Good grief, Amazon just dropped the price of the Kindle 2.0 by another 40 bucks! New price: $259. And they are introducing a GSM-enabled version for only $20 more so you can download books worldwide, not just in the US. This is unbelievably aggressive, and probably partly motivated by Sony’s recent refresh of its own ebook line.
I still think that the Kindle DX is the one I want, though – the better PDF support is critical for me. But with the price drop on the mainstream Kindle, I am even less likely to buy a DX now; the price on the DX has to come down sooner or later. The only reason I need PDF support is because I will use the Kindle heavily for my academic journal reading; if not for that I’d probably have bought the Kindle the last time it dropped in price.. and be cursing about it now.
Of course, I’ve also been doing some actual reading of late, and am now a few hundred pages into Quicksilver. I can easily see how owning a Kindle would accelerate this habit. I am genuinely conflicted at night between WoW and these analog pursuits!
I bought my wife a Kindle last year and she loves it. I was originally skeptical that she/we would actually use it enough to justify the price. But it has turned out to be very handy. I’m now lobbying all relatives for a DX for Xmas this year. Just the thing to take an entire library of research white papers with you while traveling.