The Kindle --

My thoughts: I'm sold, I'm in love and if everything keeps on the right pace the Kindle should entirely change the way collegiate educational systems sell books. Jeff Bezos (Amazon's founder), come here and give me hug.

Let's look at the device, then discuss how the Kindle could be one aspect that will push Amazon right through the economic downturn and how the Kindle has the potential to affect the educational system.

The Kindle is an electronic reading device that uses a technology called e-ink. E-ink makes reading an electronic device easy on your eyes. The battery on the Kindle will let it run for two weeks without a charge. It also allows you to download a book nearly anywhere, by using the Sprint PCS network (a possible saving grace for a slowly dying Sprint). On the Kindle one can email pdf's to the device for reading, surf wikipedia, and browse most of their favorite blogs. It also allows you to add annotations to pages, search through entire books (a favorite feature of mine) and with the Kindle 2.0 you can have it read to you.

From a nerd perspective it's the little things. When I'm reading in the morning eating my Coco Puffs, I continually find myself fighting to keep the book open to the page I'm reading. New books always seem to want to shut. With the Kindle, the book is always open and a page turn is one quick button push.  I also appreciate when I'm discussing a book to a friend; I'm able to run a quick search and pull up the exact excerpt from the book.  Finally, when I see a book I want, I download it in little over a minute.   No driving to the book store (assuming they have it in stock), no waiting for the book in the mail and best of all it was considerably cheaper than buying the book new, in most cases half price.

What excites me most are the possibilities for the Kindle. If universities start to adopt the Kindle (UPDATE: After the release of the Kindle DX Jeff B. has announced they will be working with universities as early as this fall), it could be revolutionary. Since most books purchased on the Kindle are half off, the device will pay for itself in two semesters under normal course load, possibly one. Students will not have to carry 3 or 4 books along with a laptop to various classes throughout the day simply a laptop and a Kindle. No more waiting in long lines at the book store. 1 click for each book you want and you're done. Being a grad student and working full time means I have to step out during lunch to get my books, a one click option would be a nice time savings for me.

Examining the Kindle from a financial perspective gives Amazon a positive outlook. Imagine every university adopting the Kindle in the same way every college student adopted iPods. Amazon.com would be the iTunes music store of the book industry. Setting the bar for digital distribution and providing the platform for Amazon to break into the hardware industry.  All these aspects build upon Amazon's core competences while staying with it's strategy of delivering books cheaply and easily. Wallstreet felt the same way I did and Amazon saw a 10 point stock jump when rumors of the new Kindle started to circulate a week before it's release.