Mike at Crime & Federalism was much longer winded:

The .pdf feature is what sold me on the DX rather than the Kindle 2.  The DX is larger, though.  With the Kindle 2, you must convert .pdf files.  Not everyone has had good luck with the conversion.  Most of my day is spent reading trial transcripts.  It’d be nice to take my “office” to the dog park.  Looks like that will be much easier with the DX.  I can probably justify it as a tax write off, too.  

Gushing?  Oozing love?  Well, now it’s time for Scott at Simple Justice to chime in.

Are you guys nuts?  Is there nothing new and shiny that you boys won’t buy?

Back in the olden days, we have a telephone, for which we paid rather dearly on a monthly basis.  We were always careful about who we called, and how far away they were. this was because the charge varied by calling area, some inexplicable concept that made the cost entirely different based upon how many miles the sound had to travel.  It was like the call passed through itty bitty telephone toll booths on the way to the recipient of the call.  Dial the wrong number and you could have a heart attack when the bill came.

But at least television was free.  All 7 channels, though three of them really weren’t worth much except on Sunday mornings, when the only show on was Davey and Goliath.  It was horrible, but it’s not like there was a plan B.  We managed.

Time has changed everything.  We now have cell phones, internet, cable television and all the various permutations and inter-relations thereof.  The price of a long distance call no longer matters, but then Ma Bell gave us the phone.  Today, it’s not just the cost of our monthly basic necessities, but the newest, coolest must-have hardware that makes life worth living. 

I’m perplexed.  I don’t understand how young people can afford their toys.  They still have to eat, put a roof over their heads, wear clothing and get places.  Then there are student loans.  All these things cost money, and from what I can tell, a fairly good amount of it.  But that’s just the beginning.  I see crackberries and iPhones everywhere.  And they aren’t those old, yucky iPhones from last month, but new, shiny iPhones that make their owner more virile. 

Granted, the trend toward moving into their parent’s basement may alleviate some of the financial strain, though the notion that they would happily live in mommy’s house so that they can afford a shiny toy and all the waves necessary to juice it up, flies in the face of my priorities.

I’m not a total Luddite. I’ve got a cellphone, though it doesn’t have a keyboard of any sort and I only turn it on to make outgoing calls.  My plan is the same as the one I started with, although the cellphone company has increased my minutes from 30 to 100 without raising my fee.  I’ve never come close to using them all up, and wish they would roll over.

The cable company has tried to force me to use a converter box.  And if I needed their remote control, why do the television makers include one in the box?  I’m not that easily fooled.  The same with this HD nonsense.  I’ve seen a show on regular TV and HDTV, and it looks exactly the same to me.  Of course, I don’t have HD eyes anymore.

And now Kindle.  I take it that you guys must be so well-heeled that you can’t possibly come up with ways to squander the vast wealth you’ve accumulated, because you now need to purchase a device that costs almost $500 on Amazon to, get this, read a book.  No, you still have to buy the book, but now you also have to buy the machine on which to read the book.  And buy it again when the next generation comes out, the Kindle DXX 3.2.  It’s the one that comes in colors with a sparkly exterior. 

You do realize that eventually, someone is going to come up with Kindle Green, eerily reminiscent of what your grandparents used to call “a book.”