A year ago today,
Amazon introduced the Special Offers Kindle. It was released two weeks later on 27 Apr. At first, the offers were really great and routinely dropped every four days, with some days seeing two to three offers at a time. It didn't take long for early adopters to generate enough in savings to pay for their Kindles multiple times over.
Now the offers are few and far between, and generally nothing to get excited about. Ads now predominate; especially AmazonLocal. It appears that Amazon dangled enough carrots in the beginning to get customers to buy these ad supported Kindles and now no longer feels the offers are needed to entice new buyers; with the price difference of $30-$40 between the SO vs non-SO models being sufficient enough. The SO models are now the standard.
Being an early adopter, I saved enough money to pay for my Kindle several times over. The ads don't bother me, because you have to go out of your way to see them. So overall, I'm quite pleased. If I were buying today, I'd still get a Special Offer model, but only because it's $30-$40 cheaper. I certainly wouldn't get it for the offers, because they'll never pay for the Kindle like they did in the beginning of the program.
Thoughts? How many took advantage of these models? Was it worth it? Who paid the difference to get the ads removed? Which of you don't want ads of any sort on your ereaders?