From what I've been hearing and reading, as a e-reader it is the best. If people want to use it to read books it does its job very well done. (people that use it please confirm this please).

I was interested in knowing if it also does good in other foelds, like reading .pdf and browsing the web.

*fields

I have Kindle. They're great for ebooks, but not so great for PDFs. They can read PDFs, just, but the experience is poor, as you have to either set the font so small that it is hard to read, or constantly move the page left or right. You can't pinch and zoom the way you can with an iPad.
The advantages:
The e-ink makes them easy on the eye - no strain.
Very light and portable - much lighter than iPad.
Awesome battery life.
I have a Kindle 2 (Kindle 3 is better obviously) and iPad, so I have the best of both worlds. The iPad is okay for reading books (especially in poor light, thanks to the back lighting), but great for PDFs and magazines.

I follow eReaders very carefully and I can say that if you're seriously into reading books, the Kindle 3 is a very solid buy.

If you've never seen eInk before, you'll be amazed at how it's exactly like reading paper. It has incredible battery life (I'm talking a month/1000 pages). Plus the fact that you can hold hundreds of books and you'll never go back to reading a paper back.

The Sony eReader is also a good buy. The Sony bookstore isn't as good as Amazon, but you also have access to Borders. I like the Sony because I'm not a huge fan of the keyboard, but that's really just nitpicking.

The B&N Nook and Nook Color are both complete garbage! Watch out for these two. I've tried them both out and was very disappointed with them.

At the moment, there really isn't any eReader that handles pdfs very well. They don't scale right and you can't flip through them very quickly. But, the Kindle 3 is probably the best of any when it comes to pdfs.

No eReader is going to surf the web well. You can probably surf wikipedia, but because of the eInk, and the very limited hardware, you won't be able to go to many sites (this one, for instance). But, if you think about it, you can't surf the web on your copy of "Moby Dick" either, so it isn't much of a loss.

The intent is to read books as primary function.

But I also have some technical books in pdf, that's why I wanted to know if it handled it...
I heard that you can send pdf's to amazon and they convert it to kindle format... true?
You have to pay for it?
Does the options dictionary and text to speech also work on pdf's?

i have a sony prs650.
It is great, even for PDFs. I am reading some books in pdf format and it handles the pdf texts really good, with page breaks where they should be and text reflowing handled perfectly. I haven't tested it with image-based pdfs tho.

No, the Kindle 3 has native pdf viewing, so you can just email the pdf to your kindle.

The tricky part with pdf's is viewing pictures. If it's a technical book, I'd suspect that you may find it very tedious if there are a lot of diagrams.

I'm not sure about the dictionary and text-to-speech on pdf.

(kindle is ok only if you are a north-american person, most services are USA- and Canada- based)

The automatic dictionary on the sony prs650 is ok.

@Wolf

The Kindle 3 comes in a 3G and a Wi-fi only version. The wifi only version should work anywhere in the world, no?

And, even if you're in the US, I still say get the wifi only version. It saves you some money and I can't imagine when you'd ever use the feature.

the wifi works but not the direct book shopping stuff that it has. At least this happens in italy.

Anyway, the kindle's native format is not what is going to be the most used in Italy (and i assume all over Europe), the ePUB format.

that's why i went for the sony's one

Yes, the sony has the advantage of being a little less restricted by DRM. I probably should have asking before but, Trood, what country are you in?

I have never tried sending my pdfs to Kindle for conversion, but I have tried conversion programs like Mobipocket Creator. The trouble with PDFs is that the formatting gets completely messed up during the conversion process: fonts, line breaks etc. Computer manuals do not convert well. I would be very surprised if the Amazon conversion from PDF process is any better.
I am not sure whether the dictionary and text to speech function work with PDFs. These never used to work with Kindle 2, but maybe Kindle 3 is different.
I bought Excel 2007 Power Programming with VBA from the Amazon shop, and that is good on my Kindle. I also read this on my iPad using the Kindle App on my iPad. But to be honest I have the same book on PDF and it looks better in the GoodReader app on iPad - in PDF than it does in the Amazon ebook format - but that is because they were a little sloppy converting the book to AZW.
If you want to read technical manual I recommend iPad - it is ideal for that sort of thing.

Portugal!

It is very easy to convert from epub to mobi, so don't think that should be a deal breaker, but I can see that that would be a consideration.

Well, I would suspect that wifi would work just fine, but you should check. The Sony will certainly work as all you do is plug it into your computer.

spyman: have you ever tried Calibre? it should work as a converter too

(what piss me off the most on every single ebook reader is the difference of price between Northamerica and europe: in USA 230$, in Italy 250€ = 323.3$ u.u)

the above is referred to the prs650 prices.

Yes, I use Calibre for epub to mobi, and Mobipocket Creator for PDF to to mobil. Calibre works well for conversion.

I will admit the Kindle is nifty and the wave of the future. But I can't make the plunge for 2 reasons:

1. I like the tacticle feel of a book.
2. I like having a bookshelf displayed with books. Not "click here on this folder and those are my books."

@abgemacht both wi-fi and 3G work in Portugal as in the majority of european countries.

@tj218
My bookshelf is kinda full right now... and my house is not that big :P

Well, then I'd say either the Kindle, or the Sony, depending on your personal preference.

Yeah, that's what happened to me. Moving around for College, I got sick of never having the books I wanted.

i had not said that the 3G does not work in Italy but that the Kindle's 3g connection to Amazon is working only for USA and CA

What do you mean?

I don't understand if you are saying that you can't download books for kindle using the 3G?

that's exactly what i am saying. One walkaround i read is to register as if you live in the USA, then the 3G will work anywhere. But if you say honestly, the 3G wont work.

Are you sure about that? I am in Australia and I have a a Kindle 2. I can dowloaded books anywhere/anytime. Internet access is somewhat limited (apparently it is much better in the USA), but the Amazon bookshop works fine.

That should be an Italian problem because have read reports of some Portuguese users and it works fine, both wi-fi and 3G...

The internet access issue is different... it seems that for now to be able to browse the net you need to have a US or UK adress. But that is "changeble" anytime.

For books download... there is no issue.

http://ireaderreview.com/2009/10/07/kindle-international-wireless-coverage-map/

I use the kindle reader on the Droid X. I thought about getting a Kindle but this works so well...