OBOW reader Lise has posted an excellent field study of the Amazon Kindle e-reader in its natural environment - the first-class cabin, a place I only see while passing through:
I sat next to someone in first class with a Kindle on my last four flights. It was strange how quickly this tech has pervaded the frequent fliers. It’s the next Bose headphones by which you identify the other road warriors. On my last leg I finally asked to take a peak and the gentlemen was a real Kindle evangelist. He used to go through 4-5 paperbacks on a business trip and felt bad discarding them as he went. He also hated having to wait till his favorite authors came out in paperback vs hardback and loves paying roughly 1/2 price for books. I was disappointed at the number of shades of gray. Without color I wouldn’t use it for magazines even with the new larger size coming out tomorrow. 5 shades of gray barely does justice to graphics so I wouldn’t replace my laptop for RSS feeds, web browsing or magazines and newspapers. This leaves the bibliophiles of the world to enjoy Kindle until the color version comes out. I can’t wait, that thing was tiny and had awesome battery life.