Seems that Amazon's new Kindle is garnering a lot of press and blog reviews.  Personally, I feel that Kindle will be yet another DOA ebook effort.  No one has succeeded before and I'm not sure why exactly that folks think Kindle is the magic bullet beyond the fact that it has Amazon's name behind it.  Sony's now forgotten ebook (I can't even remember the name) has fallen off the radar make already after a lot of initial "the ebook has arrived" hype.

My biggest issue is the cost of the device and the ongoing cost of reading.  I plop down a few hundred dollars for just the device.  Say its $300 bucks, for most casual readers, that is at least 30 books right there.  More if you are a B&N member like me and save at least 10% on every purchase - ok, I've signed up a few too many years in a row and the marketing spiel has stuck in my head.  But even bigger than that is the fact that I pay the exact same amount (if not more) for an ebook that I do for a real book.  $9.99 for an ebook that I also need to make sure has a good charge so I can read it and it more delicate and less portable than the "old world" version? 

I don't get it.  Now there may be some esoteric ebooks out there that are cheaper than the hard copy version, but again, for the frequent but casual reader (someone who is always reading at least one "mainstream" book at a time) what is the value prop.  I don't re-read a lot of books anymore.   The ones I really like I put on a shelf to collect dust, others I pass on to friends if they were decent or send to the trash if it wasn't.  So for about a dollar less I get a reading experience I can take anywhere, is extremely durable (I beat the crap out of my books), requires no up front investment, and has zero power dependency.  There would be absolutely nothing worse than getting on a three and a half hour flight to Seattle to find out I had forgotten to charge my ebook the night before! 

So my verdict - Yawn.