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As some may have guessed, a Kindle 2 is on its way to me.

I've previous said that the Kindle only interested me if it was $299 or less, and then went on to say "if it's free, and only then." ((Which is pretty much the same as this comment: "Unless someone gives me a $359 Amazon gift card that expires in ten minutes, I'll pass."))

I took advantage of the fact that, as a freelancer, I can set my rates at whatever I like. When I'm bored, I'll sometimes do favors for friends and ask nothing in return. To make a long story short, I did about eight hours of work over two uneventful, non-busy days, and I got a Kindle 2 and a cover out of it. The work I did was worth $400 to my friend, and suffice to say it was worth giving the Kindle 2 a shot. ((Effectively, since my friend would have been just as happy to give me $400, I rationalized it to myself as "well you're not really losing anything, and you're gaining a Kindle 2. I effectively set my hourly rate at whatever I'd pay for a Kindle 2 divided by eight. So I worked for somewhere between $12 and $25/hour. :-D))

I still like books. Physical books with color or at least >16 colors of grey for the various illustrations it may have. I like physically having books - I don't feel like I'm risking $400 when I read in the bathtub ((Yeah yeah, I take baths.)) and I can loan them or even give them to people when I'm done.

But I also like money, so it will be interesting to see what types of books I choose to buy on the Kindle. After all, the majority of my books, I've realized, I do not loan out.

I'd like to think I can read the Kindle 2 in bed at night, but that seems unlikely. I wish they'd put a little USB port at the top with some clips to allow a little reading light to attach, because the nightstand lamp is too bright for my wife's comfort.

I'd like to think I'll carry the Kindle from room to room so it's always with me, but I fear I'm going to end up leaving it in one place. I further fear that the place I end up leaving it is the bathroom. 😛

I doubt I'll use text-to-speech much, but I find it incredibly lame that Amazon caved to the writers, whose even lamer claim I wish Amazon had simply laughed at. Couldn't Amazon have claimed prior art and cited the fact that the writers have never gone after Mac OS X for its text-to-speech engine?

All that said, I'm looking forward to experimenting. Some people have said they read more with the Kindle. I'd always like to read more, but rarely have the time.

I'm curious to see how easy the screen is to read (it seems fine - I doubt I'll be disappointed). I'm curious to see how much I resent the keyboard taking up as much space as it does. I'm curious to see whether I actually use any of the web features, the dictionary (I have a fairly large vocabulary), the annotation (perhaps for golf tips?), and so on.

More thoughts tk…