Well to little 2 late. I don’t know how much it actually cost to build a Kindle but the price needs to be around $150 and should include at a minimum of 8GB of storage space. It doesn’t have either of these things. Also within the next 6 months the netbooks will be shipping as tablets and that will mark the end of a Kindle. Why because even though a netbook battery will only last 4 hours how often do you read more than 4 hours at a time where you are not close to electricity. Also you can cary a change of batteries.
Also with a netbook you can run several different types of browsers, RSS Readers, Email, ITunes or other media player, Stanza, Microsoft Reader, and the list goes on and on and on. Kindle and the Sony can’t survive in that market. I admit there is some appeal to me for a device that is as lite as the Sony and Kindle with a single charge that will last more than 10hours but at $359 I think I will buy a tablet netbook.
Also we are not even taking into account the effect of the IPhone. I used to use a windows mobile device to read my Baen and other books. But I got the Iphone over the summer and that by far is the most convenient of all because I am already carrying the device, so there is nothing more to carry. It is also backlit so you set it to white text on black so that it doesn’t disturb your partner while you read in bed.
Happy Reading!