Hi I'm new to gadgeteer and my eyes were immediately drawn to this review on Kindle... I live outside of US (Asia) so I'm unable to get a Kindle to try it out, and having read your review just makes me want one even more.... so much envy...

Anyway, I'd like to know if as an international user, can I say ask a friend from US to purchase a device then send it to me so I can simply buy kindle books from my own Amazon account? I figure if that can be done then I'll just use USB to transfer the book from PC to Kindle. I've heard of rumors that buying Kindle books will require the buyer to be actually living in US... is that true?

I'm very interested in this device not because just out of personal curiosity, but also that I'm in the textbook business here and we've been trying to study the potential effect of incorporating Kindle into the industry. It's very exciting really, but I'm with some of the posters above that this device is a bit too expensive, though counter argument might be that it's just the buying habits of students nowadays as they'd spend 400~500 (or even more) dollars on a new cell phone, but not 30, 40 dollars on textbooks. I don't know what it's like in the US, but that's pretty common here.

Lastly just want to say this is a wonderful review; you've covered a lot of important information about the device which basically is what I think any pre-Kindle owner would want to know about. Thanks.