To your last question, convenience. Being able to carry around in a single 10 oz device an entire library is quite handy for those of us who don't know what we want to read. Or anticipate wanting to read several books on a trip. I don't have one, and looking at the selection on the Kindle Store, I'm not sure I'm going to get one yet, but I expect I will get one eventually.
I gotta agree. This is going to be convenient right now. The alternative to losing a book is rebuying it anyway, so if anything, it seems to carry things on just as they were.
