The Kindle 2 screen seems odd at first because it looks so unlike any other electronic screen I have ever seen. Electronic paper is an apt description because it looks just like paper. I have already spent hundreds of hours reading from my Kindle and it feels just as if a was reading off of paper, and this is important for me because reading off of any other screen for more than a few hours gives me a headache.

Plugging the Kindle into your computer is easy, as is transferring mobi and prc files to the device. If you needed to you could easily save your books on you pc, a memory device, or a disk, but the kindle really does hold over a thousand books.

The library is easy to navigate you can just type and click the page number you want to go to, or if you don’t know where something is you can just type and search. I love the search feature. I can search within any book I have in my library, which is especially great when looking for quotations or verses in a large volume. You can also search the dictionary and wikipedia just as easily.

I have found the built-in dictionary to unexpectedly useful, and have yet to flummox it. You can run a search for words in the dictionary, but if you want a word defined from a book you are reading you can scroll to the word using the 5-way controller and it automatically defines it at the bottom of the screen.

The Experimental features such as text-to-speech and the basic web browser I don’t really use, but I will say that I have found the text-to-speech feature best when using it to read a newspaper or a manual, basically anything that does not require a lot of vocal variety.

The thing that surprised me most about the Kindle 2 is that I have actually found it easier to read than a book. I don’t just mean that it is more convenient to carry around than a library, which it is, but that reading books on the kindle is more comfortable and efficient. You never have to worry about losing you page or cracking the spine of your book, you just push one of the next page buttons and the page changes just as quickly as if you had your finger ready to flip to the next page of a paperback novel.

As far as the book selection Amazon probably has the largest non-fiction e-book selection, with most new releases costing only $9.99, though many are more, though they seem to go down in price as time goes by. There are also thousands of books, from the public domain, which are available on Amazon and other sites including many of my favorite classics. I don’t think you will run out of things to read on your Kindle any time this millennium.

The most important thing to me about the kindle is that it really does disappear in you hands, so that you can focus on what your reading not how you’re going to read it.

Over the years I’ve also I’ve taken on board the fact that there’s value in opting in early (despite imperfections!) vs. waiting (…and waiting and waiting) till something closer to perfection arrives. It often never does. So I’ve got my new Kindle. I like it. Could be better, but worth it on the whole.

Love the review and certainly is consistent with my experience. I do think that Amazon will continue to take some big hits for not including the 110-240v plug with the international edition though!

You may have to vary those predictions based on known new technologies in the pipeline which may cause discontinuities — but as it happens these have all been remarkably consistent over time as the new technologies slot in just as the previous ones are running out of options for improvement.

My own usage patterns have often turned out to be rather different from what I imagined once I actually had the devices.

An example was my previous phone, the Nokia N80, which I chose specifically because at that time had the highest-resolution screen on a 3G phone. (I don’t think the iPhone was out yet, but in any event the iPhone’s lack of swappable battery was a show-stopper for me, and still is. Or so I imagine.) My plan was to use it to access my online job system while out and about. As it happened, the lack of a real keyboard was more of a problem, and I ended up taking my MacBook Pro pretty much everywhere anyway. Tossing it in a backpack didn’t seem to be a drama.

But, I certainly wouldn’t back the Kindle to necessarily be the device that survives in this niche. A lot depends on what Apple have been negotiating behind the scenes. The article you linked to suggests that deals with newspapers are well advanced (although, with a multi-purpose device that is something like an oversized iPhone, I’d have thought you’d just read the free web content…but maybe these deals are part of the grand News Corporation plan to start charging for content). But, a big question is what deals they get with book publishers. If the do not launch with an extensive range of book titles available, the Kindle and the Nook get a lifeline. Still, in the short-term at least I do see a few advantages that the Kindle would have over the Tablet. The first is the old chestnut of battery life. With wireless turned off, the electronic paper format allows use of the Kindle for up to two weeks. There is no way (yet) that an LCD screen could match that, particularly if 3G and wifi (and probably GPS and Bluetooth) is more likely to be left on in the Tablet as it would be a multi-purpose device. The second (possibly even more temporary) is that the Kindle is very readable in bright light in a way that my iPhone (and other LCD devices) still are not.

But, as you say, this is quite likely to give the Kindle and the Nook a window of at most a couple of years. Since I resolutely stuck with the iRiver for only a couple of years (after all, it supported ogg) and then relented and switched to the iPod when later generations clearly surpassed the iRiver (in all but ogg support), I could well imagine being sorely tempted to switch from the Kindle a couple of years down the track (if not sooner).