That said,

1. Wireless EVDO — yes, you can use this, but mine remains off 99% of the time. Very slow for web browsing and rains the batteries ridiculously fast.

2. Audio — yes it can play audio files, but the DRM gets you here too. If you want to listen to an audiobook you *have* to buy the audiobook from Audible. If you’ve got MP3s of audiobooks, like I do, they won’t work because the Kindle will only play MP3s in a random shuffle mode. That is probably the single dumbest design defect they put in there.

Firstly, remember that the Kindle is being marketed as a true *reading* device: something that will revolutionize both book-reading and book-buying. That’s an ambitious goal. And, there’s a lot to like about the Kindle for that purpose. E-Ink is amazing, and the flicker on other E-Ink devices I’ve used is really not as annoying as people presume it will be. It’s less interruption than turning a real page, and the advantages in readability and battery life are well worth it.

However, at $400, your average reader isn’t going to buy this thing. I think Amazon knows that, and they’re trying (quite wisely) to position this device toward the bibliophile and technophile communities.

Since I’m both a bibliophile and a technophile, I am excited about the possibility of a truly good e-book device. The Kindle isn’t it, though it’s much closer than past attempts. There are two major types of reading I do: research/scholarly (yes, programming books fall in this category), and recreational.

The Kindle is pretty nice for recreational reading, but if you like to read materials beyond mass-market books and “stuff on the web”, the Kindle’s capabilities are somewhat cumbersome. I don’t want to have to send Amazon a PDF made from a set of documents I downloaded from Gutenberg.org, only to transfer it in the proprietary format back to the Kindle. Could they really have not included direct support for common, standard formats?

Still, not bad as a recreational reader. Not $400 worth, but not bad.

The Kindle is *horrible* for research/scholarly reading. The annotation capability is pathetic. There is *one* typeface, and it’s not monospaced. I can only imagine trying to read technical documents and books without access to the typographical conventions that lend to clarity, and without proper alignment in code samples and the like. I can’t store my annotations back to my computer in a standard form — if the Kindle line fails, gets purchased, or what have you, I can lose all my notes. Yeah, I could use a separate pad or device, but I’m not going to spend serious cash on a book-reader that can’t keep my notes at least as well as the margins of paper books can.

And, finally, the deal breaker: the DRM scheme. I’m not entirely anti-DRM, but the implementation on the Kindle prevents me from reading a book and then giving it (or selling it) to someone else. It makes it damn near impossible to lend a book to a friend. These are important features to me, and until Amazon — or someone else — figures them out, I won’t be buying any e-book reader.

I’d buy it if it had wi-fi instead, and its files were standards like PDF or RTF. Otherwise, I think it’s awesome, and I’d buy one myself if it worked where I live. However, I think it’s ridiculous to charge for subscriptions, because you can get most of it through RSS.

@Ed – I admit, my being enamored with the device may have shown through a little more than I’d planned. But, the fact is that most of the features I mention are indeed valuable. And as much as it may not be apparent, I think the Kindle is extremely innovative in its space.

That’s the whole point of it, that you can read ebooks without the screen beaming light into your eyes. You read off reflected light, like a real book. That’s why I’ve never gotten into ebooks, because I can’t concentrate on them the same way. You can get an LED booklight for like 10 bucks and read it in pitch black.