If I had $359 I would buy a Kindle 2. Yesterday when I visited the amazon.com page, I was greeted by the news that they are releasing a new version of the Kindle, which will be released on February 24, 2009. To be honest, I am not exactly sure of the practical value of a Kindle 2 for an academic. I would guess that many of the books I would want to read on it would not be available. However, the idea of being able to take 1,000 books and magically make them all weight a total of 10.2 ounces is very intriguing.
The weird thing is that Kindles are always on back-order, but I have never actually seen one. I would be very interested to see what it feels like to actually hold one and read the screen. I don’t think I would want to read an entire book on my computer, but the Kindle is supposed to look more like ink on paper than a computer screen.
The Kindle certainly has me intrigued.
What are your thoughts about the Kindle? Have you seen one? Or better yet, do you have one?
Kevin M. Watson 
It is intriguing. I tend to be pretty old school when it comes to things like this though. The storage capacity is awesome, but I still like having a physical copy of the book to make notes and whatnot.
I keep thinking about getting one. If I was able to copy and paste to my computer, have highlighting, and the ability to make notes on the unit, I would buy it. Even if it allowed me to copy and paste over to my PC I would buy it. I don’t think it has this feature though.
I have yet to find a good way to get the letters off the page into my Zotero database. Copy and paste would be WONDERFUL!