[Greg Anos]

I think it's a philosophical issue.

1. Do you want a bunch of single purpose gadgets with no flexibility between gadgets.

2. Do you value the gadget higher than the data used by it.

The popular trend is to have a single, multipurpose gadget (read - smart phone) for everything. It does nothing well, but everything well enough to limp along.

Such a gadget will never have enough internal memory for all the data, external storage is a must. (Or you continually waste your time loading and unloading data.)

But at the same time, what parameters do you want on your multi-function gadget? Some people place a higher value on battery life, and are willing to give up some of the multifunctions (full motion video and web browsing, for example).

For such a gadget, an SD chip is optimal. You want to store more stuff? Buy a bigger chip. They're riduclously expensive right now, but you can buy a 1/2 Terabyte (512 GB) full-size SD chip. That would hold my audio library and my ebook library, on one chip, with lots of storage left over. The gadget then becomes an expendable...Any brand, any size, just as long as they will handle your chip, and you basic file structure. (Which is the opposite of the "walled garden" approach of multiple vendors...

But if all you want is a single function, totally non-flexible gadget, and are happy with the "walled garden" approach, then the Kindle is perfect.