As much as I love paper books, with the advent of electronic paper the readability issues of a backlit screen are solved, and they are now just as readable as a real book. Nostalgia and the decorative aspects of a physical collection, the ability to resell your books, and the ability to buy cheaper used books remain as the only advantages against digital. But in some cases the digital versions will be cheaper (e.g. for me in Costa Rica paper books are more expensive) and with digital stores you will have a much larger selection.
So with all that in mind, the competition for the Kindle is mainly the competing offerings from Sony and Barnes and Noble with Google Books eventually being a possible winner in this category. Right now, the Barnes and Noble offering seems to be the closest competitor (but it's brand new) as they also are negotiating the free cell data connections and they also have a solid book store backing their offering but most of all they are using an open EPUP standard for e-books instead of Amazon's proprietary offering. Depending on how the litigation against Google Books goes, it too might be a strong contender for your digital collection. They'll likely serve as an online archive for your books and sell you digital books in an open format that lets you pick the reader.
My niece has a Kindle and I have to say I was surprised to find it a very comfortable way to read. I especially liked the feature of enlarging text (I'm getting to the age of needing reading glasses) and changing the background to be visible in different light. I like that you can "bookmark" a passage for reference and easily find it at a later date. I would love a Kindle if I still traveled often -
https://myswitcheroo.com/ They seem to still have a pronounced investment in glossy paper and, except for the journals which are on tne internet, the bulk of their pubs are still paperback. I think that most tech society pubs are that way.
