Kindle's value is not the hardware; the hardware is average. The value is being able to make any book you want show up on the screen in 60 seconds.<p>I suppose you can use Bittorrent to get the books, but that is inconvenient and not nice to the authors. I agree that Amazon's DRM is annoying, but it is very easy to remove if you are morally opposed. (Sometimes I am in the mood to read on the computer, so I break the DRM for that.)<p>The hardware itself is also hackable. Jesse Vincent has written some software for the Kindle that lets you view any ebook on it; not just Amazon's.
A review:
<a href="http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/15/new-e-reader-txtr-germanys-answer-to-the-kindle/" rel="nofollow">http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/15/new-e-reader-txtr-germa...</a><p>And according to txtr's site, it is going to cost about 319 Euros - <a href="http://reader.txtr.com/en/" rel="nofollow">http://reader.txtr.com/en/</a>