Go to the Kindle page and you'll find that, at the moment, it says: "Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out." It should be "in stock on December 3".
We don't know how many there were, of course, but the device already has an impressive 541 customer reviews, including some from beta testers. Less impressively, the average rating is about 2.5 stars, and more people have given it one star (189) than five (110).
There's also plenty of discussion at Amazon's new Wireless Reading Device forum.
Kindle is the subject of today's GU Technology front cover story, Can Amazon wean us off paper? It has also been reviewed by David Pogue at The New York Times (An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On).
Pogue likes the fact that "All of your reading material, and even your notes, bookmarks and clippings, is automatically backed up on Amazon.com. You can delete stuff when the Kindle gets full, confident that you can download it again later." He also has criticisms, too, but says:
So if the Kindle isn't a home run, it's at least an exciting triple. It gets the important things right: the reading experience, the ruggedness, the super-simple software setup. And that wireless instant download -- wow.
The next version should be cheaper and better. If so, there's a chance that ebooks might finally take off.
