With the plastic displays coming within the next year, all of the concerns about screen breakage will be eliminated. (Raise your hands all of you who remember when eye glasses had glass lenses.)
In a front page
post, California is in the process of requiring open sourced textbooks for high school math and science classes. Add to that the original source material for many general studies classes (and literature classes) from PG and the MobileRead download area, and the content costs trend toward zero thus allowing funds to be spent on the readers -- e-ink and traditional LCD/laptop.
I find e-ink far easier on my eyes than my LCD monitor and I find that far easier on my eyes than the old CRT monitors were. (My final CRT monitor was a b+w paperwhite monitor because it was sharper and easier on my eyes than any other then available CRT monitor that I could afford.)
I think Amazon has made a good thrust in the educational market with the KDX. I also think the KDX will do well in the business market.