Personally, I prefer one of these.

But as to the backlight issue, e-ink is opaque, which is pretty much why it's so much more readable when there's light. But that also means backlighting doesn't work, and there's no real good way of front-lighting a huge display without adding significant depth. So, disregarding battery life, there's a technical obstacle to putting effective illumination in a marketing-compliant form factor.

I didn't see a mention of the Kindle price drop -- it's $300 now, which puts it in eligibility range for me. The big wow factor is of course wireless delivery anywhere in the US, and it appears from my research that you can get the kind of books available from Gutenberg delivered wireless for free as well -- can anyone confirm that?

You can definitely have zillions of free books on your Kindle, which is important to cheapskate me. And if you hear about an interesting book, you may easily be able to buy a copy for $9.99 and be reading it five minutes from now. As with much of the best tech, it speeds up a person's whole lifestyle, by eliminating the wait between wanting to read something and reading it.

The no-backlight issue is not a biggie for me. I have a lot of regular books that also don't have backlights, yet I use them. And I have a special feature in my house -- it comes with switches that allow one to turn on electric lights anywhere, instantly! That is very handy, and I recommend it. I also have one of those portable bookreader clip-on lights that I imagine would work.

So, I'm considering getting a Kindle.

You can "push" ebooks to your Kindle by emailing Amazon at $0.15 per MB, but there are a couple of ways to "pull" ebooks over Whispernet without paying any charges. Both FeedBooks and MobileRead have catalogues of MOBI ebooks that can be browsed and downloaded from their mobile-compatible sites using the Kindle's web browser (or the browser on a N8X0/770 for that matter). They also both have a "download guide" which is a MOBI ebook that contains their catalogue - click on a link when reading the catalogue to download the ebook. This also works with FBReader on a N8X0/770. These two sites have hundreds of customized ebooks, but ManyBooks.net has the entire Gurenberg catalogue (not as well formatted as FeedBooks or MobiileRead) available via their mnybks.net mobile portal.

Thanks for the tech update - didn't know the limitations.

I did buy a Kindle, and 100% of the Project Gutenberg books are available for free on it, and you.get them via Whispernet just fine. In fact, you can use Whispernet for lots of things; in some ways it is like purchasing a lifetime free Internet connection -- free except for the initial cost, of course.

Viewing newspapers on the Kindle is far drabber than on the N800 I'm typing on now. It makes me wish for a hybrid that uses epaper for some things and regular color for others.

The great thing about the Kindle is that there are virtually zero frustrating delays, which I encounter frequently on my N800 and N810.

Text-to-speech on the Kindle works well; the available voices completely outclass any voices you can use on a tablet. I wish I could purchase even more excellent voices on the Kindle -- I miss Serena, with her very cute British accent, which I use on my Win7 PC.

I previously used my tablets for doing a lot of reading and web browsing that I will now do on the Kindle, so that massively impacts how much I will use my tablets. I have purchased subscriptions to the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly for reading on the Kindle, and am trying out the NY Times on it as well.

You can subscribe to The Economist on the Kindle, but I already subscribe, so I probably won't use the Kindle for it.

I am already half way thru Four Days in November, a book on the JFK assassination I started yesterday after buying it for $9.99 -- fascinating. I am also reading Little Women, one of the free Gutenberg downloads I also have on my tablets.

Clarification: the browsing I say I will be doing above refers to reading the NY Times, not 'real' browsing, which I think the Kindle wouldn't handle well, though I did manage Tweeting on it.