As a software developer, I usually have a laptop with me wherever I go, so that is an option for me most of the time. I also have a PDA, so I use it most of the time for reading books. The PDA has a TFT display on it, so it is minimally readable in bright sunlight, but that's better than any of the laptops that I have ever had. The PDA is pretty good for reading in bed before falling asleep since it has a backlight and it will go dim if I haven't turned a page within a certain amount of time, thus working fairly well with my habit of falling asleep while reading a book. A laptop is just a bit too bulky to use to read a book in bed. I have been tempted to get a Kindle, just for the readability of it in daylight. As a software developer, I can see a use for it in having various manuals and notes on a separate device that is not tied to the laptop that I might be using which could be in the process of being rebooted due to software or update installations. I have downloaded the Kindle reader for my PC and used Mobipocket Creator to convert the TX approach plates from PDF to a .prc file for use in the Kindle reader and although the data appeared to be there, it just didn't look exactly the same. The Kindle has an 800x600 display, so I'm curious if it would still provide a readable approach plate. When I view the PDF on my laptop, I find it a bit to small to read in full screen mode even though with a 1366x768 screen resolution, it is nearly the same vertical resolution (768) as the Kindle (800). With my laptop, I have to change the entire document orientation just to read a page that is in portrait vs landscape mode. With something as small and light as the Kindle, I can see it being less of an issue since you could just rotate the device itself if you are holding it in your hand. If you are planning on mounting it on a yoke or kneeboard, that might be an issue if you are planning on using it for approach plates. I could see how someone might possibly find useful a yoke mount that would allow the Kindle to rotate with stop positions / detents every 90 degrees for such a situation.
With regard to a previous comment about using commercial flights and having to turn the e-book reader off during takeoffs and landings, I can see how that might be an inconvenience of any of the e-readers vs actual paper. I'm not so sure that I agree with their policy of making us turn off all of our electronic devices. I'm pretty sure that those people with electronic watches do not turn off their watches during those flight phases. In fact, I would hazard to guess that most battery powered watches do not even have the provision to be turned off without removing the back of the watch and physically removing the battery. Some of the electronic watches are a bit more full featured than others and have calculators in them and I have even seen some that have cell phones in them. I think that we need a bit more real world common sense with respect to what might cause interference. If a calculator is not expected to interfere with the cockpit avionics, then something like the Kindle should not as long as it is possible to turn off the wireless features of it. Of course from a control standpoint, it is just easier to tell people to turn off their devices than to tell them to reconfigure them so that they are not broadcasting on any RF frequency.
There are also some USENET newsgroups where people post books in various e-book formats. I've downloaded a few from there when I decided to reread a book that I already owned whose paper was starting to yellow. It's more convenient for me to read it that way than to dig out the old paperback from my storage boxes. Eventually, I figure that I'll download every paperback that I ever bought and can just throw all the old paperbacks away.
