[ATDrake]

Well, if you're referring to the 1984 incident wherein Amazon wirelessly deleted from their customers' Kindles a book that legal to be sold in Australia but not yet public domain in the US, then the kerfuffle over that was such that Amazon promised never to do that again and gave the affected owners compensatory gift certificates.

It makes things interesting when there's an updated (more typo-free) version of a book available and there's this entire dance wherein their Customer Service contacts you to tell you about the update and you contact them back to say that yes, you really do want the newer and hopefully more error-free version.

Nevertheless, I'd still back up all my purchases offline.

As for the Kindle itself, I'm generally satisfied with my K2i. It's not as fancy as an iPad, but it does the one thing it's supposed to do fairly well.

It is somewhat limited in the file formats it supports, and if you're buying anything off Amazon you'll have to find a place which sells DRM-free books, unless you/your dad are willing to strip any copy-protection (may not be legal even for personal use on purchased items in your locale) and convert, if necessary. But this is generally fairly easy to do, even with very modest computer skills.

And if your dad likes the classics, then Project Gutenberg and many other public domain repositories (including the forums here) make them available completely free of charge.

The Kindle has a useful dictionary function (you can buy and switch to other dictionaries if you don't like the one installed), can also play audio books in mp3 and Audible formats, allows text-to-speech on most titles, and can make highlights and take notes and do some limited web browsing.

You can load up your own books and personal documents and are not limited to just what Amazon sells you. They also supply a free conversion service for popular file formats (optional pay version to send the converted files directly to the Kindle via wireless) so that they can be read on the Kindle.

Amazon recently did major price drops on all the models, introduced the new "graphite" DX (with improved screen contrast), and there are rumours of a Kindle 3 Real Soon Now.

However, two things to beware of:

1) For bizarre and unfathomable reasons, the DX has the Next/Back navigation buttons only on the right-hand side (on the K2, both sides have a Next button). So if your dad is left-handed or otherwise has difficulty with using his right, then this may become annoying if he ends up having to flip the DX over to use it, especially if he wants to type on the keyboard while he reads.

2) If your account is registered with a billing/shipping address outside the US, then for non-free (i.e., not zero-cost public domain or time-limited promotional freebies), there is a $2 Whispernet fee included in the cost of the book (listed in the price, which will appear to be $2 more than the same book in the Kindle US store). You can get around this in various ways, but again it's one of those things that might have to be taken into consideration.

However, there are a *lot* of promotional freebies made available every week. While they're mainly evangelical Christian fiction and fairly explicit romance, every so often the big name publishers will offer some thrillers, mysteries, sf/fantasy, and historical/general literary fiction, especially when they're trying to promote a particular author's latest release by offering an older title in a series for free.

So this may be considered a value-add for some people. Mind you, one could also download them via the Kindle for iPad app.

As for the iPad, I'd say that it's a very appealing general-use device.

With it, once you have the various stores' reader apps installed, your dad will be able to pick and choose whatever he likes from the Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and probably Sony Reader ebook stores, to name the majors.

So if pricing/availability of certain ebooks is potentially an issue, then the iPad will give you the widest selection, with less of a "buyer lock-in" to any one store, if that's a concern.

Plus you can get apps to do a tonne of other things.

However, it may be too complex a device if he just wants to read books on it and doesn't need multi-function. And also it's said that the backlit LCD screen is much harsher on the eyes than e-Ink, and one might not be able to adjust the colours/contrast on some of the reader apps.

I suggest you ask your dad to see what, if anything, he wants out of an e-reader and pick whatever seems to best suit his expectations.

Hope this helps.