No kidding. It would take an unusual exercise of even my klutz superpowers to run over $359 worth of books with my car in one go.

If I could get my textbooks for the damfool thing, it might save me a hernia; but that would make altogether too much sense, not for Amazon indeed, but for the slime-dripping lemures of Slubgob’s brood who make procurement decisions for universities.

Wow, I think that I'd have to be having an exceptionally bad day to manage to run-over my eBook or netbook with my car: I'd probably have to drive it into the living room!

I do think that the device would be pretty good buy for someone with a need to carry-around a lot of journal articles and source books; particularly since e-ink displays are reputed to be much easier on the eyes and much less power-hungry than LCDs.

So you're counting on this to go into your briefcase, then. And as long as you keep track of it, you're avoiding the trap I outlined. If your journals are online, and your books among the 230,000 currently available from Amazon, you're in.

I'd still be happier if it came better protected.

My mistake, it does, optionally.

And I was doing such a good job of resisting it....

The "official" cover looks a bit cheap (corporate logo on the front and all); there seem to be some much more comely third-party covers available which also seem both sturdier and better designed...

For the Kindle 1
For the Kindle 2