A few months on from buying my kindle 3 in Australia, I am very happy with the device. Before buying it, I was hesitant because I “liked reading real books” but now I am a converted kindle user.

Explaining to a friend of mine (hi Sarah) the other day why she had to get a kindle instead of real books, my main points were:

1. Highlights – The kindle 3 allows you to make highlights of text that you want to read again later. I used to do so using dog ears in books but unless I had a pen handy, it was always hard to know exactly which part of the page I was referring to when I went back to reread. Highlights allows me to go back after reading a book and read each of my highlights sequentially. It also let me upload them directly to my twitter and or facebook.
2. Dictionary – I didn’t initially think i would use this feature very much. That said, whilst reading certain books, I have found that I don’t know the meanings of as many words as I thought I did. Being able to quickly highlight a word and have the meaning come up instantly has been quite useful.
3. Read multiple books simultaneously -  This is one of the biggest features for me. Being able to decide on the bus in the morning what book I’d like to read (out of maybe 6-10 unread books on the device) is pretty cool. I used to take 2 or 3 books with me and now don’t have to carry as much around with me.
4. Holds your place in the book – This is a bit of an obvious one but never having to think about where I am in the book is useful. No placeholders or dog ears required.
5. Cost – So far, the most I have paid for a kindle book (out of maybe 15 purchased) is $15.99. This number used to average much higher than that buying real books.

If you’d like to read more about the Kindle, here are my initial thoughts in my Kindle 3 in Australia review.