THE KINDLE DX starts shipping tomorrow, which reminds me that I promised some thoughts on travel with my regular-sized Kindle. Overall, I’m quite happy. It’s as readable as a paperback book, but more portable. Battery life is good — I took the (quite compact) charger with me, but it probably would have lasted the trip without it. It saves a lot of weight on travel, since I usually pack at least 2 or 3 fat paperbacks, and often more. With the Kindle you can take a lot more along, without a weight penalty.

Downsides: You have to turn it off when the airplane is taking off or landing, which sucks. I am, overall, disappointed with the selection of available books — it sounds like there are a lot, but when you go looking for specific things you discover that there are still a lot of books that aren’t available on the Kindle. It’s expensive — drop a paperback in the water and you’ve ruined a $6.99 book. Drop the Kindle and you’ve ruined a much more expensive gadget. That, in turn, makes me just a little bit less likely to take it along in iffy situations. And the Amazon “Whisper Net” wireless service doesn’t work outside the United States.