Brian - you make perfect sense, and it is indeed quite a lot of money to spend on a gadget.

To me, the Kindle really is not interesting for people who enjoy sitting at home and reading a good book the old fashioned way. Electronics simply can not replace the look and feel of a "real" book.

The power of the Kindle comes from the ability to buy a book anywhere you want. There are no monthly fees involved with the device, and the cost of downloading your book is included in the book purchase.

The Kindle is perfect if you are stuck at the airport, or in a hotel room and need a new book to read.

Yes; a Dell Mini 9 will do e-books, but good luck keeping that thing going for more than a few hours. The Kindle does not use any power except when you download a book or change pages. When the e-ink display is working, pages are static, and don't drain the battery.

Also, the device is easier to carry around than a normal PC or netbook, there is no reboot involved, no patching or anything else that takes the fun out of reading a book.

If you read a lot of books, then the $359 investment is fairly easy to justify, as it saves on shipping costs, saves on the price of overpriced books at the airport or local book store and saves gas which you'd waste driving to the library or book store.

The Kindle also offers newspapers, magazines and blog access.