First of all, think of the convenience the Kindle provides you. Now, you can read all of your favorite newspapers, blogs, books, magazines etc. anywhere and everywhere. You do not have to worry about the weight and size of your reading material and about how you will transport it on the move.

Second, you can do and learn more with what would have been wasted down time while you wait for this or that. You can just pull it out whenever you have a few minutes here and there.

Third, think of the environmental cost savings. If we, as a collected whole, begin to do more and more of our reading from “paper-like” digital devices, we will be cutting down less trees, maintaining and even increasing oxygen levels and perhaps even fighting global warming.

Fourth, just as Chris Brooks mentioned above, you begin reading content that you may have otherwise missed and will become more and more educated/cultured as you seek out new and different reading materials.

All in all, while $359 for this device plus the cost of the books etc. seems high, you are getting a great deal of value out of it, be it value from convenience, value from supplementary education, value from environmental protection or other value.

I still would reccommend this to anyone! Please visit http://www.prokindle.com!

I’ve only purchased 1 book so far for the Kindle, relying on many of the free sources of books (both public domain and creative commons) to augment my library. I’m finding that I’m reading some interesting material that I likely wouldn’t have otherwise (and that’s a GOOD thing!).

I happen to be staying in an area outside of EVDO range so am relying on my USB connection to get content to the Kindle and it works fine – in some ways it is better as I’m able to control the naming of PDF files that I convert and put on the device.

The main reason I don’t think I’ll save money in the end is the sharing aspect. My wife and sons are all fiction fans and we tend to cycle books quite a bit in our household. Me having the Kindle is likely to *increase* my expenses as I suspect I’ll end up buying a few books twice. That doesn’t seem right…

That said, Tom’s review (to which you linked) makes me think that browser would not at all be a replacement for the one I use now (Mobile Safari on an iPhone), nor even the one I used to use (Blazer on Treo). I can see how that answer would be different for other people, but for me, I won’t count $20/month of savings based on the current Kindle browser.

But — thanks much for the correction.

@David: ahh, I see. Hm. I’ll take a look.

Here’s a review:
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/12/kindle-web-brow.html

So yeah, buying a kindle would meet the mobile web browsing needs of some people, saving $15-$20 per month over a smartphone plan, even without buying any books.