This is my first post here, so I'm sorry if it is a little off the wall. A co-worker has a Kindle and just seeing it has gotten my attention. I am currently using my Eee PC as my e-reader and just about everything else I do away from work. I've read all the reviews and I the main thing holding me back is non-fiction book prices. Fiction are mostly less than $10, but technical books are only a couple of $ less than paper price. I have a wall of computer books in my office that I would hate to lose! However, I have gotten to the point that I have to really need/want a computer book at $50+ to buy it. If the electronic versions on the Kindle were $10 or $15 I would have already bought a Kindle and a bunch of technical e-books. I guess enough are selling that there is no incentive to lower the prices.

Anybody have an explaination of the difference in the price of Fiction eBooks vs. technical eBooks?

The cost of production, and the very limited number of sales.

Publishers - reputable ones at least - do hugely more work with non-fiction books than they do with fiction. They generally send the content out for review by people knowledgeable in the field - nothing worse for a publisher's reputation than publishing a textbook with factual errors.

The cost of printing is completely trivial compared with the cost of producing a textbook. It's unreasonable to expect them to be sold for $10.

This first generation Kindle may not be so good for technical books. They haven't quite dialed in the issues with images and charts (tables).

Since your friend has a Kindle, ask them to download a free sample of a technical book you are interested in. If it looks usable to you, then you probably won't have a problem with the types of technical books you need. If not, you may have to look at something like the iLiad.