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Originally Posted by rflashman
Very good points. Might want to consider also, what is the practical lifespan of said product. I read somewhere that IPODs only last two years in consumer hands, before the bulk of puchasers have upgraded/replaced. I can see something similar for the Kindle. Assuming yearly product upgrades, most users would upgrade/replace after the 2nd major upgrade. This is a world of throwaway electronics.
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That's a tough call. On the one hand, this is probably a market less inclined to fads so having the latest and greatest style may not be as much of a motivation, but we're still at the point where the actual features are getting better at a pretty good rate, so people may be inclined to upgrade before the product fails.
My Dad got his iPod 5 years ago and it just died. Most people I know with iPods aren't like Dad. They've upgraded 2-3 times and sometimes have more than one. They want whatever the new thing is even though the old thing has pretty much the same feature set. I'm more like Dad as I would suppose many of us here are. If this were a mature technology like the iPod, I would expect to have it 5 years. But real feature improvements do seem to turn our heads and those seem to be coming at a good rate. I look at some of the lovely screen improvements they're working on and if one of those came out in a year, I might just cave. DH figures he'll inherit this Kindle when the next gen comes out. At least it would still be in service.