Free Kindle iPhone App: Crazy Or Genius?

The Kindle 2 has a lot going for it - it's snazzy looking, super functional, and keeps most of the technical under the hood. But the cost. For $359 you can get a game console, cheap computer, or tickets to Paris. And now, for free, you can get Amazon's Kindle service on your iPhone.

Sure, you won't get access to periodicals (only books), the form factor isn't as friendly to the eye, the books still cost $9.99, and so forth. But you can now access books that are only available at Amazon's store, keep your page when moving between Kindle and iPhone via Whisper Sync, and generally enjoy Kindleness without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for a unit.

Given my own trained-like-a-circus-bear behavior tendencies, I see myself falling in love with Kindle books and eventually justifying the purchase of what would otherwise be an almost offensively expensive product. I don't know how well that recruitment technique will work in the wild, though, which leaves the Kindle app as an extension of the service for the existing Kindle community - after all, there's gotta be a lot of overlap between iPhone and Kindle customers.