prepaid 3G mobile internet for the life of the device. You pay for the device and you are done.

There is no service plan, and if you sell your Kindle 2 to somebody else, they also get this prepaid 3G mobile internet. The only thing you cannot sell is books that you purchased from Amazon, these are locked to your Amazon ID. A good way to put the $359 into perspective is that the data plan for an iPhone 3G is $360 PER YEAR.

Yes, per year. In one year, iPhone 3G users pay off enough mobile internet fees to pay for a full Kindle 2, which comes with prepaid mobile internet. When you think about it, and even with volume discounts, at least $100 from the price of a new Kindle has to go to pay for that 3G connectivity.

In our case, we have two Kindles connected to one Amazon ID, so for example if my wife forgets hers, she can borrow mine and re-download whatever book she was reading. The awesome part is that it will even remember the last page that she read. If both of us forgot the Kindle at home, we both have iPhone 3Gs, which means we can open the Kindle app for iPhone, re-download whatever we were reading and it remembers the last page.

Notice that Amazon will never charge you to re-download things that you purchased from them.