Comments on: Get a Kindle 2 for $299. Or, better yet...

...don't. While the price drop is encouraging, the Kindle is still overpriced for what it offers. Fortunately, there are two cheaper e-book alternatives worth considering.

[Inconnux]

$50 max for a black and white text reader... kindle is the biggest ripoff tech gadget ever made. buy a decent netbook and get 100x the functionality.

[depot84]

I guess I am not really the one to ask how much i would pay because I bought the damn thing at 359. But, that said, I absolutely LOVE my kindle 2. It is a great device and yes I use it simply for reading. I agree with someone further up who said discount it to sell more books like gillette does with razors and blades. I have the kindle app on my iphone and love that the devices sync to each other. I think if it were 49 or 99 dollars as some people suggested though would it still be a quality product or would I feel it was being held together by baling wire and hope?

[SLSLR]

Wanted a Kindle or similar (being in the UK we're pretty much stuck with the Sony 500 Reader) to read comic books on - didn't like the idea of a monochrome screen though. Went with a Toshiba slim-line digital picture frame - absolutely awesome, perfect visuals and I can even read books on it!

[moshelinho]

if i buy a device on which i can do nothing but read books, i will pay a max of $200...

[jbcahill]

I own an iPhone, Laptop and a Kindle 2.

Reading books on an Iphone/Ipod touch is great if you are in your twenty's and have eyes like a hawk. I am 47, wear glasses and do a tremendous amount of reading. Reading on the IPhone/Ipod...no thanks...been there done that about went blind. The devices are to small.

Laptops/Netbook....crappy battery life, LCD screen washes out in outdoor light.

Kindle. For me this has turned out to be the perfect device. The lower cost of ebooks compared with their dead tree brethren has paid for the Kindle with the money I have saved. Free 3G wireless in the Kindle. They could have sold the Kindle at a lower price then required you to get in a 2 yr data contract. No thanks. I can read outside under my shade tree and the screen if perfectly readable. Battery life will sustain the Kindle for three days (for me) with the wireless on...2 weeks with the wireless off. Kindle is light and compact and easy to carry anywhere.

I get it that for some people the Kindle isn't for them. But for a lot of us it was a long time coming.

[moshelinho]

if i buy a device on which i can do nothing but read books, i will pay a max of $200...

[saracnet]

An iphone is fine if you already have it for other purposes -- and don't mind the high monthly fee -- and don't read that much -- and don't mind small text. My 89 year old grandmother, who stole my first kindle, loves the kindle precisely because she can make the text nice and big. I can't see reading much on a netbook -- I have one, but it is not as comfortable to read for a long period of time and battery life is also a major issue. And it doesn't come with free internet access.

[sodapop2k9]

My 78 year old mom loves her Kindle. The iPhone is too small for her eyes. Additionally, in the $300 price you get free wireless to download and archive books for life and free online storage. Just to read a one book on an iPhone I have spend $100-300 for the hardware and about $2000 for the phone+data service. No to mention while people like me love all-in-one devices, we usually find that a multi-purpose device is never a master in one function. We end up using multiple computers, phones, camera, data devices etc. anyway.

The value of the Kindle is not that it's a mediocre Swiss Army knife, but that its an entire library in the palm of your hand - specifically designed for reading. Reading off the iPhone and computer screens is too hard.

Another antidote is that my dad had a subscription to a printed news magazine who suddenly converted to digital. My dad isn't going to read the article off the computer because its too uncomfortable. Reading long passages of text require something other than a 2 inch screen or a computer screen.

[tscott]

I am using Kindle on my I-touch. Started out with light background and dark text, then switched to dark background with light text. Any way to get back to light background?

[MDB808]

I read ebooks with Stanza (or occasionally Kindle, if the ebook is only availible through Amazon, or I have Amazon gift certificates to burn but Stanza is my ereader of choice. Of course, Amazon just bought them, which is where the Kindle app got it's improved features...) on my iTouch and I love it. I can read with the lights on or off, and it fits in one hand and I can still turn the pages. An iPhone might be a bit big for that, especially depending on the case.

With my iTouch, I'm not locked into buying from Amazon. Yeah, I can't download wirelessly anywhere, but I can load up a whole lot of books while I'm at home or use any of the increasingly-common free hotspots that are around many major cities. There are also several websites with direct links in Stanza to downlad thousands of classics for free. No limits that I'm aware of.

BTW, Stanza + Calibre (a desktop program that manages your ebook library and makes transfer of ebooks to your iTouch easy) FTW. Seriously.