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.