Thursday saw the latest monthly meet of Linux users in and around Chester; its Liverpudlian counterpart to follow this Wednesday. A member of each has recently added to their gadgetry a popular proprietary electronic book reader, the Kindle from onile retailer Amazon.

The thin, “revolutionary wireless reading device” aims to bring books into the digital age, both at leisure and on the move. A user purchases texts from Amazon’s online store or transfers DRM-free PDF documents to the device to read on it’s non-glare, paper-simulate screen. The wireless networking and 3G mobile Internet features are both free and world-wide, attractive to techies and non-techies alike to provide new and previously purchased material instantly, along with full Internet access on the go. Amazon even foot the 3G bill in the hope of re-cooperating enough from store purchases. All in all, the Kindle - and other eBook readers I dare say - is rather tempting to commuters and those wanting to travel light, taking all the good bits of a good book and rounding off the inconveniences of a cumbersome paper companion with modern technology.

Sounds too good to be true? Possibly. I’ve recently reopened James Fray’s a million little pieces, and soon to start its sequel, my friend leonard. Both are available to buy as eBooks but for double what I paid for my second-hand paperbacks. Also on my reading list are crime fiction novels from Christopher Brookmyre and Jonathan Kellerman, only a selection of which are available electronically. Somewhat expected given they are hardly world-renowned classics! As are most of my personal PDFs, technical references that quickly become irrelevant as technology progresses. To compound this, any future downloads would be in the proprietary AWZ format, which may restrict me in the future should Amazon decide to lock-down. On the plus side, they can be read on other devices like my netbook and my Android mobile phone through Amazon’s Kindle application (which is sadly not available for Linux).

So: the perfect travelling companion if it can give you what you want. Until the issues are resolved, I’ll stand by my trusty netbook for a good balance of power and portability, alongside my paperbacks for availability and financial realism.

The turning point? Perhaps it is one already on the horizon: daily newspapers. When done with my book, I regularly read the… easy on the mind Metro and regional daily Manchester Evening News during my lunch-break or on the train home from work. If these were delivered to a Kindle everyday for a negligible amount alongside my livre du jour, I would become again interested. The Financial Times, Independent and others are already published in this way through a subscription, but I personally doubt my selection are considering such a distribution given they are already free and widely available. To those I say: prove me wrong.