DH bought me the Amazon Kindle for Christmas. It is the coolest gift ever, and the perfect gift for an obsessive compulsive reader like me!

It has free 3G wireless and can download books, newspapers, periodicals, and even surf the Internet from anywhere. The screen is the size of a real book, lightweight and about the same thickness as an Ipod. It can store up to 50 books!

Most books are $9, but all of the classics are free, and there are a lot of books for .99. I love that I can carry  several books that I am reading around, and read them anywhere privately with no book cover that tells whether I am reading a steamy romance, mystery novel, or self help book!

Bonus - no more boxes of all of my used books crammed under every bed in the house! 

Great if you travel, too!  What a great gift! 

Jen, that is an interesting discussion.

Our school district provides macbooks to all 9-12'th grade students. The digital versions of all of their textbooks are available with the school password through the publishers website, as well as study guides and other reference materials.

10'th grade DS rarely ever brings his actual books home. I do see both pro's and con's to this. Pro - maybe this generation will avoid back problems associated with carrying around 30 pounds of books all of the time. : ) With the laptop students have access to all of their classroom materials anywhere - no more "oh, I can't do my homework because I forgot my book." or "I forgot to write down the assignment."

Con's - I just don't know if the information sinks in the same way when reading it on a computer screen vs. reading the actual book. Plus there are so many other distractions, you know the students always have IM or Itunes running in the background, which makes it easy to just skim without really absorbing the lessons.

For those reasons, I think the kindle would be a better alternative to digital textbooks than the online textbooks our students are using. I find reading on the kindle is the same as the actual book, being the same size of the book, etc.

My husband bought one for himself and loves it.  The big loss is to the library, because they are no longer receiving any more donations of his hard backs.

Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle - now $189!
Here's a link in case you want to check it out!

I think the Kindle was one of the very best gifts DH ever bought me. Since I got it at Christmas I have read over 20 books, and countless magazine articles, blogs, etc.

It was the best possible thing to have during my long hospital stay too. I keep it in my purse, so whenever I am stuck waiting somewhere I always have something to read.

I love that no matter where you are, you can always download something new, and that you can have a ton of different books and magazines all on the device at the same time.

After 7 months, I seriously cannot come up with anything negative about it. Even the top retail price that DH paid at the time has been re-cooped in the amount of $ saved in free books, and the discounted price of new wireless books!

I  my Kindle!