I agree with everything you say about a device that would function like this. Unfortunately the kindle can not handle this workload. The no color is a deal breaker right off the bat. The price per textbook is still to high, no matter how you break it down. Textbooks on college campuses are out of control currently. But you have to understand that in the current system most students are simply "renting" the textbooks. I just asked one of my students how much books are for the semester. She payed $420 for the semester and she will sell them for $250-300. She is out over the long term $200-250. Those same books (some are not available) using the kindle would cost her $500 and she owns them but she will never use them again. What do you think she is going to do. I would love to get rid of paper books and newspapers but this device can not do that yet. A device further down the road maybe will have all the functions you mentioned.
As far as the Kindle is concerned, it's a step in the right direction e-ink, but otherwise it fails. It came too late in the game for newspapers, blogs and magazines. Carrying a Kindle is not convenient because it doesn't fit in my pocket and if I'm not on the move, I'll use a computer to get this information.
Actually you are missing something
groundlessnfree, with Kindle you have the potential to expand market share for magazines & newspapers, at least the more respected ones. The content is delivered direct to the device via 3G, so for a person who travels alot, or who lives outside the normal areas of the NYT delivery the Kindle option is ideal, go to any major city, wake up in the morning and there is the NYT waiting for you, latest edition of say Wired is out and there it is, don't need to be home, don't need to wait, don't need to power up your laptop, don't need to deal with tiny text on your iPhone etc etc.
For once the publications can actually benefit from this, you aren't geographically tied to a physical newspaper. I won't in any way say that the newspaper is saved by any stretch as that market seems to be needing more shakeout anyway, but cost wise the reduction in paper publication & transport could be quite beneficial to a newspaper like the NY Times. (Let alone the potential for offering overseas subscriptions at some point for expats)
Obviously this isn't an instant mass market, but they are definately steps in the right direction. I think we would need an online "vault" of some description that allows your book purchases/licences to be saved and restored on a replacement device (without necessarily needing a computer) and add to that a way in which you can sell/trade your e-titles such that the license/content is removed and transferred to the new owner.
Ultimately like all new technology this is very much new, relative to the existing medium, and it isn't perfect, but if we don't push down this path it would be like the first automakers getting laughed into oblivion because they could never replace the horse & cart with that thing on 4 wheels. The Kindle & other devices may not catch on in full for 5-10 years as such a radical change does require time, but there are both economic and environmental long term benefits from such changes.
One being the publisher can also be the seller of the ebook and can skip over the middle man (Borders, B&N, campus book stores) and price accordingly. There is no issue with book demand not reflecting supply, we have 50 copies of the book you want at the store 30 miles away but none here. Just go online where there is always an ecopy in stock 24*7.
Also you don't have to worry about edition X having 100,000 copies in stock across the book stores when exition Y is being released in a few weeks. Let alone the benefits of providing updated editions to correct publishing errors.
How much money is wasted printing a title to exist on a shelf in a store somewhere just so it has a small probability of selling? Which is then replaced by a new edition which again just sits on a shelf... just in case.
Regarding international release, not sure if Amazon can get the same sort of deals as they have with Sprint regarding free 3G access, that might be a sticking point for some countries, but with such limited ability in being a pc replacement they can probably at worst come up with a deal where you pay $1 or 2 per month or maybe it can be free/discounted if you have an exisiting subscription to the wireless carrier.
As to overall success, probably the biggest obstacle to overcome is standards, if Sony & Amazon agreed to follow the same standards where the publishers do not need to release device specific versions of the titles then they can go a lot further. How many applications have existed on Windows but the companies couldn't/wouldn't justify a version for the Mac? Go beyond the infighting, agree on a standardized format and the market can progress a lot more quickly.
As to the student market, I am sure they can develop (if it isnt already in existance) a way to add notation to text in the books, you have a keyboard which already helps, though adding complex equations might not be so easy, but not taking should not stretch the bounds of reality too much.
