Ahhhh. Gotcha.

I thought Amazon's advertising was duplicious.

They compared the cost of an Amazon Kindle book with the similar printed book at full price whereas Amazon sold the same printed book at a discount too. This made the kindle version much less of a bargain. Its big remaining advantage was of course instant download.

As it happens...
 

...SWMBO went ahead and bought the Kindle (with the wifi bit) and is well pleased with it. She found it easy to log it into the network here and has successfully downloaded half a dozen books so far. She has used it whilst reading in bed and is now happy for me to put out the light on my side of the bed so that I can get to sleep. Hurrah!
She also couldn't believe the snippy tone of some of the p8sts above and asked "Is it like this all the time?"

The Ancient Mariner

There are quite a few lending libraries lending E-Books for free nowadays, but the Kindle apparently wont download them, the Sony PRS 650 does though. But then it's nearly £100 more. :(

I have a PRS-600, which I think is more or less the same as a PRS-650.

Super device, lasts about a week on a charge, easy to read, and will handle just about every eBook format except for Mobipocket (which is pretty much defunct now) or Kindle (which just means I don't buy my ebooks from a certain south American aquatic source). On long overseas trips, I can buy and download new books easily also, which is great when running out of reading matter in non English speaking countries (and saves a lot on baggage allowances).

Handles MSWord/RTF files very well, PDFs variable, and Adobe ePub fantastically well. With a standard SD card in the slot, holds about 200 books (or equivalent).

It works in a cockpit fairly well, although I've not yet tried loading approach plates and checklists onto it - an experiment to be had eventually. No RF/bluetooth/Wifi/etc. connection which is more help than hindrance in the air - you know it can't possibly try and interfere with anything - it charges and connects to your PC on a USB. Also not having its own Wifi/3G it can't have a mind of its own either - nobody controls it but me.

The PC software provided for moving books back and forth is absolutely horrible, but works, just.

My main whinge about it is the variability of pdf handling - some work really well, but scientific conference papers (which for my sins I have to read a lot of) with figures, graphs, diagrams in can often be a real struggle - and on one occasion it just crashed altogether at a really tough one.

Also useful for taking meeting notes, and fits in a jacket pocket very well.

For those who like such things, it's also an MP3 player, although I've never used it as such.

There are a lot of independent eBook retailers nowadays - although it pays to shop around since they aren't consistent in their pricing. You can usually get the latest bestsellers easily, and then a randomish spread of older stuff. Project Gutenberg is brilliant for a near-infinite selection of free out-of-copyright books.

If you just want something iPad-ish, without paying an obscene amount of money to Apple, go onto ebay and search on the phrase "Android Tablet" - you'll get a range of nice little devices, using a Google operating system, connecting as required via USB or Wifi, and lasting 3-4 hours on a charge, that work really well. You can download a free Kindle reader for those, and they'll take a mouse and keyboard via USB, which an iPad won't, and nor will any ebook device. However, the big disadvantage (to me) is the 3-4 hour battery life, versus the 7-10 day battery life of my Sony, and presumably the Kindle and other similar devices.

G

The Kindle, and especially the Kindle DX, is the best product out there as a book reader but is limited for aviation and most other use by not supporting directories ("folders" in windoze-speak).

This makes it very hard to browse large numbers of files e.g. PDFs of approach plates.

The Ipad does a much better job of this but has two issues: it cannot be dimmed sufficiently for night flight, and it suffers badly from reflections within the cockpit if flying in sunshine.

Don't see anything underhand about that at all.. merely illustrates that Amazon is generally cheaper for both printed and electronic books than other retailers.

The Kindle books are by and large, on comparison, cheaper than other formats. The advertising seems fairly honest to me.