I love the Kindle!  I read my first full-length book over Thanksgiving, and it was a great experience.  At first, you're aware of the device, which is a little distracting, but after a while, you forget about it completely.

The e-ink screen is amazing!  Everyone I show the screen to, whether geek or technophobe, agrees that they could read off of it.  It really does look like gray paper.  Sure, v2 could have some better contrast, or maybe even color, but v1 is perfectly fine.  As with a book, the more surrounding light you have, the better.  You can't really understand how different it is from a laptop until you see it for yourself.

Positives

• Screen - again, e-ink is awesome!
• Book availability - Amazon already has tons of books available, with more coming all the time.
• Wireless - it's so convenient to have wireless built in, with no fees.  Downloading book sample chapters is great, and I subscribe to my local newspaper, so it's just there every morning!  Every once in a while, I also look something up on the web.
• Form - with it in the included book-like insert, it looks and feels just like a book.

Negatives

• I'd love for wireless to be controlled with something other than a switch.  It'd be nice to set it to time out, or to only be on when it's plugged in.  If you forget and leave it on, your battery life goes from weeks to a couple of days.
• The battery cover comes off easily when in the included book-like insert, since the insert uses an indention on the battery cover to keep the device in place.  Annoying.
• You're not going to write novels with the keyboard.
• Newspapers and other periodicals don't include images.  To be fair, this is stated on the Amazon web site in the fine print.  Hopefully this will change one day.
• Bibles, while usable, have limitations.  You get a chapter list as links at the top of every book in the Bible, and once you navigate to the chapter, you can't see what chapter and verse you're at.  The Kindle seems hardwired for page numbers, and that's it.
• Expensive.  Yes, this is obvious, but it still needs to be in the list.

Bottom line

The negatives are more like nitpicks of any v1.0 device.  This device is great as-is!  If you read a lot, you owe it to yourself to investigate this device!  It is expensive, and you'd have to read a lot of books to get a decent ROI, but the convenience is worth something in and of itself.