Amazon Kindle Does It All -- Almost

Buying a book for the Kindle is simple: Choose the title -- your Amazon.com-registered credit card is billed ($10 for most books) and it is automatically delivered to your device, wirelessly, in less than one minute.

More than 90,000 books are available for downloading, including a huge number of the current New York Times best-sellers. Amazon lets you download a book's first chapter for a trial before you buy.

You can also subscribe to newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Le Monde and top magazines including Time, Atlantic Monthly, Fortune and Forbes -- all auto-delivered wirelessly. Prices range from $13.95 per month, or 75 cents per day, for The New York Times to $1.49 per month, or 49 cents an issue, for Time.

More than 250 top blogs are also available from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, The Onion and Huffington Post -- all updated wirelessly throughout the day.

Wireless access to Wikipedia is free. You can also email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, BMP, .PNG) to the Kindle for viewing.

During my testing, I was very impressed with what was included inside a Kindle -- and what it can do.

I downloaded a few book samples to see what it was like to read a book on an electronic device. The screen is pretty good in both subdued light and also bright sunlight. All in all the words were easy to see on the screen. Reading each page was pretty straightforward.

It was moving from page to page that annoyed me. Kindle has a scroll wheel that lets you navigate up and down each page. But, when you get to the end of that page you can't scroll to the next page. You need to press the "Next Page" button on either side of the screen to keep reading. I know that's how you read a regular book -- but because this is an electronic device you should be able to just keep reading by scrolling.

I also missed having an actual book in my hands. There's something to be said for holding a large hunk of paper. I know it's old-fashioned, but maybe I'm an old-fashioned kinda guy.

But, here's my big question for Amazon: How many people will be willing to plunk down $400 for an electronic book reader? For that matter, how many people are willing to plunk down $400 for books in any format?

I'm guessing that in these days of iPod-based entertainment, reading books will continue to have limited appeal.

But, if I'm wrong, Amazon's Kindle will be a big success and continue to sell out quickly. Personally, I'll wait for a Kindle device that will be able to stream my favorite HDTV shows in full high-fidelity surround sound -- as well as allow me to read a book electronically.

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